Preparations for End of Year
INDEX
- Preparations for End of Year
- Preparations for a new school year/term
Absence
If you use the “absence” functions in Itslearning, you must complete this for this year.
- Absence is registered and completed by the teacher in all weeks in all courses. We recommend that teachers complete each week throughout the year.
- Mentor changes to the daily absence (only on completed weeks from the teacher) where one wants daily absence and complete the process.
- Headmaster complete all absence on the school level
Customers may choose from which level they want to export absence. This is set up and chosen in the Workflow which you have defined via the Administrative tasks. Absence does not need to be completed before being exported.
Export of absence to MIS/SAS?
If you want export of absence to your own MIS/SAS, and this has not been done before, this need to be set up/configured by Itslearning staff/consultants to work properly.
Send a request by mail to integrations@itslearning.com with information on MIS/SAS you are using and whom to contact during the configuration process, and we may be able to set this up.
Export of absence data depends on which MIS/SAS you use.
Termly behaviour
Termly behaviour and grades are added by and completed by Mentors.
Termly behaviour cannot be exported before they are completed.
If you cannot export "Termly behaviour” – check that they are completed!
End of term
A term is completed when the term end date is reached. You may then complete the term if all data you want to be added to the assessment overview, absence registration and termly behaviour has been added. The level from which the export should happen is set up in the Workflow!
For questions regarding terms, end-of-terms, mid-term assessments, and final assessments, please contact integrations@itslearning.com and ask for a “walk through” as soon as possible before you plan to do your own “End of year” process.
Preparations for a new school year/term
How to handle users/persons
Students in lower levels
Note! Please check that all students in lower levels have a synchronisation key added!
Many customers manually add new students in lower levels and forget to add the synchronisation key. If the synchronisation key is missing, the students will not be automatically synchronised via the integration and some students may end up with two accounts when the integration is run. Duplicate accounts occur when you have both a manually created account and a new account created by the integration for the same user.
To avoid having duplicate user accounts, it is important to check that manually added students have a synchronisation key. If you know that teachers or schools are adding students manually those same teachers or schools should make sure that the students' accounts have the correct synchronisation key BEFORE they are updated through integration. The synchronisation key should be the same unique identifier the student has in customer MIS/SAS, and used by the integration.
Creating users manually when you have an integration
We never recommend adding users manually when you have an active integration. This is to avoid that you end up with duplicate user accounts as mentioned above. If you discover that you have duplicate accounts – it is important to handle those correctly and correct them as quickly as possible to avoid any future issues where a student may log in and use 2 different accounts.
Contact integrations@itslearning.com as soon as possible, and they will help/guide you on what needs to be done to correct the issue.
Note! Exceptions - ADMINISTRATORS/SYSTEM ADMINISTRATORS
If you want to create new Administrators/System Administrators, these users may be created manually and we recommend that they never have a synchronization key added to their users. This is to avoid these users being changed by the integration!
General information for all integrations
Changing to a new school year may lead to many changes in the data that is sent to itslearning via integration. The most important parts are:
- Students change classes/levels
- Membership changes
- New students/staff are added
- New classes/students groups are being created
- Students/staff who have left and need to be removed
- If you are using course import:
- Old courses should be archived
- New courses should be created
It is critical to remember that transferring new courses from MIS/SAS to itslearning should not be done before the "start date" for the new school year has been reached, to avoid that new courses being added to last year.
Note! Please check how your MIS/SAS handles «End-of-year» and «Back to school” (new year).
Large updates/changes in data files – Safety Filter ON/OFF?
Our IMSE integration has a “safety mechanism” we call a “Filter”. Filter has a set of parameters that will make sure that the data sent to a customer's integration does not contain too many changes/deviations from previous imports, and prevent these changes are automatically updated in itslearning. This is to avoid that changes creating "havoc" on a customer's itslearning site.
If there are too many changes/deviations in the data we receive from a customer's integration – compared to the last import – the import process will be aborted and the customer and support is notified via a Status- email with details of why the import process has been aborted.
Note! itslearning recommend that all customers ALWAYS have the Filter turned ON, enabling the safety mechanism at all times. We only change the Filter settings/turn Filter OFF after a dialogue with the customer and the customer has decided that this is something they want to run through.
Customers should always check the Status email that is sent out after each integration run, if there are some issues, the customer and integration support need to have a closer look at them. It may be that the import process has been aborted due to too many changes/updates, or too many deletes, compared to the max limits set in the Filter setup.
We also point out that for all integrations there is a two-way responsibility:
- Customer should check that the data sent to their integration is always correct
- itslearning should provide the technical services and make sure they work as expected
The data source, i.e. data that is sent from customer MIS/SAS to itslearning, is the customer’s responsibility. It is only the customer that can determine whether the changes we receive to their integration are correct or not! itslearning "only" imports the data that is sent. We cannot determine whether the data we receive is correct or not, but we can assist customers with data checks before deciding whether or not to run the import!
