Security 

Options 

Scheduling Status 

Scheduling Options 

SMS & SSS Initialization 

Convert to Flex Scheduling 

Convert to Section Staff only (non-flex)

Overview

Navigate to Scheduling Process > Configurations > Scheduling Setup.

The Scheduling Setup page allows the Student Scheduling (SSS) and Scheduling Master Schedule (SMS) tables to be set up for scheduling during the current school year or for the next school year.

Security  ↑

Options  ↑

Scheduling Setup Options is divided into three sections: Scheduling Status, Scheduling Options, and SMS & SSS Initialization.

For districts with the Flex Scheduling feature flag enabled, the Convert to Flex Scheduling section will be displayed at the bottom of this page.

Scheduling Status  ↑

Under Scheduling Status, choose the correct option for your scheduling needs:  Scheduling Students into Classes for the Current School Year or Scheduling Students into Classes for the Next School Year. Scheduling for next year in this year’s database will use the Next Grade field (STU.NG) to determine whether a student can be placed into a section's grade range. Additionally, the scheduling process will include both active students and students with a status tag (STU.TG) of ‘*’ (i.e., pre-enrolled).

If you will be using Flex Scheduling next year, skip down to the Convert to Flex Scheduling section of this document. See the Flex Scheduling documentation for more information.

Scheduling Options  ↑

Under Scheduling Options, select the option Do NOT allow an Alternate Course Request that has already been selected as a primary or alternate request to prevent a student from requesting a course as an Alternate Course, if the student already has that course as a primary or alternate course request.

The Scheduling Options section provides checkboxes to enable Wait Lists for Master Schedule and/or Scheduling Master Schedule sections.

See the Placing Students on the Wait List documentation for more information about Wait Lists. 

The final option under Scheduling Options allows you to Use Staff-Section Association instead of Teacher Numbers (TN) with SMS Sections. If Use Flex Scheduling for Next Year option is selected under Scheduling Status, the option to Use Staff-Section Association instead of Teacher Number(TN) with SMS sections will be checked on by default. When this option is selected, the records in the Staff (STF) table will be used by the system to be assigned to sections. Enabling this option will ignore existing TCH records and will only read from the Staff (STF) data. 

If a school type of 'Secondary' is using traditional scheduling, but would like to use the Section Staff Members feature to assign staff records to sections (instead of teachers from the TCH table), selecting this option will display the Section Staff Members area (SSM table) on the Scheduling Master page. The selection of this option is stored in OPT with the name 'SchedUseStaffInSMS'.

SMS & SSS Initialization  ↑

For more information on mid year scheduling, see:  Mid Year Scheduling and Finalization.

The first step to initializing the SMS and SSS is to clear out any existing data in those tables. If scheduling has previously been performed, the SSS and SMS tables will contain data. When copying data from the Master Schedule (MST) into the SMS, always blank out the SMS table before copying the MST into the SMS.  

Be absolutely sure you are ready to clear out the SSS and SMS tables. Select the following options to blank out the SSS and SMS tables and click on the Initialize Scheduling button: 

The following message will display. Click the OK button to proceed.

Wait for the email confirmation that the process has completed.

If you do not plan on copying the current MST or SEC to the SMS or SSS and you want to start with an empty Scheduling Master Schedule (SMS) and Course Request (SSS) table, no further steps are necessary.

If you plan on copying the current MST or SEC to the SMS or SSS, continue with the next steps. 

Select which terms to copy for scheduling. These choices apply to both the student classes copied and the master schedule sections copied.

In the Course Requests section, choose an option:

• Do Nothing with the SSS Table will leave all existing data in the table.
• Selecting Blank out the SSS Table will delete any existing data and leave table empty.
• Selecting Copy Current Student Classes to SSS Table, Keep as Prescheduled will keep the students in the same sections they were in during the previous term. This function is normally used during mid-year scheduling.
• Selecting Copy Current Student Classes as Course Requests Only will copy students’ current classes as course requests.

Note: If the SSS table is already populated with course requests and either of the last two options are selected, a message will be displayed to indicate that the SSS table already has records in it and that selection of this option will append the new records to the existing records. If the SSS table has records in it, you will be asked to confirm if you want to continue copying the current classes to the SSS table.

In the Scheduling Master Schedule section, choose an option:

• Do Nothing with the SMS Table will leave all existing data in the table.
• Selecting Blank out the SMS Table will delete any existing data and leave table empty.
• The final option, Copy current master schedule (MST) table to the new SMS table will copy your school’s Master Schedule (MST) into the new Scheduling Master Schedule (SMS) table. When the option is selected, more options will be displayed, allowing you to choose how to handle inactive sections in the MST. Select the appropriate option for your scheduling situation.

After all options have been selected, click the Initialize Scheduling button. 

The following message will display. Click the OK button to proceed.

An email will be sent to confirm that the process was completed.

Convert to Flex Scheduling  ↑

In order to ease the transition of converting traditional scheduling data to Flex Scheduling, a conversion process has been added on the Scheduling Setup page. This process replaces the need for running the Initialization SQL Scripts. The process to convert to Flex Scheduling can also be run in the new year database after the rollover if the school is currently using traditional scheduling, the Scheduling Type field is NOT set to Elementary or Elementary w/MST and there are no MST records.

