Aeries is excited to announce the release of Report Card History. This new feature in Aeries allows for storing the individual report cards for every student for every grading period.  The copies of these report cards will stay in a student's record and be available in subsequent terms and school years. All users, including Teachers, Parents, and Students, will be able to access the Report Card History if granted appropriate permissions.

The Report Card History contains an exact copy of the same PDF report card that the school would normally print, but instead of printing, the report card document is saved in the Aeries database.  This allows the school to create a digital archive of all report cards that were issued, even if data and configurations are changed in the future.  Even better, this creates the opportunity for schools and districts to save printing costs and offer grade report cards entirely online through the Aeries Student and Parent Portal.

Creating the Report Card History follows the same steps as printing the report cards.  Instead of clicking Run Report, the user will click the new Generate Report Card History button.

Staff and teachers can access a student's Report Card History under Student Data | Grades in the navigation menu.  Parents and Students will find the page under the Grades menu.   A list of the current year's Report Card History also displays on the Student and Parent Portal home page.  The page displays information such as year and term to identify the report card, with a link to view the PDF both in English and in the student's Correspondence Language if different from English.

Since the PDF has already been generated and saved in the database, there's no waiting for a report to run; the PDF will immediately display in the web browser.

Report Card History is compatible with all report card types in Aeries – Standards Based, Secondary Standards Based, and traditional secondary Grade Report Cards.

Registration for the 2017 Spring Users' Conference is now open!

All information regarding the conference can be found at our conference page at http://www.aeries.com/conference, including pricing details, deadlines, accommodations nearby, and a link to the online registration portal. If you already have an account on our website, you will not need to create a new account to register for events. Also, you can register other attendees or other users can register you for upcoming events.

What’s New?

Schedule

The Conference Schedule has been reworked to make better use of all attendees’ valuable time. Monday will now feature five sessions instead of four! Tuesday will let out a bit earlier, but still features four full sessions.

Sunday Preview Day

Attendees of the conference have always had the ability to check-in early on Sunday – from 3-5:30PM at the Convention Center. All attendees who arrive on Sunday will now be given a special Preview Day giveaway, have early access to the Open Forum to ask questions to Aeries experts in-person, and be able to attend Preview Sessions highlighting new and exciting sessions being offered.

Sessions

In congruence with the announcement regarding transitioning to the web version of Aeries® SIS, all sessions will be presented in the Aeries Web Version (with a few exceptions where applicable). New sessions include:

• • #168 – Mastery Based Grading
• • #199 – Loop™ – The Aeries Communication Package
• • #226 – Aeries Analytics™ – Using the Free LCAP Dashboards to Build and Monitor Your LCAP
• • #241 - Student Account Integration with Google, Office365, Apple, & Active Directory
• • #345 – Summer School Management
• • #605 - Career Pathway Management
• • #610 – Individualized Academic Plan Administration
• • #690 – 504 Plan Management
• • #730 – CALPADS Update from CSIS

Specialty Tracks

Not sure what sessions to sign up for? We have created specialty tracks that will guarantee a schedule free of conflicts for your role, even if you only come for Monday of the conference! Look for the track when signing up for courses for teachers, scheduling, or if you are new to Aeries.

General Conference Info

Going Green

In order to further efforts to go green, Aeries Software will continue offering attendees the best available high-speed wireless internet throughout the convention center and encourages all attendees to bring their phones, tablets, and/or laptops in order to connect to the Conference Portal.

In addition to access via the Conference Portal, all conference attendees will be given a 32GB 3.0 USB drive with the conference documentation. Finally, Aeries Software will no longer be offering a binder of printed conference documentation as an option for attendees, but will instead send all registrants access to the Conference Portal two weeks prior to the conference in order to print out any documents to take notes on if desired.

Partners

Highlighted by the trailblazing partnership between Aeries Software and Dewsly Education to offer the Loop communication solution directly integrated within Aeries® SIS, Aeries Software continues its commitment to interoperability by hosting numerous partners at the Users’ Conference.

To view all Aeries Partners in attendance, including those presenting sessions, please visit http://www.aeries.com/conference#partners

Fall 2016 Users’ Conference Highlights

See you in the Spring!