Send an email to integrations@itslearning.com if you have questions about your integration has failed, or if you have other questions related to your integration.
Stop the integration for the summer/school break.
If you want to «freeze» the content in itslearning «as is» at the «End of the year», without changing user access or content, there are two options to do that:
- Stop the integration from running after the last day of teaching
- Turn on a special function called «Delay Delete» to postpone any deletes to a later day
Stop the integration for the summer/school break (alternative 1)
If the customer wants to keep itslearning “as is” on the last day of school, and you have an active integration, we may deactivate the integration preventing the integration to import new data. Customers may then do necessary changes in their MIS/SAS without transferring this to Itslearning.
Itslearning will then contain all content and users as they are when we stop the integration.
The integration will then be put “on hold” until you decide to restart it again in the Fall.
All students and teachers will then have access to their courses etc, during the summer break, if they need to access it. But at the same time no new users, groups, hierarchies, courses etc, will be added, even if you do changes in your MIS/SAS.
Note! All customers need to check with their MIS/SAS vendor how to handle EOY/BTS and if there is a special date for changing over from “this year” to a “new school year”!
Turn on the special function «Delay Delete» (alternative 2)
A second option is to use a special function called “Delay delete” in our IMSE integration.
By adding a period of “delayed deletes”, all deletes that should have been done due to changes in customers' MIS/SAS will NOT be transferred over to customers' itslearning site BUT will happen in the IMSE import database.
By turning on «Delay delete” customers may prepare a new school year long before the school year starts, and all users, groups/hierarchies, courses etc, will remain in itslearning until the “delay delete” period is ending. At the same time all new users, groups etc, will be added when the integration runs.
When the “Delay delete» period is ended, all deletes that have been postponed in itslearning will take place.
«Delay Delete» is set up with a «start date» and an «end date» to specify the period the function should be active on the integration. It is automatically turned OFF when the end date is reached.
The disadvantage is that teachers may expect classes etc to change, and it does not happen until the delay delete period is over. This then is considered to be an error with the integration – which it is not. It is only that the deletes are postponed.
The advantage is that all users, groups, hierarchies, courses etc are intact in itslearning while the delay delete period is active and new data is added.
Send an email to integrations@itslearning.com to request for the integration to be stopped for the summer or to turn on a “Delay delete” period. If you want to delay delete, you must specify a start and end date!
Summer school?
Some customers have taught during summer vacations as well, so the IMSE integration then CANNOT be deactivated.
Any special summer classes/courses etc must be added as extra information in the data file sent to the integration, otherwise existing users, classes, courses etc, will be deleted/archived. Delay delete will here be a good solution to turn on while summer school is going on.
New terms for next school year
- New terms need to be defined before the start of the new school year if absence should be used
- Assessments for mid-term and final assessments need to be added to the terms if they should be used
- Assessments for termly behaviour need to be added to the terms if they should be used
- Everything that needs to be added to the assessment letter has to be connected to the terms
We recommend that the term and assessments are added to a template and then pushed out to all courses where they should be used. The teacher then does not need to add this themselves, and the process will be correct.
Archiving of old terms?
Terms from last year can be archived, to prevent them from being available and cause misunderstandings. This can be done when you prepare «End of year» and before the summer break.
As a System Admin, you need to go to Admin/Terms, and there choose which terms to archive.
This is how you do it:
Or to the «Admin» menu, then select «Terms» (inside the red rectangle). When you do you will get a list of terms on your site:
From this view, you can select a term and then select «Archive». You may select and archive several terms in one go.
If you have “terms” created by the integration, the integration will archive “old” terms when you change the school year in your MIS/SAS, and the old terms no longer is present in the data file.
How to handle courses?
Course templates MUST be updated
- All standardized course templates which contain terms and are used by other courses MUST be updated with the new terms and any old terms must be removed.
- If the template contains a set-up for assessments, you must consider if the same should be used before changing to a new school year. If there are no changes here – you do not need to do anything
- If the template contains a setup in Planner you need to consider if the same set-up should be used or if you need to do any necessary changes in the setup before changing to a new school year.
- If you have requests for new templates that contain course content and this should be run via the integration, please reach out to us and this can be set up before changing to a new school year.
- If you should change which level has the different course templates, these changes must be done before you change to a new school year. Please reach out to us well before you plan to change to a new school year, since it may take some time to update the templates per your requests
If you do not have standardized course templates but want to have them – please reach out to us and we will help you create them. Send an email to support.no@itslearning.com, and request help with this.
Courses not created via the IMSE integration, but where you want the integration to create and update!
If you have coded or want to have coded special courses, f.ex. team courses, class courses etc, you must review and consider if you want a change, or if you want additional or fewer special courses that are created and updated via the IMSE integration. These then need to be changed before you change to next school year, for them to be processed correctly.