Elementary schools converting to Flex Scheduling can follow this documentation: Converting from Elementary to Flex for Next Year

The Convert to Flex Scheduling section will display for districts under the following conditions:

If scheduling for next year:

• The Feature Flag for Flex Scheduling has been enabled
• The school has selected the Scheduling Setup option:  Scheduling students into classes for the next school year, using their grade level next year (not the Use Flex Scheduling for Next Year option) 
• The school has at least one SMS record (the Copy current master schedule (MST) table to new SMS table process can accomplish this)

If scheduling for the current year after the New Year Rollover:

• The Feature Flag for Flex Scheduling has been enabled
• The School Options > Scheduling Type field is NOT set to Flexible
• The school has the following Scheduling Setup option selected:  Scheduling students into classes for the current school year
• MST records cannot exist prior to using this conversion process

The Convert to Flex Scheduling section has a Class Calendar Start Date and a Class Calendar End Date. These dates require the user to select a Start Date after July 1 of the next academic year, and will be used to create Class Calendar records for the next academic year. The Class Calendar End Date will auto-populate with a 6/30 end date by default. This can be changed to the appropriate last day of school of the following year. Warning messages display if the start or end dates do not fall within the next academic year and the Convert to Flex Scheduling button is clicked.

If Next Year Start Date (LOC.NSD) is populated on the School Options page and it is after the last day of the current school year, then the Class Calendar Start Date will be auto-populated as the default Start Date value. If Next Year Start Date (LOC.NSD) is blank, then the Start Date field will be blank. The dates cannot fall on a Saturday or a Sunday.

If the start date entered is not a Monday and the Convert to Flex Scheduling button is initialized, the process will successfully create the Class Calendar records and upon completion, the Start Date that was entered will be selected.

For example:  If the first day of school is a Tuesday 8/20/2024 and the conversion process is run, the Class Calendar will have the date 8/20/2024 selected.

If scheduling in the new year database after rollover but prior to the start of school, the date picker will default to the first Monday of school if the DAY table is populated. Otherwise, it will default to the next Monday after today (or today, if today is Monday).

After a sample date is entered, clicking the Convert to Flex Scheduling button will display a Yes/No confirmation dialog.

After clicking Yes, the date picker will be validated. It must not be blank, and it must be a Monday. If not, a red alert text will display with the proper message.

If validation is successful, the process to convert to Flex SMS will begin by first performing a scheduling backup. This is the same process as if the backup was done using the Backup and Restore Scheduling Results page. The Description will be labeled as Pre-Conversion to Flex Scheduling.

The conversion process will then perform the following:

• Create Flex Periods for next year based on the current BEL table and assign them to the existing SMS records
  • Ensure that all periods expected to be converted are added to the Default Bell Schedule on the School Options page (BEL) to avoid Flex Periods from being missed during the conversion process.
• Create Class Calendars(CCL) based on the existing combinations of meeting days in SMS (DY, MM, MT, MW, MT, MF) and assign the Class Calendars to all existing SMS records.
  • Create Class Calendar Dates(CCD) based on the sample week, starting with the sample Monday selected by the user.
• Create Section Staff (SSM) records based on the existing combinations of SMS.TN, SMS.TN2, SMS.TN3 and the related TCH.ID, TCH.ID2, and TCH.ID3. TCH records without Staff IDs will be skipped during the conversion process.
  • If the school was already using Section Staff for SMS, this step will be skipped.
  • School types of Elementary w/MST do not support Section Staff and will not be converted
• Clear out the SMS fields that are not used by Flex Scheduling
  • PD, BL
  • TN
  • DY, MM, MT, MW, MR, MF, MS
• Convert Preferred Teacher(SSS.TN) to Preferred Staff(SSS.PS).  This will only run if the school was NOT already using Section Staff.
• Convert Scheduling Exclusions periods to Flex Periods (SED table).
• Convert Scheduling Exclusions Teachers to Staff (SED table); this will only run if the school was NOT already using Section Staff.
• In the new year database when scheduling for current year, the school will be set to Scheduling Type of Flexible on the School Options page.
• Scheduling Status on the Scheduling Setup page will have the option Use Flex Scheduling for Next Year enabled
• The option to Use Staff-Section Association instead of Teacher Numbers(TN) with SMS sections will be enabled
• The LOG table will show the event as SMS Conversion to Flex - Process Started and SMS Conversion to Flex - Process Completed, with no other details.

After completing the conversion process, the scheduling process can continue. For more information, see the Flex Scheduling documentation.

Convert to Section Staff only (non-flex) ↑

For districts who would like to ease into converting to full Flex Scheduling, another option is to continue to use traditional scheduling but also move away from using the Teacher data (TCH) and begin using Staff data (STF). The process to enable Section Staff can also done in the new year database after the rollover if the school is currently using traditional scheduling.

On the Scheduling Setup page, a single option can be enabled when scheduling in SMS. 

If scheduling for next year:

• The Feature Flag for Flex Scheduling must be enabled
• The school has selected the Scheduling Setup option:  Scheduling students into classes for the next school year, using their grade level next year (not the Use Flex Scheduling for Next Year option) 
• Enable the Use Staff-Section Association instead of Teacher Numbers(TN) with SMS sections option
• An optional script can be run to add the Section Staff records (SSM) if SMS sections currently have teacher numbers associated. Otherwise, manual entry of Section Staff can be performed for each section. 
  • Only run the SQL script titled Create Section Staff (SSM) Records linked to SMS

If scheduling for the current year after the New Year Rollover:

• The Feature Flag for Flex Scheduling must be enabled 
• The School Options > Scheduling Type field is NOT set to Flexible
• The School Options > Scheduling Type field is NOT set to Elementary or Elementary w/MST
• The School Options > Use Staff In Sections field is enabled
• The school has the following Scheduling Setup options selected: 
  • Scheduling students into classes for the current school year
  • Use Staff-Section Association instead of Teacher Numbers(TN) with SMS sections
• An optional script can be run to add the Section Staff records (SSM) if SMS sections currently have teacher numbers associated. Otherwise, manually entry of Section Staff can be performed for each section.
  • Only run the SQL script titled Create Section Staff (SSM) Records linked to SMS