Tag Archives: customization

Health Office visits statistics using graphs

2 Replies

Here is a customization I’ve done recently for the Health Office department of an international school.

Its purpose is to have a visual representation of the data collected every time a student enters the Health Office (office visits). In our case it will display statistics over “visit types” (as “categories”) and over “visit time” (as the difference between “time_out” and “time_in”).

The initial screen displays the title of the page, two date entry fields and a submit button.

ho_vt_01

You can bound your statistics to a certain time window by filling in both the “from” and “to” fields (or either one or the other, depending on your needs) or leave them both blank in order to get a statistics over the entire history of your office visits records (a “total over time”).

Once you chose your time window you can go on and press the submit button to display the results.

The result page showing the statistics will be split into two graphs (example given for time window: Jan 1st – Jul 1st, 2016):

  1. Number of Health Office visits
    Includes the total number of office visits and total number of (unique) students during the Health Office over the specified time window.ho_vt_02
  2. Average Health Office visit times
    Includes the time spent by students and average visit time duration during the specified time window.ho_vt_03

The statistics could be further refined/split in the future by, for example, school name (Middle School, High School a.s.o.) or by school year (thus eliminating the need of having tho choose the from/to dates yourself). Of course statistics similar to the above can be done for Immunizations and Screenings, should you be needing them.

There is virtually no limit to what can be done (counted, displayed and analyzed) on the pattern above as long as the data is there, in your database, and it is consistent (that’s extremely important when you’re doing statistics/graphs).

You can download this customization (as a PowerSchool plugin) here or here. Once installed, you will find its main page called HO_visits_graphs.html under /admin/dashboard. You can then create a link to this page and add it to the left-hand menu or pretty much anywhere you want.

You can email me any comments or questions you might have.

Make the school calendar page default to the current month with today’s date sticking out

Leave a reply

Tested in PowerSchool 9.0.x

By default, the PowerSchool stock page for the school calendar (/admin/schoolsetup/calendarsetup/calendarsetup.html) shows the first month in the current school year when you access it (via School Setup -> Calendar Setup).

We can change this behavior, though, by means of the scheddate parameter, making the page open at the current month instead. We can then identify the row that defines today’s date and make it stick out.

First we want to make sure that today’s date is passed as a parameter to the page itself.
So we check if there already was a variable called scheddate that got sent to the page.
If there wasn’t, we send it straight away (by means of adding it to the current URL string and then redirecting the browser to the newly created URL).

We accomplish this by adding the 3 lines below to the head section of the page, just after the <head> tag:

~[if.~(gpv.scheddate)=]
    ~[redirect:~[self]?scheddate=~[date]]
[/if]

Then we need to format the current date (~[date]) to fit the formatting of the dates as they are displayed on the first column of the big table (ex. Thu, Nov 5).

Once this is done, we need to look through all the cells in the first column of the table and find the one that matches today’s date.

Then, once the matching cell/row is identified, we will change its background color so it would be easier to “spot it in the crowd”.

We will accomplish all of these through the small piece of JavaScript/jQuery code below:


//once the content of the page has been loaded into the browser
$j(document).ready(function(){
//create a Date Object from the date string outputted by the PowerSchool code “~[date]”
var now = new Date(“~[date]”);
//create a Date Object from the date string passed via the “scheddate” parameter
var scheddate = new Date(“~(gpv.scheddate)”);
//create an array of 3-letter week day names
var weekdayNames = new Array(“Sun”, “Mon”, “Tue”, “Wed”, “Thu”, “Fri”, “Sat”);
//create an array of 3-letter month names
var monthNames = new Array(“Jan”, “Feb”, “Mar”, “Apr”, “May”, “Jun”, “Jul”, “Aug”, “Sep”, “Oct”, “Nov”, “Dec”);
//return the Date Object as a string, using locale conventions
var dateString = now.toLocaleDateString();
//get the 3-letter week day corresponding to the day of the week we are currently in -> getDay() returns 0 – 6 corresponding to Sunday – Saturday
var weekday = weekdayNames[now.getDay()];
//get the 3-letter month name corresponding to the month we are currently in -> getMonth() returns 0 – 11 corresponding to January – December
var month = monthNames[now.getMonth()];
//build the date string that will look like this: “Thu, Nov 5”
var dateString = weekday + ‘, ‘ + month + ‘ ‘ + now.getDate();
//only if the current month is equal to the month of the passed “scheddate” parameter then do
if (now.getMonth() == scheddate.getMonth()){
//loop through all rows in the main table
$j(“table tbody tr”).each(function(){
//if the text in the first cell of the current row is equal to the date string above
if ($j(this).find(“td:first”).text() == dateString){
//remove the color of the row it was found on
$j(this).removeAttr(‘bgColor’);
//change the background color of the row to “blue-gray”
$j(this).css(‘background-color’, ‘#BAD3E5’);
//once a match is found, break/exit the loop
return false;    
}
});
}
});

