Prepare your rollover to get a head start

Each year, you must start the rollover process to configure your system for the new year. Don't panic, your CSM will help you through the steps and offer guidance. Preparation is the key to a smooth end and start of the year. Let's go through the steps and explore the tools offered to make the process as easy as possible.

How are you handling reenrolment & promotion?

Before we start, how are you handling your promotion and re-enrollment requirements? Is promotion automatic? Are there minimum requirements? This will help determine which option is best for you. Your CSM will be able to offer advice on how to proceed, submit a ticket with your requirements and we will reach out to help and offer advice. A few tips to begin with;

• If you would like parents to give their approval/agreement for re-enrolment, the questionnaire module makes this easy. Ask them to update their contact details, medical information and consent at the same time. 
• The admission module is for new students only, they still need to be enrolled into their future classes. You will need to create classes in the next year to hold these students when you enrol them. Alternatively, you can create a holding class for them.
• Do you have student elective subjects? Do your students have access to the student portal? They can use the subject selector to give their choices, which will help you assign them to their courses for next year.
• Are you using an external timetabling solution? Enrolment can be created via our import tool. 
• Do you make seeding decisions for your class cohorts? It may be advisable to activate the dual enrolment feature to create holding classes in the new year until this decision is made. Speak to your CSM about this.
• Should your staff, guardians and students be able to access their future enrolment details? Speak to your CSM about the options to temporarily block access whilst you prepare.
• Users with time travel ability will be able to work and access their modules in the future year. As rollover admin, you need this.
• Are you using the LMS module? Educators will be able to copy their assignments and content from one year to the next. They will be able to do this once they have been assigned to their future course as a course Teacher.
• If you have an active sync for One Roster or Google. You may not wish yet to create future classes and enrolmnent. Deactivate this whilst you prepare. 

If you are prepared then follow these steps to ensure you have the new set-up before your return from a well-deserved summer break;

Step 1: Year management

In the configuration panel, under the Core module tab, you can access the year management page. An alternative is via administer/advanced options/Administer year or year management.

Access to the page and functionality is controlled by the create, edit and set academic years permissions. It may occur that legacy super users do not have permission to set future years. Contact your CSM for assistance.

Click on the blue year and a slide-over appears, enter the first operational day of school and the last operational day of the school year. The financial date range is no longer needed in MySchool finance. 

It is important to enter these dates when they are confirmed. These dates will control the class enrolment dates for the students and the course duration and enrolment dates. Changing these dates after you have enrolled students in their new classes and courses may cause issues with withdrawn or future start statuses appearing.

Do not set the year yet, this will be the final action for the rollover, once you are ready to start the new year.

Step 2: Create the classes

It is a good start to create the target classes in the new year. With these in place, you can start to move some of the students already into the new year. There are a few easy options available for you:

• Create manually - All dependant on your structure but creating classes in MySchool is quick and simple. Especially if you choose to have a grade cohort only. 
• Import - Ask your CSM for assistance and guidance on the import tool and its functions. They may be able to help. out in this step
• Promotion rollover tool - You can create your classes with no enrolment if you prefer. When you select the correct target year and you have set up your class promotion mapping. Click Auto Create Classes and uncheck the enrol students check box. This needs to be done for each class level. 

You can start to promote students into their classes if you wish to do so. It may be advisable to add your new starters or start to enrol your successful applicants into their target class.

Step 3: Create terms

Before creating courses, we advise you to set up your term configuration. It is best to start course rollover and enrolment once the term dates have been fixed to avoid having to amend enrolment data for your students.

Administrators can access this via the configuration panel, in the same place as year management, or via administer/advanced options/Administer terms or term management.

A) Creating a new configuration or using an existing configuration?

If your term will not change for next year then you can use the previous year's configuration and just apply to the same grades and add next year's dates, explained in B & C. 

A good tip to order and better manage your term list is to add a number in front of your active terms and the year. Add a z. to your archived or no longer used configurations to push them to the bottom of your list.

If you are creating a new term configuration and you make a typing mistake or wish to change the labels, then simply start a new configuration. 

B) Apply the configuration to the grade/class levels

You can apply one term configuration per year to each grade. Click on the empty year slot and select the grades from the slideover.

C) Set the dates

You will be asked to save your configuration before setting the dates. Click on the target year and the slide-over will show the terms greyed out. You need to check the activate field and add dates.

