Preparing for Custom Automation

In order to take advantage of the Custom Automation that Enriching Students offers, it’s important that you're able to express your needs clearly.   This might sound obvious, but there are a lot of pieces that can go into setting up automation.  Having a clear view of how the process works will enable you to better describe your needs.

So the purpose of this document is to provide your school with guidance on the type of information we need in order to set up Custom Automation for your school.

Of course we are very willing to have conversations with you to walk you through the process.  Looking over this document will prepare you for those conversations.

Items to Consider

We look at Custom Automation as a series of steps.  

• What Day(s) Should the Process Run?
• Which Students Should be Scheduled?
• Where Should the Students Be Placed?

Thinking of it this way will help you to simplify the process and will likely make it easier to describe what your needs are.

One thing to consider; if you find the automation you’re trying to describe is too complicated for you to get your arms around, ask yourself, should there be multiple rules?

For example, imagine you want seniors with a grade of “F” to go to a specific location.  Seniors who don’t have an “F” but have a “D” should go to another location.  Juniors who have a grade of a “C-“ or lower should go to a third location.

Instead of trying to describe this as one large rule, feel free to break it out into separate rules:

• Seniors with an F go to location A; this rule is run first
• Unscheduled Seniors with a D go to location B; this rule is run second
• Unscheduled Juniors with a C- or lower go to location C; this rule is run third

Carving up your process into smaller steps can make it easier to explain.

Step 1 - What Day(s) Should This Run

Here are some examples:

• Monday - Friday
• Tues/Thurs has one set of rules and Mon/Wed have another set of rules
• A school is on a rotating bell schedule.  The process runs on “Blue” and “Violet” days.
• The third Wednesday and last Friday of the month
• The week before the Christmas break.
• The last two weeks of the semester.

Step 2 - Which Students Are Affected By the Process

Often, this is where the complexity starts to be revealed.  Remember, we can set up as may rules as needed.  Some examples:

• All unscheduled students
• Freshman and Sophomore students should be scheduled to one location; unscheduled Juniors and Seniors should be scheduled to another location
• Any student with a D or an F should be scheduled, even if they've already self-scheduled. 
  • However, don't modify an appointment if it was created by a staffer.

This step also requires that you consider what day and period you want to schedule.

• Is the appointment to be created for the selected day, or for another day?
  • For example, you might be running the process on Wednesday, but you want the following Monday to be scheduled.
• Does your school have a single Flex period, or multiple?
  • If multiple periods, which periods should be scheduled?

Step 3 - To Where Should the Students Be Scheduled

• All  unscheduled students should be scheduled to the class with the phrase “cafeteria” in it.
• All unscheduled Juniors and Seniors should be sent to Mrs. Smith’s subject matter course.
• We have three different locations.  
  • We want all unscheduled students to be scheduled evenly across the locations.
• We have three different locations.  
  • We want to place all unscheduled students into the first location.
  •  Once that’s filled, place unscheduled students into the second location.
  •  One that’s filled, place unscheduled students into the third location.

And, an important question to ask, can staff be overbooked? 

• A "yes" means that all students are likely to be scheduled, however, it does mean that some staff might have more students than they are prepared to work with.
• A "no" means no staffer will have too many students, but some students might not be scheduled.

Conclusion

Sometimes, a school's needs are very simple.  "Create an appointment for all unscheduled students for our single Flex period.  All students should be placed into the cafeteria." But as we've seen in the examples above, and as our experience is demonstrating, most schools want much more from their automation.  This requires careful thought and planning.

Ask yourself this question.  Could someone take the information that you’re going to share with us and manually create the appointments?  If the answer is “no”, then there’s likely not enough information for us to create the “rules” to set up the custom automation.

When you're ready to have us set up automation for your school, start a conversation with us.  Share as many details as you can, and we'll reach out if we have any questions.