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openSIS Student Information System Quick Setup Guide For Community Edition 4.9

Last updated: January 2012

openSIS is a product of Open Solutions for Education, Inc.

Contents
Login to openSIS ................................................................................................................................................ 3 School Information ............................................................................................................................................ 4 System Preferences............................................................................................................................................ 5 School Calendars ............................................................................................................................................... 7 School Periods ................................................................................................................................................. 10 Grade Levels .................................................................................................................................................... 11 Attendance Codes............................................................................................................................................ 12 Report Card Grades.......................................................................................................................................... 13 Report Card Comments.................................................................................................................................... 14 Student Enrollment Codes ............................................................................................................................... 15 Portal Notes ..................................................................................................................................................... 16 Adding Users (Add Teachers) ............................................................................................................................ 17 Course Manager .............................................................................................................................................. 18 Course Period .................................................................................................................................................. 19 Adding Students .............................................................................................................................................. 20 Custom Fields .................................................................................................................................................. 21 Student Scheduling .......................................................................................................................................... 22

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openSIS is a product of Open Solutions for Education, Inc.

Login to openSIS
Once you have installed openSIS, please login to the application using the administrative username and password you provided during installation. If you have not installed openSIS yet, please refer to the openSIS installation manual that came with the software.

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openSIS is a product of Open Solutions for Education, Inc.

School Information
To access this page choose School Setup >> School >>School Information from the tabs and sub menus used to navigate within openSIS. Complete your school information, to edit existing text, click on the text box and it will become an editable text input field. Enter your school information and click “Update.” If you installed openSIS with the sample school, then you can choose the Copy School option and copy the sample school information into your own school. Just give a new school name when copying.

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System Preferences
Set half-day and full-day minutes In this section, it is important to set up the Full day and Half day minutes of the school. The system is set to mark a student present for the day, if the student attends school for 300 minutes. If the student attends school for 150 minutes to 299 minutes, he will be marked half day present. If a student attends school for less than 150 minutes, the he will be marked absent. If your school has different attendance requirements, then you need to set the number of minutes in this section.

Set login failure allowance count

This is number of times the system will allow a user to try logging in with incorrect credentials before disabling the account. It is advised to keep the count no more than 5.

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Set allowable user inactivity days

This is the maximum number of days the system will allow a user in between logins. The system disables users who do not login for the number of days you specify in this section. Put system in maintenance mode This section is used when the Administrator is doing any maintenance work with the system and doesn’t want any other users like Teachers, Parents, Students to log in to the system. He can type the notice here and after saving it that notice will show up in the Log in screen. Only the Administrator is permitted to login while the system is in maintenance mode. To put the system in the maintenance mode, click on Under Maintenance and select the checkbox. Then put some text on the text area that you want your users to see in the login screen and save the form.

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School Calendars
To set up a school first you need to create a calendar. To do so go to School Setup > Calendars and click Create a new calendar.

Give the Calendar and name and mark it as the default calendar for the school. The system will automatically fill in the begin and end dates of the school year that you have provided during installation. Mark the days of the week the school is in session and lick OK to save the calendar.

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Once the default calendar is created, each month will be automatically marked as a school day and will be light blue in color with green check marks. The holidays will be pink. If you need to mark a day as a holiday, simply uncheck the check box and save it. That day will become pink denoting a holiday.

To add an event on a calendar, click on the + sign and a new window will pop up. Enter the title and notes and save it.

The event information is saved and it will show on the calendar and on the portal page of the users. Marking Periods To access this page choose School Setup >> Marking Periods from the menus. Now fill up all the required details and click save. You can create as many Semesters and Quarters as per your needs.

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To mark a Semester or Quarter graded, check the Graded option. This will allow teachers and administrators to enter final grades for that marking period. To enter exam grades for a Semester or Quarter, check on the Exam option. To enter comments on a report card for final grades, check the Comments option. Fill in the begin and end dates of each marking periods. Grade posting begin and end dates are the dates when a teacher is allowed to enter final grades for that marking period. It is a good practice to keep it for the last week of the marking period so that teachers do not prematurely enter the final report card grade.

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openSIS is a product of Open Solutions for Education, Inc.

School Periods
To access this page choose School Setup >> Periods from the tabs and sub menus used to navigate within openSIS. This is the area where you define the time division of a school day, know as periods. Fill in all the periods that are in use in your school. If you check the Used for Attendance option, a teacher would be able to take attendance for that particular period when that period is associated in a course period. If you check Ignore for Scheduling you can avoid period clash for scheduling a student.

