Session Catalog

Download PDF of session schedule here

Session 1 (Day 1)

Scheduling (Prepare to Build/Load) – Greg Satterwhite
Comprehensive PowerScheduler training over two full days! Join Greg for a complete run-through of the PowerSchool schedule building and loading process from beginning to end. If you sign up for this you are committing to attending the full two day workshop.

Intro to Customization – Roger Sprik
This session will teach you the concepts behind customizing PowerSchool. We will introduce Language Translation, Custom Fields, Database Extensions, Custom Screens, Custom Pages and an overview of how a client and the PowerSchool server interact. The basics of using Custom Page Manager will be included.

Advanced Customization: Beginning Angular JS – Eric Schaitel
Angular JS is a JavaScript framework which is becoming more prevalent throughout PowerSchool. The framework provides tools that allow developers to more easily and quickly develop complex applications using a Model-View-Controller (MVC) architecture. This course will explore the basics of Angular JS including Modules, Controllers, Directives, and the Angular JS scope service. Attendees should have some pre-existing familiarity with JavaScript to get the most from this course.

PowerSchool Security – Jason Springel
This session will bring you up to speed on field level security, user access roles, document attachment security, PT Pro read-only access, and more. Come learn critical information for keeping your system secure and also how to take advantage of the greatly expanded flexibility PowerSchool now offers.

Session 2 (Day 1)

Standards Setup and Implementation – Romy Backus
Come to this session to learn the basics of setting up and implementing standards on your server. We will cover grade scales, calculation methods, importing, and how the data is used and viewed by administrators, teachers, parents, and students.

Advanced Customization: Intermediate Angular JS – Eric Schaitel
We will expand upon the concepts covered in the beginning Angular JS session. Attendees will learn the basics of data retrieval (AJAX) using the Angular JS framework. We will also cover the use of custom directives and services to develop clean and reusable code.

DDE/DDA and Data Export Manager (part 1) – Carla Dancz
In this session we will cover the basics of exporting data from PowerSchool using DDE and Data Export Manager. Using real life scenarios we will focus on various PowerSchool tables, understanding the data in each table, how tables relate to each other, how to extract data from multiple tables and common table links. We will focus on the students, schedules (cc), courses, sections, teachers and stored grades tables. Understanding these tables will help you find and extract the data you need.

Student Contacts Deep Dive – Jason Springel
Do you have a lot of custom fields that hold student contacts’ data? What’s the best way to manage the transition to the new Student Contacts feature to ensure clean data and minimal confusion? How do you import new contacts rather than having to enter them manually? Come to this session to learn the answer to all these questions and more.

Session 3 (Day 1)

Customization 2: Getting started with SQL and sqlReports – Roger Sprik
Learn the power of Structured Query Language (SQL) for accessing your PowerSchool data. This session will introduce writing basic SQL queries. We will introduce some options for directly testing your queries in PowerSchool, including Oracle SQLDeveloper and the custom sqlStudio tool. Once you have a working SQL query, we will discuss ways to embed that inside PowerSchool. In particular we will focus on the popular sqlReports plugin and how you can use that tool to create magical reports for your users. We’ll also cover how to find and import existing sqlReports that have been shared by others.

Attendance Deep Dive – Kevin Cinnamon
Exactly what it sounds like! Learn all about correct attendance setup and usage in PowerSchool and which methods are the best for you. Find today’s absentee information and run reports on attendance summaries and totals over time.

DDE/DDA and Data Export Manager (part 2) – Carla Dancz
Part 2 of the double session.

PowerSchool API and PowerQueries – Chris Walberg, intellimedia (remote)
Accessing data in a structured manageable way: learn about the capabilities of the PowerSchool API including the addition of PowerQueries to access the PowerSchool data in a maintainable way. A common documented approach for external data access, integrations and customizations. This is an advanced class.

Session 4 (Day 2)

End-of-Year/Start-of-Year Process – Romy Backus
One of the biggest responsibilities of a PowerSchool Administrator is ensuring that the End-of-Year Process (aka rollover) goes smoothly and that everything is ready in the system for the new school year. We’ll walk through the timeline of tasks that need to be completed as well as look at some other tips and tricks that can save you time and hassle.

Customization 3: Coding Basics in PowerSchool – Roger Sprik
PowerSchool is a website, and uses web-standards like HTML and CSS. This session will teach you the basics of HyperText Markup Language (HTML), and how its appearance is altered with Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). This session also covers the roles of tables in structuring data and how to use forms to make updates. We will introduce PSHTML, the codes specific to PowerSchool that populate the pages with data. Along the way we’ll equip you with tools like the built-in Custom Page Manager editor and other resources that will help you customize PowerSchool.

Advanced Customization: Intermediate SQL – Eric Schaitel
Topics will include selection of distinct results, result concatenation, and aliasing. The primary focus will be querying related tables using SQL joins. We will dive deep into the differences between inner and left joins.

PowerSchool Learning/Schoology – Kevin Cinnamon
Come to this session to learn more about and discuss topics surrounding PowerSchool Learning/Schoology (Powerschool Suite Product).

Session 5 (Day 2)

Advanced Customization: Advanced SQL – Eric Schaitel
This session will cover more advanced SQL functions including aggregate functions: avg, count, min, max, and sum. Conditional logic (case statements), subqueries, the WITH clause, and pivots will also be discussed.

