Session Catalog

View Session Schedule with times and days

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. We will also lightly touch on how to enable the new Custom Page Manager in version 12.1.

Searching for and Working With Student Records – John Dunleavy
This session will get you started with an overview of the four different portals: administrator, teacher, substitute, and parent/student. Then, go more in-depth on the admin side by learning how to enroll a new student, search for students, find student information on student pages, work with student selections, make a list of student field data, and transfer a student out of school.

Embedding Microsoft Technologies into PowerSchool – Majdi Hammad & Khuloud Hajjiri

In this session you will be introduced to the techniques to embed external technologies into PS.

You will explore how to use MS SQL server to create an external buffer database for advanced data manipulation, freely and without any restrictions. This will simplify querying and reporting tasks, schedule and automate database work, and create customized database views for external systems.
Moreover, we will work with customized web pages created with MS ASP.net and embed them into PS pages. Learn how to pass parameters and data between PS and ASP pages.
Finally, we will embed integrating MS SQL server reports into PS with live data connection feed directly from PS as an alternative reporting tool.

Session 2 (Day 1)

Customization 2: 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 dive into PSHTML, the codes specific to PowerSchool that populate the pages with data. We’ll also cover the basics of the Language Translation Toolkit (LTK), which is a way to alter PowerSchool text and data without any coding required. 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.

School Admin Toolbox – Romy Backus
This session is a continuation from John’s Searching for and Working With Student Records session and is designed for office managers, registrars, school counselors, principals/assistant principals, and other school administrators. It will dive deeper into various functionalities of the admin side and student pages. We will discuss how to work with historical grades and transcripts, get lists of data (demographics, GPA, cumulative credits), view attendance totals, run honor roll, check graduation progress, work with log entries, and more.

Intro to Object Reports – Jason Springel
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.

Session 3 (Day 1)

PowerSchool Resources – John Dunleavy
Did you know there are a lot more places you can get PowerSchool help and training than just calling support? This session will help you help yourself become an expert by providing you with an overview of the many resources for information and assistance in the PowerSchool world.

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.

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)

Final Grades: Pieces of the Puzzle – Romy Backus
Understand the key pieces of the PowerSchool puzzle that lead to the grade results you see in Historic Grades and on transcripts. Learn how terms, grading periods, course structure, grade scale setup, gradebook configuration and the storing process all come together.

Data Cleaning (Intermediate, Advanced) – John Dunleavy
Clean Data is Happy Data. We will look at built-in tools, and add-ons that will help you uncover data errors. Then we will set about correcting them. We will also cover some data validation techniques to get the info entered correctly.

Customization 3: 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.

Session 5 (Day 2)

Exporting and Working with PS Data – Romy Backus
The first half of this session will cover exporting data from PowerSchool’s tables and datasets using DDE (Direct Database Export) and DEM (Data Export Manager). Looking at those exports, we’ll discuss some common fields that you might encounter and what they mean. Next, we’ll look at some tips and tricks to manipulate the exports in Excel to get the report or spreadsheet into a readable and usable format. This session does not require any coding skills, though you should have basic familiarity with Microsoft Excel.

Customization 4: Migrating Custom Fields / Working With Database Extensions– John Dunleavy
The basics of migrating your custom fields to PowerSchool’s Database Extension Tables. Pre-Migration Tasks, Planning, and Migration will be covered. Then we dive into how to use those Extended Tables in Exports, on Screen, and in Object Reports

Attendance Overview – Jason Springel
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.

Session 6 (Day 2)

Customization 5: SQL Magic – 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 official public release of a new tool that will be premiered at this conference. Once you have a working SQL query, will 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.

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.

MBA Report Card Creator and Custom Alerts Demonstration – Michael Vallosio, remote
This session will demonstrate two excellent and useful PowerSchool plugins available for purchase from Marcia Brenner Associates:

The first is the Report Card Creator plugin, which allows for easy creation of sophisticated traditional- and standards-based HTML report cards in PowerSchool (much more flexibility than standard object reports). These reports can be archived to a student’s record as well as published to the teacher and parent/student portals easily.

The second is Custom Alerts, which allows for the creation of student alerts with different icons, colors, text, and information according to your school’s needs. These can be tied to advanced SQL-based triggers for added complexity.

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.

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 6: 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 DirecTable.Select tag. We’ll work within the context of working examples so that the application can be seen immediately.

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.

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.

Must-Have Customizations – John Dunleavy
How to look like a genius with little effort. We will look at simple customizations using Custom Page Management, using what is available on PowerSource, PSUG and other outlets – PDS, NickTech, SIS Resources, etc. We will also incorporate Insertion Points and Page Fragments. This is a good course to take if you are unable to take Roger’s customization track or delve deeply into learning to write your own code, but would still like to enhance your system with some great free plugins.

Enterprise Reporting – Creating Custom Reports – 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!