Over the past four years, the California Attorney General’s Office have shown a commitment to tracking, analyzing, and offering guidance regarding the attendance crisis in elementary schools throughout the state. This year’s In School + On Track report proved that the situation is still severe, but there are signs of optimism, including an increased general awareness of the issue and commitment to diagnosing causes and implementing effective programs for eliminating chronic truancy and absenteeism.

2016 In School + On Track Report

https://oag.ca.gov/truancy/2016

In 2013, the Attorney General’s Office recognized Aeries Software’s position as the leading provider of Student Information Systems in California and sought out a partnership. The intent of this partnership was to facilitate the collection of anonymous, aggregated student data in order to analyze and gain insights into data not otherwise available through then-current state reporting. Aeries Software created an extract routine for Aeries school districts to opt into providing their data. Every year since, more and more Aeries school districts throughout California, of all sizes and in all locations, have participated in the data collection process.

Key Points

Some distinctions made this year include:

-          Chronic Absence is one of the strongest predictors of dropping out, even more than suspensions and test scores

-          Chronic absence rates are disproportionately high for at-risk student populations

-          Chronically absent students are concentrated in a small number of schools and school districts

o   Over 50% of chronically absent students attend 20% of schools and 10% of school districts

o   Over 25% of chronically absent students attend 7% of schools and 3% of school districts

-          Suspensions disproportionately impact low-income students, students of color, foster youth, and students with disabilities

Positive Signs

Despite these continued trends, there have emerged some promising indications:

-          Current investments of only $1.00 for attendance-focused programs result in $1.57 (a 57% increase) in ADA funding

-          Local Control and Accountability Plans (LCAPs) present a valuable opportunity for school districts to outline their improvement goals for student attendance

-          Inclusion of data on chronic absenteeism in LCAPs has steadily increased

-          99% of surveyed school districts report that they have already implemented changes or plan to implement changes this school year to policies and programs to improve elementary school attendance

Thank you

Once again, Aeries Software would like to applaud and thank the 179 school districts that participated in this valuable awareness-raising report. We would also like to encourage schools to continue to look for ways to make steps towards improving chronic absenteeism and truancy. Keep up the great work looking out for California’s students in keeping them in school and on track.

#EveryKidCounts

A new Graduation Requirements Item Definition feature was recently added in Aeries Analytics™.

Education code specifies that students must pass a minimum set of required courses specified by both state regulations and local school boards to graduate from high school. Some students are not graduating and having to take summer courses when its determined that they have not passed all of the required subject-area courses. Using Aeries Analytics ‘Graduation Requirement’ Item Definitions and Dashboard Items help determine which students are in threat of not having all of the required courses as they matriculate through high school. Early Warning Points can also be assigned to place these students higher at-risk and populate the At-Risk Watch Lists. To make these analyses real-time, the ‘Graduation Requirement’ indicator calculates subject area credits completed and credits in progress, similar to what displays on the Graduation Status page and Transcripts.

Below are some screenshots on how to create the Graduation Requirements Item Definitions. 

1. Analytics Item Definition Setup. Select ‘Graduation Requirements’ in the Type pull-down then select the desired course Subject Area. 
   
   
   
2. A new Label Layout can be added to reflect the different levels and descriptions.
   
   
   
3. Thresholds can be adjusted by school and/or grade to evaluate students required course requirements as they matriculate through high school.
   
   
   
4. Appropriate Student Sub Groups can be assigned.
   
   
   
5. Create Dashboard Items and chart with some filters in place to develop the actionable dashboards needed to identify student at-risk of not graduating.
    

Mike Vincelli, Director of IT, from Shasta Union High School is using these analyses to provide early detection of students not on a pathway to graduation. Mike stated:

Refer to the Aeries Analytics documentation for more about this new Analytics Indicator, click on the link below:

http://help.aeries.com/help/Data_Analysis

The team of educators at Screaming Eagle High School run a tight ship for the benefit of their students.

For instance, as the no-nonsense counselor of Screaming Eagle High School, Ms. Anderson, is not going to let those Juniors getting failing grades in their English and Math classes continue down the current path. Nor will the attendance clerk, Mrs. Joy, rest until all the students with poor attendance records are called and checked on. They understand their role in keeping these students on-track for graduation and beyond.

