Session Catalog

Session Schedule with times and days (PDF).

SESSION 1

PowerScheduler Overview (Greg Satterwhite)
What is PowerScheduler and how does it work? What is involved in doing a schedule “build” in PowerSchool’s PowerScheduler, and why would you want to?  Understand the overall process from beginning to end.

Beginner Customization: Site Structure and Basic Concepts (Roger Sprik)
This session will teach you how to begin customizing PowerSchool web pages. We will be covering many of the basic concepts essential to understanding how customization works, as well as simple edits and some of the special “PS-HTML”tags that can be used in PowerSchool pages.

PowerTeacher and Parent Portals (Romy Backus)
In this session you will get an overview of the PowerTeacher and Parent/Student portals of PowerSchool. This is not designed to teach you how to use PowerTeacher or setup a gradebook but a look into how data is presented and used by teachers. Additionally you will be able to see how data is viewed by parents and students.

SESSION 2

PowerScheduler: Best Practices for Setting Up Your Next Scheduling Year (Greg Satterwhite)
Getting started in PowerScheduler hands-on. What are the steps involved in getting started in PowerScheduler for the next school year? The difference between the Build and Load, and Load Only, and helpful information you can copy over from one year to the next.

Beginner Customization: Finding, Installing, and Using Popular Customizations (Roger Sprik)
How to look like a genius with little effort! We will look at customizations you can put in place on your server with little to no coding ability, using what is available on PowerSource Exchange and other resources.

Language Translation Toolkit (Romy Backus)
Learn how to change PowerSchool terminology to fit your school’s preferences without resorting to customization, and how to translate those terms into the language of your choice. You’ll also learn several tips and tricks for using this functionality in useful ways, as well as how translations interact with custom pages and plugins.

SESSION 3

PowerScheduler: Course Preferences, Course Relationships and Constraints (Greg Satterwhite)
One of the most important aspects to scheduling in PowerScheduler is defining your courses and the way they build into your schedule. We will cover Course Preferences, Course Relationships (how courses can be related or interact with other courses) and Constraints – exceptions that we force Powerscheduler to consider while building the schedule and loading students into the schedule.

Intermediate Customization: SQL and Using sqlReports 5 (Roger Sprik)
Learn the power of Structured Query Language (SQL) for accessing your PowerSchool data. This session will cover writing basic SQL queries in Oracle SQLDeveloper and then embedding those queries into the powerful sqlReports5 customization to make the data available to users. Installing and using ready-made sqlReports will also be discussed.

Standards Part 1: 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.

SESSION 4

PowerScheduler: Course Catalog and the Course Requests Process (Greg Satterwhite)
Learn how to define Course Groups and how they can be used, with an emphasis on their role in PowerScheduler. We then will work though the process of setting up online registration screens to collect the student course requests that serve as the foundation for the PowerScheduler Build and Load processes.

Enterprise Reporting (Roger Sprik)
Learn how to use and build reports in PowerSchool’s newest data manipulation tool, Enterprise Reporting. Session will include how to setup user accounts, work with built in reports using the Actions menu, save/publish reports and create subscription options for running reports at specific times.

Exporting and Manipulating Data (Doug Irish)
PowerSchool has many different ways of accessing and exporting data. This session will cover the usage of List Students, Quick Export, DDA/DDE, Data Export Manager, and AutoSend, as well as tips and tricks in Excel/Sheets.

SESSION 5

Intermediate Customization: The Care and Feeding of Customizations (Romy Backus)
Ever had an old customization cause trouble on a page? This session will discuss the process of maintaining Powerschool customizations across versions: how to evaluate what customizations you have on your system, create a working document for future tracking, read the page change area of the release notes effectively, and merge custom with stock code ahead of an upgrade.

Standards Part 2: Change Management and Standards Customizations (remote session by Bob Cornacchioli)
So you have standards – and now your school wants to make changes. What is the best way to manage these changes across school years? How do the standards settings affect what shows for teachers in either PowerTeacherGradebook or PowerTeacher Pro? What are the different ways that changes can be made (standards list, import, Data Export Manager) and which should you use? What are some standards-related customizations that will make life easier? Come to this session to find out more.

PowerTeacher Pro (remote session by Jason Springel, PowerSchool LLC)
Learn all about PowerTeacherPro, PowerSchool’s latest Gradebook. Jason Springel, Senior Product Marketing Manager, will join us remotely to discuss best practices for the transition from PowerTeacher Gradebook, back-end setup as well as teacher-side interface, and the roadmap for future enhancements.

SESSION 6

Scheduling “Outside the Box” (Greg Satterwhite)
A working discussion of unique scheduling challenges and exploring creative ways to efficiently get the best schedule possible for your school.

Advanced Customization: Database Extensions, Page Fragments, and Plugins (Roger Sprik)
Learn how to leverage database extensions to hold additional data, write and add a page fragment to make your custom pages upgrade-proof, and use plugins to simplify installing and managing larger customizations.

PowerSchool API and PowerQueries (remote session by Intellimedia, Chris Walberg)
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.

SESSION 7

Scheduling Lab  (Greg Satterwhite)
Hands-on session to ask questions and get help from a scheduling expert. Bring your toughest scheduling questions and problems for Greg Satterwhite to answer!

Advanced Customization: Building a Plugin from Start to Finish (Roger Sprik)
Are you interested in a customization example and/or want to learn how to share your customization as a plugin? This session will put everything from the previous sessions together and walk participants through the process of creating a full working plugin for PowerSchool. Not a deep dive, but more of a complete example of combining Database Extension, Page Fragments, and customization topics covered more in depth in other sessions. It will include tlist_child, Direct Access, and GridWidget code that help you work with one-to-many tables, and then bundle it all up as a plugin. Source-code will be provided. A basic knowledge of customization, SQL and database extensions is recommended.

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.

SESSION 8

Open Lab (Roger Sprik, Greg Satterwhite, Romy Backus)
Bring it on! Come in with any question you need an answer to. We will have three very knowledgeable PowerSchool experts available!

Standards Part 3: Standards-Based Report Cards with Visual PST (remote session by Bob Cornacchioli)
Need to build a printable standard based report card? Instructor will share all aspects to consider as you begin design your standard based report cards. Learn some of the PS constraints on the technical side that may impact curriculum. Sample object reports will be provided upon completion of the session.  All participants will receive a free 30 day license for ParkBench Visual PST software.