PT: Booking enrolment interviews

Jan 23, 2018

When parents are wanting to book an enrolment interview we will typically use the ‘Parents meet pre-selected staff’ option, however the parent still has to enter their child’s name and year level.  The problem comes when they are entering a year level – do they enter the current year level or the year level they are going into?  Often parents are not sure which to choose and many end up choosing the wrong option.  This is confounded because SOBS requires you to select valid year levels for which the round will be applicable.

The Enrolment year level

To resolve this issue we have created a new year level called ‘Enrolment’ that will appear as the first year level in the list of year levels available within SOBS.  To use this option the SOBS Administrator can enable this year level as a year level valid at the school – you can do this in the School Settings page, the valid year levels are at the bottom of the page.

Once selected as valid you can then configure your enrolment interview round as normal, and select the ‘Enrolment’ year level as the valid year level for this round.  When parents access the system to book their interview they will add the new child’s name and the ‘Enrolment’ year level will be selected by default – this is then reasonably clear that the correct option is selected.  When the parent saves the child details the Enrolment interview round will then appear as required.

Adding an Enrolment year to your configuration

Schools that joined SOBS after August 2013 will automatically have the ‘Enrolment’ year level as a selectable option.  Schools that joined prior to August 2013 won’t have this, however it is easy to add, just follow these instructions:

  1. Go to your School Settings page, the first tab should be displayed automatically
  2. Click the ‘Edit’ button to edit these details
  3. At the bottom of the form you will find a list of year levels that are available to your school – these will differ depending on when you first joined SOBS
If you are not using (and unlikely to use) the first entry in the year level list then follow these instructions:
  1. Type over this first year level name and specify ‘Enrolment’ or any alternative text you would like
  2. Check the box below this year level to indicate you will be using it
  3. Click ‘Save’
  4. You will now be able to use this option on your enrolment interview round
If you are using (or are likely to use) the first entry in the year level list then follow these instructions (NOTE: You should not use this procedure if you are currently operating the School Notices application):
  1. If you are using the earlier options in this list then it is likely you will not be using the last few, so we need to shuffle the list to the right
  2. For example if there are 14 entries then move the 13th description to the 14th description area and similarly adjust the checkbox value
  3. Repeat this moving from the right to the left, ie next move the 12th description to the 13th description area and similarly adjust the checkbox value
  4. Repeat this all the way to the 1st entry moving to the 2nd entry area
  5. Lastly you will enter into the 1st description area the text ‘Enrolment’ or any alternative text you would like
  6. Check the box below this year level to indicate you will be using it
  7. Click ‘Save’
  8. Now this will cause issues for the current students registered – they will now not reflect the correct year level, so we need to adjust the student year levels
  9. In the Parent/Teacher interview booking application click the ‘Parents’ link in the main menu
  10. As the SOBS Administrator you will see a ‘Make global changes’ button at the top of the page – click this button
  11. One of the first options is to ‘Increment all student year levels’ – click this button (just once)
  12. Your students should all now have the correct year level and you will also be able to use the ‘Enrolment’ option for your enrolment interview round