Data Access Tags and Codes – Carla Dancz
Ever wanted to know some of those undocumented PowerSchool codes or where you can use some codes you may already know? We’ll dive into some of the more common PS codes and what you can do to get data out in a way you might not have even know possible.

PowerTeacher Pro – Teachers (Jason Springel)
Come to this session to learn how teachers use and interact with PowerTeacher Pro and their grading data, including assignments, student view, running reports, and the student metrics and progress areas.

Session 6 (Day 2)

Customization 4: jQuery and Page Fragments – Roger Sprik
Websites are made dynamic and interactive with Javascript. jQuery is a fast, small, and feature-rich library that simplifies Javascript and is used by millions of web developers. jQuery is included in PowerSchool and this session will examine many examples of how it can be used to add rich interactivity to your web-pages and help you discover how to leverage jQuery for its most popular PowerSchool use – to code your customizations as Page Fragments and avoid directly modifying the stock pages. With Page Fragments you avoid the pain of missing out on PowerSchool updates and minimize conflicts with other customizations that affect the same screen.

Object Reports – Kevin Cinnamon
Learn how to create custom PDF reports for students, placing various elements such as text, images, and student field values. We will create a demographics and emergency info summary page with student photo that can be printed out for review.

Log Entries – Carla Dancz
This is an interactive discussion focusing on different types of logs and various uses for them. We will also look at how to search logs, export and report log entry information.

PowerTeacher Pro: Administrators – Jason Springel
Learn all about PowerTeacherPro, PowerSchool’s latest Gradebook. Discuss best practices for the transition from PowerTeacher Gradebook, back-end setup, and the roadmap for future enhancements.

Sponsor Session (Day 2)

MBA Plugins Demo – Carla Dancz
This session will demonstrate the suite of excellent Marcia Brenner Associates plugins that enhance your PowerSchool functionality and experience: Report Card Creator, Custom Alerts, and more.

intellimedia Plugins and Services – Ahmad Jawad
Need a little extra expert help? intellimedia provides a range of Powerschool customization services and plugins that can enhance your current system or add features according to your needs. Come to this session to learn more about their offerings.

PSFinancials Demo – Danny Yeow
PS Financials is a PowerSchool partner providing an integrated ERP, finance and business management solution. Come to this session to learn more about their products and services.

PowerSchool Accounts Team – Nicolas Bonatto and Sam Eilert
Spend some time getting to know your friendly PowerSchool International Accounts team!

Session 7 (Day 3)

Course Prerequisites, Teacher Recommendations and Student Course Selection – Greg Satterwhite
Come to this session to learn how to set up course prerequisites, train teachers to enter course recommendations for students, and finally how all these pieces fit together in allowing students to select and submit their course requests from the student portal in preparation for scheduling season.

Importing and Managing Standardized Test Scores – Romy Backus
This session will cover setting up test types, creating an import spreadsheet for some common standardized tests, a discussion of the table structures that hold test data, and some useful customizations for displaying test scores optimally.

Customization 5: Beyond One-to-One – Roger Sprik
Working with custom fields that are “one-to-one” is fairly straightforward, when you have just one piece of information to store for each student. But learning how to implement one-to-many fields introduces a whole new level of complexity. You may want to store multiple AP scores, track equipment, manage post-graduate plans, or manage any other type of data where each student will have more than one record. This is implemented with “one-to-many” database extensions and requires more advanced coding to produce lists and screens that can create and edit these records. You will also need tools to search for, export and report on this type of data. We’ll cover the basic tlist_child and tlist_standalone tags, but focus on the more flexible DirectTable.Select tag. We’ll work within the context of working examples so that the application can be seen immediately.

Advanced Customization: PowerQueries – Eric Schaitel
PowerQueries are SQL queries that, when bundled properly, are embedded as part of the PowerSchool API. The results of these queries can be retrieved and scheduled in PowerSchool’s Data Export Manager. The queries can also be accessed in custom pages as a more secure alternative to tlist_sql, and exposed to select third-party applications to facilitate integration. We will discuss the process of creating and installing PowerQueries as PowerSchool plugins, and then explore their use in custom pages and Data Export Manager.

Session 8 (Day 3)

Scheduling Lab – Greg Satterwhite
Apply everything you’ve learned in Prepare to Build and Load to your own schedule, with Greg’s expert help.

Customization: Putting it All Together – Eric Schaitel and Roger Sprik
Live feats of daring coding! Bring your ideas for customizations (small to medium) and Eric and Roger will attempt to accomplish them together, applying the concepts taught and learned in the customization sessions.

PowerSchool Registration/Ecollect – Kevin Cinnamon
Come to this session to learn more about and discuss topics surrounding PowerSchool Registration/Ecollect (Powerschool Suite Product).

Enterprise Reporting – Jason Springel
Enterprise Reporting is the most exciting reporting and data extraction tool you have ever seen! This session will cover everything there is to know about Enterprise Reporting. We will show all of the features that are available to users who run reports, and then learn how to build your own custom Enterprise Reports.

Open Lab (Day 3)

This is time for you to work with other attendees or with trainers directly on your particular problems, questions, projects, and issues!