The district office is no different. Consider Mr. Parker, District ELA Coordinator: he has been paying close attention to CELDT results and focusing on the students who are at below basic level based on the most recent testing administration.

This star team deserves a star tool that will help save their precious time, make their job easier, and keep track of the list of students they are committed to taking care of. One such tool is the Student Groups Screen in Aeries Web Version.

Aeries has been offering the powerful student groups screen for the last few years and it does save hours and hours of tedious work of picking and choosing students every time the district or school staff need to work on a fixed set of students. Since December, this power has expanded with the ability to associate a student group with Aeries Analytics items.  We have also rearranged the screen for a fresher look and ease of use. Finally, we have added the ability to filter students based on multiple IDs at once.

Now that the powerful analytics engine is at the service of the student groups, there is virtually no limit to creating a group based on attendance, grading, program membership, test results or any other analytic data item. In case you were wondering, yes, the list of the students is refreshed as the students associated with the analytic item criteria is updated. That’s why we call it a Dynamic Analytics Group.

To give it a try, just check the dynamic group checkbox as you create your new group. You will see the new Associated Analytic Items tab ready for you to choose from. One other important reminder is that all customers have access to the free portion of Aeries Analytics for LCAPs. Those same indicators included in the LCAP dashboards and are commonly looked at for LCFF funding are already included in the Dynamic Student Group associated Analytics items, regardless of whether or not your district has purchased the full Analytics license!

This makes Ms. Anderson, Mrs. Joy and Mr. Parker happy because Aeries will make sure their groups are refreshed and ready to use each day. That means less time spent on filtering, selecting, clicking and more time on follow-ups, planning, teaching and keeping their students on track for success.

Here at Aeries, we always put an emphasis on empowering our districts, especially when it comes to making day-to-day business as simple and effective as possible.  One of the major hurdles many districts face is that of keeping their data interconnected, and flowing between related systems.  We’ve made many innovative enhancements over the years to address those issues, and keep your data connected.  With the addition of one of our newest features this past December, Data Event Triggers, we’re letting your technology teams take the reins with near endless possibilities.

These Data Event Triggers work by executing a stored procedure in real-time to complete some task, triggered when a specific event occurs in Aeries.  Those stored procedures will be the responsibility of your team to craft for any task your district sees fit.  For example, many districts using Active Directory have written procedures to pull data from Aeries and use that data to create accounts for staff and students.  When connecting these existing scripts to our new Data Event Triggers, that integration can move from a nightly or otherwise scheduled task to a real-time event giving students access to resources within seconds of being entered into Aeries.

Please read through the documentation thoroughly and heed the warnings, this is a very powerful feature that requires skilled technical expertise to implement correctly: http://help.aeries.com/help/Data_Event_Triggers

2017 is bringing big changes to how schools and districts can manage Summer School.  Previously, schools have faced the challenge of how, when, and where to track Course Requests for Summer School and how to build a master schedule and manage students without creating complex procedures for counseling and IT staff.  To solve these challenges, Aeries now has a new "Summer School Course Requests" feature (using the new SSR table) that should help simplify and streamline the process districts undergo to prepare and implement Summer School.  It's important to note that districts are not required to use this new process.  The old method will still work, although this new method will be much easier to implement.

The following is the set of steps customers will be following under this new system:

1.Setup available Summer School Courses using the new "Summer School Terms" and "Summer School Courses" pages.  If you do not want to setup Summer School Terms, right now, just create a "Year" term to use.

2.Enter Summer School Course Requests for students starting now through the end of the school year.  This is available for staff with appropriate permissions on the Course Requests page.

3.IMPORTANT NOTE– The regular Aeries database will now be used to build the Summer School Master Schedule, even if you normally create a new SQL Database for Summer School.  The creation of that Summer School SQL Database can now be delayed until right before Summer School begins at the end of the regular school year.

Items below this point are in the process of being developed and are not yet available in Aeries.  Expected release dates are included.

4.Go into the Summer School School(s) (in the current, regular database) and use the Scheduling Setup page to configure the school to "Use Summer School Course Requests Table (SSR) instead of SSS".  This feature should be available around the first week of April.

5.Run Scheduling Reports as normal in your various Summer Schools.  Scheduling reports will be converted to support the new SSR table starting around the first week of April and it is anticipated that all reports will be complete by May 5.  Check back to this blog for a full list of all scheduling reports and the status of their support for SSR.

