Overview

For each new Academic Year, part of the Rollover process (Steps 4-5) for your Compass portal will include building the schedule.  There are some steps (Step 1-3) in the Rollover process that need to be completed prior to building your new schedule so please refer to the Rollover - Schedule Builder article from our Knowledge Base before proceeding.

The Schedule Builder allows for the building of simple, core level timetables within Compass. This module is most useful for Primary Schools and small schools where timetabling may have previously been done on a simple document or spreadsheet. It is not suitable for schools that utilise a third party timetabling package such as Edval or First Class.

Schedule Builder takes away the need to manually populate subjects with classes, student enrolments and sessions.  It will allow you to assign students to the applicable classes for both attendance and/or reporting purposes.

It is important to consider your semester reporting requirements when configuring Schedule Builder.
If you wish to discuss your school's specific report requirements in regards to your Schedule Builder setup please contact our Support Team on (03) 9005 5217.

Example: In standard Primary School settings it is desirable to separate subjects into year levels (e.g Year 1 Generalist, Year 2 Generalist etc.) for reporting purposes. The Subject setup & Schedule Builder setup below shows Generalist and Specialist subjects configuration optimised for Semester Reports.

When you are ready to set up the Schedule Builder Template for your new Academic Year, please work through each of the below sections of this article.

Please Note: This article goes through how to set-up a new Schedule Builder Template, for details on managing an existing Template, please refer to the Schedule Builder article from our Knowledge Base.

Set up Subjects for the new Academic Year

Go the the Teaching and Learning menu (pencil icon) and click 'Subjects and Classes'. 

The initial part of the process is to set up your Subjects for the new academic year.  You can either manually set up each subject or you can export your current year subjects, edit any changes in the spreadsheet and then import them as your new academic year subjects.  Please refer below for the process for the method you choose.

Manual Subject Creation

On the Subject View tab, set the Academic Year to be the new Academic year you are creating subjects for.

     

Click 'Add New Subject'.  You will then need to fill out the information required in the pop-up.  Fields with a red star are mandatory.

     

Fields:

Code	Choose a code to assign to the subject.  The code must be at least 2 characters long, unique within this new Academic Year and, due to the potential impact on the timetable and attendance data, the code should NOT be changed once the Subject is created.  We generally recommend using a code that provides some indication of what the subject relates to i.e. for a Year 2 Generalist Subject, 02GEN might be the code you choose.
Short Name	Type in the name of the subject.  The Short Name field is generally referenced for the Subject name when subject data is being exported in various locations in Compass.
Long Name	The name keyed in for Short Name will populate this field by default.  You can add a more detailed/extensive subject name if required.  The Long Name field is what is used for subject names on Semester Reports.
Year Level	Choose the applicable year level this subject applies to from the drop-down i.e. if you are creating the Subject for Year 2 Generalist classes, select Year 2.  If the subject will apply across different year levels, choose 'Cross Year'.  This might be needed for a specialist subject such as Art or for if you are going to have composite Generalist classes.
Faculty	If you are using Faculties you can select the applicable one or leave as 'Default'.
Academic Year	This will default to the new Academic Year (because you set it at the start of this process before clicking 'Add New Subject').  If it is not showing the correct new Academic Year that you want the subject to be in, select the correct year from the drop-down.
Coordinator	If you have Subject Coordinators in place at your school you can choose the applicable staff member or you can leave this field blank.  You can come back in to edit the subject at a later date and add the coordinator if need be.
Schedule Layer	Choose the applicable Schedule Layer that classes of this subject need to sit on from the list available.  When creating standard subjects for your new Academic Year, the layer will generally be a Normal Classes layer.  For more information on Schedule Layers, please refer to the Configure Schedules article from our Knowledge Base.
Roll Marking Mode	When you have selected the Schedule Layer, it will add the default Roll Marking Mode for that Layer to this field.  If it needs to be different for this Subject, you can choose another type from the drop-down.  This Roll Marking Mode will then be the default for any classes created within this Subject.  Classes can be edited to have a different Roll Marking Mode if needed.
Attendance Code when marked Present	When you have selected the Schedule Layer, it will add the default Attendance Code for that Layer to this field.  If it needs to be different for this Subject, you can choose another type from the drop-down.  This Attendance Code when marked Present will then be the default for any classes created within this Subject.  Classes can be edited to have a different Attendance Code when marked Present if needed.
Period Structure	The Period Structure will show the default set for the Schedule Layer you selected.  Classes created within this subject will then follow this Period Structure.  For more information on setting up Period Structures, please refer to the Configure Schedules article from our Knowledge Base.
Course Fee ($)	If your school is using the Course Confirmations module to charge School Fees to families and you need to assign costs to Subjects so that students can be charged a Subject fee based on subjects they are taking, you can set the amount for the subject in this field.  This is mostly applicable in Secondary schools.  Leave blank if not applicable for your school.
Approval Req.	When student subject selection is imported into the Course Confirmation module, students who have selected to do subjects with this field ticked, will require the staff member administering the Course Confirmation cycle to approve the student for the associated fee to be charged.

