If you choose the advanced PCS feature, your app’s Calendar screen can show personalized, always up-to-date class schedules for each student. We can combine your bell schedules, block/day schedule (rotation), and class list, and we can handle just about any level of complexity or creative scheduling that your school may be using.
The feature relies on data you provide for each the following:
The steps are as follows:
Note: The Block Schedule feature shows students the block rotation each day on the Calendar screen of the app. Read more: Block Schedule.
There are two ways to navigate to the Block Schedule Spreadsheet:
A. In the dashboard sidebar, click Bell/Block Schedule.
B. In the dashboard sidebar, click Calendars, and find your Block Schedule. When you open the block schedule calendar, click the link in this message: “This calendar is maintained in the spreadsheet: Click Here to Edit.”
You are now on a read-only Block/Bell Schedule page. The Block and Bell Schedules are maintained in an online Google Sheet with two tabs, named SCHEDULE and SETUP. To open the editable Sheet, click Edit (in new tab). This will open the Google Sheet in a new browser tab.
At the bottom of your web browser page, select the SETUP tab.
You should see one of the following:
Has your class scheduling changed since last year? If you changed how your block rotation works, e.g. changing from linear (day 1/2) to semester, or numbered to alpha blocks, please contact Support.
Go into the SETUP tab at the bottom of the spreadsheet:
Go to the SCHEDULE tab and for every day:
TIP: Hover your mouse over the column heading to see instructions for each column.
The EVENT column is a formula that combines the blocks and day, and will be shown in the app. You should not edit the blue columns directly as they are formulas.
Changes made to this Google Sheet are saved automatically after a few seconds. However they do not take effect in the app. If you just want to see your Block Schedule in the app, you can jump ahead to Sync. Otherwise, continue to the next section.
You may already have the Sheet open from the previous step. If not:
Now, at the bottom of your web browser page, select the SETUP tab.
Note: The Bell Schedule times here are only used for the PCS feature. To show a bell schedule document in the app, you’ll need to add a link to the Home screen.
Review the list of Bell Schedule Choices. Update the times as needed. You can add new choices as needed, such as “Early Dismissal” days and other special bell schedules, be sure to give each one a name. You just enter the times here once, and give each possible bell schedule a name.
Next, go to the SCHEDULE tab.
If your spreadsheet has the Special Bell? column, for every day with a special bell schedule, choose Early Dismissal etc. from the drop-down menu in that column. This will help show the correct class times in the student’s personal class schedule. Leave this column blank for normal days (you can press the delete key to make it blank). If the option you need isn’t listed, go back to the SETUP tab and add it there.
You may keep notes in the Note column; these are NOT shown in the app.
Tips:
Changes made to a Google Sheet are saved automatically after a few seconds. However, they do not take effect in the app yet.
If you have already imported your classes, you can jump ahead to Sync. Otherwise, continue to the next section.
You’ll need to import your classes from your Student Information System (SIS), including the block or period number for each class.
For PCS, once your SIS data is ready, proceed as usual following the instructions to export the list of classes from your SIS. To find the instructions, click Help and then search for your SIS’s name. Once the class list is done, students will be able to subscribe to their classes and see their own personal class schedule in the app.
Read more here:
If you have the editable Google Sheet open, close that browser tab.
Return to the Block/Bell Schedule page in the Dashboard if you are not there already. Then, refresh your browser window and confirm that you can see your latest changes.
If you have just imported your classes, you may see that synchronization (generation of Personalized Class Schedules) is currently in progress.
If you have not made any bell/block spreadsheet changes since importing classes, synchronization is run automatically. In that case, you can continue on to Check.
Otherwise, if you are ready to publish the block/class schedule(s) to the app, click the Sync button.
It can take several minutes to complete the process. You can leave the page while this is in progress, but it needs to complete before you can continue to the final step.
Once the above 4 steps are complete, be sure to check your work and ensure that the resulting schedules are accurate.
Here are two ways to check (the second one is quicker, easier, and recommended):
Subscribe to a variety of classes in the app, and ensure that the correct class times appear on the Calendar screen.
In the Dashboard, go to Classes/Groups. For various different classes, click the Class Schedule link in the Schedule column and ensure that the times are correct (look at both semesters, if applicable).