6.Build your Summer School Master Schedule using the SMS table in your summer schools.  Also by May 5th, the scheduling pages that allow you to build your Scheduling Master Schedule based on Course Requests will support the Summer School Course Requests table.

7.Run the Schedule All Students process.  Around May 5th, the scheduler will be adjusted to schedule directly against the SSR table.

8.If you normally create a new SQL database for your Summer School, wait until the week before summer school starts to create that SQL database.

9.Copy in your Summer School Students.  A new process will be created that will process the SSR table in the regular Aeries database and copy the students from there into the Summer Schools (even if in a different database) and into the appropriate schools.

10.Late enrollment of students already in your district will be able to be quickly added to the appropriate Summer School by using the Student Add/Transfer process.  This program will be adjusted to support pulling students from the regular DB into the Summer School DB.

11.Adding New Students who have not been previously enrolled in your district can be added directly to the Summer School DB.  The "Next Perm ID" of the student will be pulled from the regular Aeries DB to avoid conflicts with students being added directly to the regular Aeries DB.

12.At the end of Summer School, use the existing "Copy Student Data from Summer School DB" process to pull in newly added students and student-related information from the Summer School DB to your regular DB.

To start schools off, there are resources available on the Summer School Course Request process:

Documentation: http://help.aeries.com/help/Summer_School_Course_Requests

Videos:

One of the wonderful aspects of the Aeries Student Information System is that it continues to grow with exciting new features week after week and year after year as schools continue to face new challenges that require creative solutions.  The following are projects we are planning for development and release throughout the remainder of 2017.

Summer School Course Request Management

Check out our recent "2017 Summer School" Blog for all the details: http://www.aeries.com/blog/summer-school-management-just-got-a-whole-lot-easier

Aeries App for Students, Parents and Teachers

We have heard the calls from our community that Aeries needs an App.  In response, we have begun working on an app for Students, Parents and Teachers that will provide features specifically targeting these types of users.  Watch for the new "Aeries App" over the summer for Students and Parents with teacher features coming in the 17-18 school year.

A New Look to Aeries

We're going to the barbershop to get the newest, freshest hairstyle. Aeries is getting an all-new look with fresh colors, a revamped navigation system, and redesigned screens to make Aeries easier to use and information quicker to gather and evaluate.  We are focusing on making Aeries easier to use on touch-screens and tablets and making student information easier to read and find.  Of course, we are adding some extra features like quick-switching between school years and a new student search screen for reverse lookup features.  This new look will roll out as an optional update to Aeries late in the 16-17 school year.  For 1 month after its release, the update containing the existing look in Aeries will also be available.  After that, the system will switch over to the new look.  Having both versions available for districts to implement will allow Aeries administrators to setup a "Sandbox" environment for their staff to get acquainted with the new look to Aeries.  The new version will also be available on the public Aeries demo site (http://demo.aeries.net).  The Student/Parent Portal will also be updated to use the new look at the same time.

Aeries Client Features Moving to Aeries Web

A massive push to complete the migration of all pertinent features from the Aeries Client to the Aeries Web Environment will be undertaken in 2017.  This includes many features that are less frequently used or only used by system administrators like extracts, imports, and system configuration screens.

Records Transfer

Earlier this year, early adopter districts began transferring students electronically between their districts.  This new feature includes Transcripts and Test Scores with many additional data sets to come.  We are currently accepting requests from districts to join the Aeries Records Transfer Network (ART Net) with the hopes that all Aeries districts (that's nearly half of California) will join by the end of the 2017 calendar year.

3rd Party Systems Integrations

Aeries has long been applauded at being an open system that is easy for 3rd party systems to interface with.  We are expanding on this concept with the development of a new API based on the IMS Global One Roster 1.1 Standard.  The Aeries API is already a very powerful way to pull data out of Aeries, but once the One Roster 1.1 API is built into Aeries, ANY solution focusing on this new national standard can tap into the Aeries Ecosystem.  Already on board are LMS Industry Leaders: Canvas from Instructure and Schoology.

Aeries Analytics

Earlier this year Graduation Status On Track Analysis was integrated into Aeries Analytics.  New for the 17-18 school year will be UC/CSU On Track Analysis.