When you have completed adding the required information, click 'Save' and the subject will be created.

     

If you need to edit information, click the associated edit pencil icon for that subject.  Click 'Save' to update your changes.

     

Continue to click 'Add New Subject' and add each of the subjects you will require for the new Academic Year.

      

Importing your new Academic Year Subjects

On the Subject View tab, check that the Academic Year field is set to 'Currently Relevant'.

     

Click 'Exports' and choose 'Subjects Export'.

     

A csv file will download to your device.  Open the file and make all the necessary changes for your new Academic Year.  Remove any subjects that will not be running, edit any codes or names as needed.  You can also add/remove/edit any costs associated with the subject.

When the csv file reflects the subject data you want for your new Academic Year, select 'Save As' and save on your device as a csv file with the header columns included.
  
In Compass, on the Subjects and Class page, click 'Actions' and choose 'Import Subjects'.  In the pop-up you will see the fields required and the file guidelines.  Choose the new Academic Year from the drop-down.  Click 'Choose File' and select the file from your device. 

     

Click 'Import Subjects' and you will then be redirected to the Import Jobs screen where you can monitor progress of the imported subject file.

If any warnings or errors show instead of a status of 'Completed', double click the '-' (hyphen symbol) in the 'Add' column for the import to see what the issue is.  If you need assistance resolving a warning or error please contact our Support Team.

Go to the pencil menu icon and click on 'Subjects and Classes'.  Set the Academic Year to be your new Academic Year and you will then see the subjects you have imported showing.

     

     If you need to make any edits, locate the subject in the list and click the edit pencil icon. 

     


If you have included a subject in the import that will actually not be running, click the associated red cross to delete it.  Please proceed with caution when deleting a subject, if classes have been associated they will be deleted in the process and it will remove any related attendance data for students.

     

Please Note: If you attempt to re-import another Subject file into this new Academic Year, it will update any changes to existing subjects (ie. if when you first imported the file, Food Tech had a cost of $50 and you then edited this in the csv file to be $60 and re-imported, the cost would update) and add any further subjects you included in the file.  It will not delete existing subjects.

Now that you have the subjects created for your new Academic Year, you can proceed to create the Template (see below).

Create the new Academic Year Schedule Template

On the Subjects and Class page (under the pencil menu icon), click to the Schedule Builder tab.  Here you will see the existing schedule templates for your school.

     

Click 'Add New Schedule Template'.  Fill in the details.