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openSIS is a product of Open Solutions for Education, Inc. Grade Levels
To access this page choose School Setup >> Grade Levels. This section captures the different grade levels your school has. Fill in the information and pay particular attention to the Next Grade field. When the school is rolled over at the end of each academic year, the students who are set to be promoted to the next grade are done so according to the value you set here. So, always set the next grade value as the one following the previous grade level.

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Attendance Codes
To set up Attendance Codes, go to Attendance > Setup > Attendance Codes from the tabs and the sub menus of openSIS. Now create the Attendance Codes as per requirement and click Save. It is recommended that you select Yes for Default for Teachers for the Attendance Code = Present, because that will default all students to present for a given day. It becomes easier for teachers to take attendance since most students are usually present in the class. You must fill in the State Code value otherwise attendance will not work.

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Report Card Grades
Nest, you need to set up Report Card Grades. Go to Grades > Set Up > Report Card Grades. Now create a Main Grading Scale. Then select it and under Main create the Grades. Put the weighted value in the GP value code and unweighted value in the unweighted GP value column. Without these values the transcript will not work.

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Report Card Comments
Now you need to set up Report Card Comments. These are the canned comments that a teacher can use to insert in the report card. To create comments go to Grades > Setup > Report Card Comments. Fill it in and click Save.

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Student Enrollment Codes
As the next step you need to create the Student Enrollment Codes. To do so go to Students > Setup > Enrollment Codes. These codes are displayed in the enrollment record for students and are required for adding and dropping a student from a school.

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Portal Notes
The Portal Notes page is a messaging page. In this section you can create text messages to be displayed on the home page of the user. Go to School Setup > Portal Notes. Type any message for Students, Parents, and Administrators. You can make the text appear for a certain period of time by selecting begin and end dates. You can also control who gets to see the message by clicking on the Visible to options. For example, if you want parents to view a message only, click Visible to Parent.

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Adding Users (Add Teachers)
Now you need to add teachers in the system. To do so go to Users > Add a User. Now fill up the form. Here select the User Profile as Teacher while creating a teacher. In the same way if you want to create an Admin select User profile as Admin. If you want to create a Parent select Parent.

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Course Manager
Next, you need to set up the Course Manager. Here you will have to create a Subject, a Course and a Course Period. To do so go to School Setup > Courses > Course Manager.

You can add as many subjects you want to. Just click on the + sign. Give a Title, and click Save. Your new subject is created. Select any subject and click on the plus sign to create a Course within the subject. You can create unlimited number of courses.

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Course Period
Creating each course period (some schools call it course section) properly is very important. In this screen there are several key fields and switches that needs to be filled in and depending on your choice will affect attendance and grading. To enable a course period for attendance, check the Takes Attendance option. To allow teachers to grade the course, select the Grading Scale. If you want the course to be counted in the honor roll, check the Affects Honor Roll option. To allow teachers to override the school’s grade scale and to use their own, check the Allow Teacher Gradescale option. For the transcripts to show the completed hours for a course, you must fill in the credit hours.

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openSIS is a product of Open Solutions for Education, Inc. Adding Students
Now the most important part of a school is to add students into the system. To do so go to Students > Add a Student. Fill in the form and click Save. You must enter data into General Info tab first and save the record before filling in the other tabs.

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Custom Fields openSIS by default provide a number of fields for student data capture. If you want to capture additional data, you can create custom fields by selecting Students ->Setup ->Student Fields. To add a new category, click on the + sign and give it a title, sort order and save it. To create new fields, click on a category first and it will show you a list of existing fields. Click on the + sign to create new. Give the field a name, select the data type and sort order. If you want the fields to be a required field, check the Required option. The data type selection has multiple options. For pull down and its variants, fill in the values one in each line in the given box and save.

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openSIS is a product of Open Solutions for Education, Inc. Student Scheduling
Scheduling is the last function that needs to be completed before the school is ready for operation. There are several ways of scheduling students. The most common way is Group Scheduling and Single Student Scheduling. To do single student scheduling go to Scheduling > Student Schedule. Then click on Submit to get the list of all the students.

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Now click on any student for single student scheduling. Then click on Add a Course.

A new window will open up.

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Click on the Period and the period is added for that student.

To add more subjects click on Add a Course again.

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To schedule many students at a time to a single course period, use the Gropu Scheduling option. Go to Scheduling > Group Schedule, click on submit to get the student list. Then click on Choose a Course.

The course selection box opens up. After the course is selected, enter the start date which is when you want the students to be scheduled on the class you just selected. Select the proper marking period.

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Now check the little boxes beside Students and click on Add course to Selected Students button at the bottom of the screen. This action will schedule all selected students to that course if they do not have a scheduling conflict. If there is a conflict, you will get a notification that one or more students were not scheduled to that course period due to conflict..

You have now completed setting up openSIS and it is absolutely ready for use.

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