Academic Plans

Aeries has long had the ability to record and track Individualized Academic Plans but they were not the easiest to enter and manage.  2017 brings us a newly redesigned Academic Plan system that not only makes building plans easiest, but also integrates Graduation and College Entrance predictions.  Students and Parents will also (optionally) be able to adjust a student's academic plan.  And one of the biggest feature enhancements to this area will be the integration with changes to a student's Class Schedule.

Emailing Attendance Letters

With so many parents with email addresses registered with Aeries it was only natural that certain letter routines began supporting being sent via email instead of by paper.  The first area to support this technique will be a new Attendance Letters system will count absences and tardies across multiple schools and will automatically determine which students will have a paper letter generated and which will be delivered via email.  This should help save every district time and money.  Look for this new feature Spring 2017.

Database Structure

For the 17-18 school year, we are mandating that all student-related tables that have optionally been based on School Code and Student Number will be required to be based on a Student Permanent ID.

Scheduling and Class Schedule Changes

Over the last year we have reached out to groups of counselors and scheduling professionals from many districts to identify areas of improvement for Aeries.  We are working on revamping how student schedules are changed, reducing the number of clicks significantly.  We are also working on new scheduling features for Teacher, Period, and Other Student Exclusions when scheduling students into classes.  Also coming are quick class schedule data entry routines for new and returning students.

Online Fee/Tuition Payments and Education Crowdfunding

Aeries has partnered with industry leader, Edbacker, to create a unified platform for online fee and tuition payments and crowd funding campaigns in your schools.  Not only will tuition and fees be launched as personal crowd-funding campaigns for students, but Aeries will provide a channel for schools and teachers to safely and efficiently advertise to parents about the fund-raising campaigns pertinent to their children (all with effective administrative oversite).

Many Other Important Projects:

• -Query Change Form
• -More Loop Communication System Features
• -Enhanced Online Help
• -District Assets Enhancements
• -Parent Data Confirmation Enhancements
• -New Report Card based on the Grades History table for Summer School
• -Aeries Online Enrollment re-skin to support adding new students from a phone
• -Supplemental Attendance integration with Regular Attendance for mid-day flex periods
• -Gradebook Enhancements
• -"Report Tags " (like Aeries Client Query Tags)
• -Electronic Transcripts to Community Colleges, CSUs, and UCs

Aeries has always been a user-oriented platform, dating back to our early inception prior to the advent of the Internet. Our focus on customers is a philosphy we've held throughout our more than 20 years of serving California schools, and we're happy to continue that tradition in the refreshed and improved user interface (or "UI"). We've designed this update to make Aeries easier to use and more efficient to navigate, as well as introduce a new look that is pleasing to the eye.

Perhaps most crucially, this update lays the foundation for exciting ongoing improvements to the underlying user experience behind Aeries. As we embrace web technologies and the amazing things Aeries can do with them, we're focused on making sure that our application's user interface is growing more intuitive, consistent and easy to use. This new UI release is the first step on our continual journey into the brave new world of user-centric design.

Likely what you'll notice first is that we've updated the styling and fonts, embracing a design that emphasizes negative space to boost comprehension and clarity.

Sidebar menu navigation

Another area we knew we could make a big improvement was the sidebar navigation. In user testing, we uncovered that users found our previous sidebar difficult to navigate due to small text size and massive tree structure. Other users outlined that they never actually browsed reports, choosing to search for them instead. So, the sidebar is all-new with 3 switchable sections you can easily navigate between - "Pages", "Reports" and "Favorites". With these enhancements, it's possible to get anywhere in Aeries in just a couple of clicks.

Take the tour

Even though the style and font changes might seem like a relatively small change, it can feel much more significant for daily users. We wanted to make sure we were as clear about these changes (and how they'll impact your daily workflow) as possible. We created two brief walkthrough tours that you can access right from the Home screen of the new UI that will outline all of the wonderful new improvements we've made with you in mind.

Curious about what's new in the new user interface? This tour is for you!