The sync course functionality is only needed if you have already created courses before creating and applying your term configuration. If you follow the order of the steps, then these terms will automatically be applied to all courses within the target class levels for this configuration. 

Step 4: Create timetables

It is not essential to create your timetable configuration before creating your courses. Configure timetables via the configuration panel just like the years and terms. It can also be found in administer/advanced options/Administer timetables or Timetable management. 

Don't need to change the structure of your timetable (Day or period configuration)? You just need to apply the class levels to the year.

If you are changing the configuration then it is advisable to archive the configuration and start from new.

Important to note: If you are using a regular weekday configuration, then you must contact our support team to reset the calendar to show your timetable correctly. If you are using day mapping then you must configure this for the new year as well.

Even if you are planning to use an external timetabler, for both KJ Timetabler and ASC it is advisable to create the configuration before importing the schedule. It will facilitate the mapping of the entities during the import phase.

Step 5: Students > Classes

Now we need to place the students into their future classes. Here are the options;

• Manual enrolment with the people picker - Using the people picker, you can easily transfer grade levels or individual classes in a few clicks. Time travel to the next year, select the class and open the student tab. Change the year to the previous year, and populate the class from there. 

• Import - Ask your CSM for access to the import tool. Create an Excel with the MSM ID of the student and the class ID or exact name. Ensure that you are selecting the correct target year for the import. Use quick reports to export the data, making it simple to format.

If you still haven't decided on which seed or target class for your students. No problem, why not create holding classes, and activate dual enrolment? Place all of your students into one class for the year or grade then you can use the people-picker method to populate the correct class once the decision has been made. When finished, you should have no students in the holding class, simply delete and ask support to deactivate dual enrolment. 

Step 6: Create courses

There are multiple ways to create courses, but by far the quickest and easiest, in our opinion;

Ask our support team to do it for you!!

We will need to know what you would like to copy to the next year;

We can copy the term and schedule if the configuration is the same as the previous year Teachers will have access to their next year's roster if they are copied and access has not been stopped. Default rooms will respect the same periods and booking clashes appropriately if the timetable has been configured.

Equally, we can create courses with the import tool. If you are using the ASC/KJ import tool, new courses can be created as part of the import process. 

Step 7: Enrolling students in the courses

It all depends on your internal process. Again the option of manual enrolment with the people picker is quick and easy, if you need access to the import tool, again you will need an Excel template with the MSM ID of the student and the exact name or UID of the course. 

Speak with your CSM about the best option. 

Step 8: Assessments

It is not a mandatory step, as the assessments may change from year to year. If you want to get a head start then you can use the copy function from subject specifications to copy all assessments, learning outcomes, content and topics from one year to the next. The bulk learning outcome update allows you to copy all subjects from one year to the next. 

NB: Please check the target year field before proceeding to copy in bulk. If you copy to the current year, you will erase all assessments. 

Step 9: Check every step

• Are your year dates correct? Check a student's class enrollment. These should align with the year's dates.
• Are your terms within the year dates? Are they correctly assigned to courses?
• Are the students enrolled for the duration of the course? If you have any short courses? Alter the duration dates.
• Are you using holiday management, do you know the dates? Add them to the system before opening the portals.
• Are the terms assigned to the assignment grid appropriately? Are the correct terms showing on the assessment grid?
• Check a few schedules for both students and teaching staff. Are the periods scheduled correctly? Did you contact support to reset the calendar if you are using a regular week set-up?
• Can your assigned teachers take attendance on the first day?
• Are your new starters set up in their new classes?
• If you copied assessments check to see if the configuration looks ok, you may have to update certain fields with new terms if you are using a stated grade field.
• Why not create an announcement template to send each year inviting the community to the new school year?
• Have you made yourself a coffee? Well, it looks like you are set up and all that you need to do is to wait for the start of the new year.

Step 10: Set the new year to be the system year

Once you are ready, then back to year management and set the system year. All users will now see their new schedules, enrolments, and other details. Away you go for another MySchool scholastic year!

External scheduling software

We offer an import tool for ASC, KJ timetabler and Untis. These solutions can help with enrollment as well as scheduling. What is important is to have the structure of the new year set up. The first step is to export details from MySchool to help build your schedules. Once complete the entities are mapped automatically.