We can help you set up the integration to create courses which otherwise are not coming from your MIS/SAS. Send a request by mail to «integrations@itslearning.com», and we will reply with an offer on this, and an estimate of work hours needed to give you the extra/special courses you want set up. This is a chargeable extras service that we offer.
Course archiving
Itslearning has a function called “course archiving”. With “Course archiving” turned on for your site, all courses created by the integration will be automatically archived when the hierarchy group the course is based on is removed from the data file sent to the integration.
- You may check that «Course archiving» is turned on and active on your site. You will find it under “Admin/Edit Global settings/Functions and security/Synchronization», as shown in the image below (in Norwegian):
If this setting «Course archiving» is not turned ON, courses created by the integration WILL NOT be archived when the hierarchy group the course is based on is removed from the data file, but will instead be detached from the hierarchy, and live on as a “manually created course”. All participants will be converted to manually added participants in the course. The courses will then still be active inside Itslearning and function as manually created courses.
If you cannot see the setting mentioned above, and want it to be activated on your site, please contact Itslearning support and we will help you turn it on. It is a combination of a «site setting» only available to Support and a setting needed to be turned via the Admin interface for your site itself. We recommend that all customers having courses created via the integration turn ON the course archiving feature!
The following happens when course archiving is turned on, and a course is archived by the integration:
- Courses, where the hierarchy group has been removed from the data file, will be detached from the hierarchy and the course itself is put in the “Course archive” (Course is no longer active). You may find the archived courses in “Admin/Courses” and may search for courses as usual but need to check “Archived courses” to have a search result.
- Hierarchy synchronization is removed from the course. All previously synchronized participants will be converted into manually added participants in the course.
- Teach can still access the archived course and may copy content from the course.
- Students can still access the archived course to see what they have done or copy content they need in other courses.
- Archived courses may be “unarchived” from the course archive.
Any hierarchy synchronization will not be restored this way. - An archived course will still be course archived even if the hierarchy group the course initially was created from, once more is included in the data file sent to the integration. If that happens the course will be reconnected to a new hierarchy and will be synchronized with new participants (any old participants will also be there). The Course itself is NOT moved out of the Course archive and needs to be “un-archived” manually. The IMSE integration have no mean of doing that automatically!
- An archived course that is manually restored (moved out of Course archive) without the hierarchy group being sent to the integration again, will be restored without the hierarchy synchronization. And since the integration «know nothing about it» the course needs to be manually archived again – if you want it to be archived.
If a course (a course hierarchy group) is deleted from the data file?
If a course (hierarchy group the course is based on) is removed (deleted) from the data file, and “course archiving” is NOT turned on, this will happen inside itslearning:
- Courses that have been removed from the data file will lose their hierarchy connection inside itslearning (the course will be detached from the hierarchy) and will live on as a manually created course. The course is still active and will NOT be put into Course Archive.
- Hierarchy synchronization will be removed, and all participants will be converted to manually added participants in the course.
- Customer needs to manually delete or archive the course if the course no longer should be available as an active course inside itslearning.
Remove a course from "my favourite courses”
Courses that are archived or deleted should be removed from your «favourite» course list, preventing them from clogging up your course list. This has to be done by each user.
You can do this easily by navigating to the “Course menu” (which shows your courses) on the Main menu, and then “Select all” courses. By selecting all courses, you can easily turn OFF the «Favorite”-view for those courses you do not want to be favourite anymore. Select the “yellow start” for each course to «unselect» the course from the favourite list.
You select all the courses you do not want to be your favourite, then select «Remove favourite» to remove the courses from the favourite list. The courses you «unselect» will no longer show up in the «Course»
Special considerations regarding MIS/SAS
There are some special considerations regarding some MIS/SAS about changing settings for “trigging” data for the correct school year.
Please check with your vendor to check if there need to be made some changes to your IMSE integration and inform Support if Support needs to do something on the Itslearning side of the integration.
Itslearning support knows that we need to do changes for Norwegian and Swedish customers.
And some UK customers use Wonde as middleware.
If your integration needs special care before changing the school year, please inform Itslearning support, and we will add your integration setup to an internal “Scheduled task list” to make the necessary changes at the correct date.
Change of MIS/SAS?
Note! Changing MIS/SAS will need changes to your IMSE configuration!
Customers need to inform itslearning way ahead of any changes in MIS/SAS, so we can do necessary changes to your integration on our site, to facilitate changes in data source/ids etc.
It will include setting up test environments with a test integration to test if the new data will cause large changes or not.
Changes of MIS/SAS that will need changes to the customer IMSE integration is a chargeable change and need to be agreed upon with your KAM and work need to be done by the Integration consultants.
itslearning cannot promise that we can do changes to an MIS/SAS integration just before changing the school year, but we will do our best to help out in any situation.