     

Name	Type in a unique name for the Template that reflects it's purpose ie. 2024
Academic Year	Select the new Academic Year the schedule will relate to ie. 2024 Academic
Period Structure	Select the Period Structure that the Schedule template is to adhere to.  Please Note: If you attempt to edit this to another Period Structure after you have added class/teacher information to the template, it will clear all the already added information in your template.
*Form Group Type	If you have allocated student Future Forms in your school's SIS because you are setting up the new schedule prior to that year commencing, select 'Next Form Groups'.  If you are creating the new schedule after the current academic year has concluded and students have been promoted in your school's SIS to their form groups for the new Academic Year, select 'Student Form Groups'.  For more information please refer to this section in the Rollover article from our Knowledge Base.
Time Period	Select the correct Time Period.  This should have been created in Step 1 of the Rollover Process, Configure Schedules. Please refer to this section of the Rollover article from our Knowledge Base for more information.
Start	This will populate with the start date set for the Time Period you selected
Finish	This will populate with the finish date set for the Time Period you selected

Please Note: For schools using People Management as their SIS (Student Information System), you will need to have completed the Internal Transitions student promotion process before generating your Academic Year Schedule Template.  Please refer to the 'Internal Transitions' article for details.  Once you have completed the promotion process, you will need to select 'Student Form Groups' for the 'Form Group Type' field and the correct form groups for your new incoming year will be generated in the schedule template.

Click 'Save' and the new schedule template will be created.

Now you can proceed to assign staff to classes.

Assign Staff to Classes

On the Classes tab you will see all the Subjects your created listed across the top as column headers.  The Forms run down the left side as row headers.

     

The process now is to allocate the Lead Teacher and location (if known) for each class each Form will take.
Currently all cells are set as 'Excluded' which means there is no association between a form and a class for a particular subject.  Click into a cell that connects a Form with a subject students in that Form will be taking a class for.

In the below example, Form 00A is a Foundation form and needs to have a Foundation Generalist class under the Foundation Generalist subject so we click that cell.  In the pop-up you will see the Subject it relates to and you need to select the Form's teacher for this class from the drop-down.  

     

At this point, select the Lead Teacher for the class.  If it will have shared teaching, you can set this up later on in the process on the Timetable tab.
When you have set the teacher, then choose the applicable Campus and Room that the Form will generally have their classes for this subject in.  If it is not known, leave the Room field as 'Unassigned'.  Alternatively if classes will be held in a Custom Location you can enter that information.

     

Click 'Update & Close'.  You will see the cell has now updated.  In this example, Form 00A will have a Foundation Generalist class.

     

You need to continue working on this tab, clicking into cells that each Form need a class for.  Not all Forms will have a class under each Subject i.e. A Year 1 Form will not have a class under the Foundation Generalist Subject.

If you need to stop at any point and come back at a later time to keep working on this tab, click 'Save' to save your progess.  Cells on the Classes tab that show as light pink indicate they have been added but 'Save' has not been clicked, if you leave the page this data would not be retained.  Cells on the Classes tab will show as light green when 'Saved' has been clicked and it is safe to leave the page.

     

When filling out the cells on the Classes tab, there are several options available to you to assist with the process.

It is possible to speed up your data entry by filling multiple fields in the same row/column at once, if they share a teacher or location, or both.  This is generally useful when completing your Specialist classes for Forms.

Right-clicking on a block that you have entered information for will bring up a new list of options for you:

Fill Location - This will use the Location information in the block you have right-clicked to automatically fill the Location for all form blocks in the direction that you choose in the next step.

Fill Manager - This will use the Teacher information in the block you have right-clicked to automatically fill this field for all form blocks in your chosen direction.

Fill Both - This will use both Teacher and Location information in the block you have chosen to automatically fill these fields for all form blocks in your chosen direction.

Exclude - This will exclude all form blocks in your chosen direction, leaving no information entered.

Exclude Class - This will exclude just the specific class that you have right-clicked on.

Example: If one specialist teacher takes all form groups for a specific subject, it is possible to enter this information once in the top row of that subject column and then right-click, select 'Fill Manager' > 'Down' in order to fill this information into every form group block for that subject.

If the same specialist teacher takes all form groups in the same location, instead of selecting 'Fill Manager' you can select 'Fill Both' and follow the same steps.



In the example above, information on both Teacher and Location will be filled into every block below form 02A in the subject Japanese.

When you have completed all the applicable cells that each Form requires a class for and you have clicked 'Save', click over to the Timetable tab.

Adding the Timetable Details