Easy, isn’t it? 🙂

Please let me know if you found this small customization useful or if it gave you any ideas you would like to pursue (and perhaps would want to share).

Customized solutions that bring out the full potential of your PowerSchool platform

Do you want to make the most of your PowerSchool platform?
Do you need help developing and implementing PowerSchool projects for your school?
Would you like to train your staff to use PowerSchool to its full potential?
Are you interested in finding out about customizations other schools have been using?
Would you like to see how your school could benefit from the experience of others?
Do you have a customization that stopped working and you need it fixed?

If your answer is Yes to at least one of the questions above, then you came to the right place.
For any questions and finding possible solutions to your PowerSchool needs, please contact: pshelp911@gmail.com

We will help you:

Make your PowerSchool Public Portal an unique experience by allowing your students and their families to have access to:

Bell Schedules

  • Fully customizable look & feel
  • Extensive info on periods and day/time of day, color coded, easy to read and print

Report Cards and Progress Reports

  • Web and printer-friendly versions
  • Based on Historical Grades, Standard Grades or a mix of the two

Transcripts

  • Web and printer-friendly versions (Head’s signature and seal of the school applied on it)
  • Fully customizable look & feel by grade or by division

IB programme

  • “Predicted grades” web and printer-friendly versions
  • Print official letters for the prospective universities

Data entry pages

  • Health Office, Field Trip, Travel, Activities information
  • On-the-fly update in the database or possibility to check and approve by an Admin staff first
  • Help parents help you with keeping their children important information up to date

Honor Roll and Student Recognition

  • Using built-in or customized data
  • Fully customizable look & feel, you can pull in any relevant data available on the student
  • Possibility to print the page as a “letter of recognition” (Head’s signature and seal of the school applied on it)

Empower your Admin staff and help them accomplish more by means of:

SQL-based reports

  • Extract, present and analyze any kind of student data
  • Simple and intuitive interface
  • Possibility to export the reports as text, CSV, TAB or Excel files

Data input and update pages

  • Input, view and update any kind of student data (built-in or customized)
  • Security based on customized group access lists
  • Applying to areas such as: Learning Support, Health-related information, school activities, IB diploma a.s.o.

Custom alerts

  • Quickly identify a student’s status pertaining to attendance, health, learning support, grades a.s.o.
  • Visible and suggestive alert texts and icons
  • Pop-up messages displayed on the student’s page
  • Email sent to designated addresses when a student reaches a specific status (defined at the school level)

IB programme progress monitoring

  • IB predicted grades coming from Gradebook or Historical Grades
  • Grades tracked over multiple sessions across both years of the IB programme
  • Compare the IB predicted grades for a student over multiple sessions or between students
  • Web and printer-friendly versions
  • Download/print official letters for the prospective universities

Keep your Teachers in the loop by ensuring their access to the necessary information:

Teacher’s Schedule

  • Fully customizable look & feel
  • Extensive info on periods and day/time of day, color coded, easy to read and print
  • Possibility to save the schedule as an “.ics” file to be imported in any type of calendar (Outlook, Google a.s.o.)

Custom alerts

  • Quickly identify a student’s status pertaining to attendance, health, learning support, grades a.s.o.
  • Visible and suggestive alert texts and icons
  • Pop-up messages displayed on the student’s page in PowerTeacher
  • Email sent to the email addresses all the teachers of a student when the student reaches a specific status (defined at the school level)

Access to important student data

  • Learning Support (reading/writing accommodations, counseling, special education a.s.o.)
  • Health (allergies, life-threatening conditions, what to do in case of an emergency a.s.o.)
  • Activities (after school, vocational, athletics a.s.o.)