Let your voice be heard! Give us your direct feedback

This first iteration of the new UI is the result of countless hours of collaboration between Aeries and users, but we're just getting started. We want this update to signal a newfound focus on bringing UX / UI principles to our software development. That's why we included a tool you can use to send us feedback on specific pages or elements of the new UI very easily. Watch out for the floating action button in the lower right-hand corner of our demo instance, and use it to let us know what you think!

Click this button on the demo site to bring up a built-in web screenshot snipping tool you can use to send us screenshots and notes!

Download and install the UI demo

For those that already possess a sandbox environment or have the technical knowledge to create one, we will also be making the new UI build available for download so you can create a sandbox for your staff to test with your district's data. That build is available under a new category under our Updates page for those with valid permissions.

You may be familiar with the scenario: what do you do if you need to take positive attendance in a negative attendance environment, and be able to submit multiple check-ins and check-outs? With today's update, it's Supplemental Attendance to the rescue!

Aeries has had the ability to track student involvement in supplemental attendance since 2009, but this summer we are introducing some brand-new concepts that will change the way you take attendance.  Not only are we allowing the ability for students to be able to attend the same session multiple times throughout a day, but also adding a tie-in with regular attendance.  The Teacher Supplemental Attendance page has also been revamped to include the ability emulate a teacher, giving a more consistent method of tracking supplemental attendance across user types.  Due to the nature of these enhancements (which includes a redesign of the supplemental attendance data tables), this change requires disabling Supplemental Attendance in the Aeries Client version. Additionally, Supplemental Attendance is not supported in the Old UI.  

Here are the highlights of the great new enhancements to Supplemental Attendance in Aeries Web:

1. Supplemental Attendance Sessions now have the ability to flag an “Attendance Period” that the session will tie-back to. Upon check-In, any unverified absence will be cleared for that period and the check-in will warn if there is a verified absence (i.e. Illness) in that period already. Also, removing supplemental attendance for a day will flag the period attendance as unverified (typically marked with the code “A”). There is also a scheduled process to automatically assign absences to students who are not in a session within a defined time after the class period starts - for example, if they are 10 minutes late (or whatever threshold you choose).

2. Supplemental Attendance Data is replacing the existing sign-in/sign-out process with a button opening the new Teacher Supplemental Attendance page in emulation mode for the current session and selected date.

3. There is also a new report for room sign-in sheets, allowing you to generate a QR code that students can scan with any QR-scanning smartphone app. When they do, it will link to a student check-in page for the current room, making self-check-in a breeze.

4. Supplemental Attendance Sign In is a new page in the Student Portal that will allow students to check-in to a session. Please note this page is only available to view if students are given permission to view Supplemental Attendance Data (ATD), and they can only check-in if given update permission.

5. Supplemental Attendance by Teacher (New) allows for all of the existing teacher input of data with some very important enhancements.  The check-in process is as easy as clicking on a plus symbol for the day, or scanning an ID card. Teachers can also check students out of a session mid-way through the session, and then check them back in later!

We know these enhancements are going to make a big difference in the lives of everyday Aeries users taking attendance. Stay tuned for more great improvements to come!

Visit our knowledgebase for complete documentation of the new features: https://support.aeries.com/support/solutions/folders/14000115147

A new school-year is fast approaching!  Like many of the administrators we work closest to, the summer was actually quite busy for us at Aeries Software. While a new user interface and other enhancements in version 8 of the web version of Aeries® SIS represent a significant improvement of the product by looks and features alone,  we know that these elements are not the only pieces that go into ensuring a great user experience for everyone. We’re excited to share some procedural improvements we’ve been developing with regards to customer support that will mean faster, more accurate help for all users.

A change to our support model

First, we’ll outline changes we’re implementing to make more efficient use of our support reps’ and your time, effective July 31st. Now, when you call Aeries support via telephone, your calls will continue to be answered by a live person – except it will now always be a call coordinator answering to gather details and create a ticket on your behalf within Freshdesk. Additionally, we will add the ability to press a number key on your dial pad if you would prefer to leave a voicemail on a machine that will be turned into a ticket for you. Finally, you will be asked your preferred method of response back – via phone, email, or direct Freshdesk ticket response. Our support representatives will then research your matter and respond to you after having gathered potential solutions.

With this substantial transformation in our procedures, tickets created directly through Freshdesk or via email are considered just as urgent as phone calls. Consequently, we encourage our customers to utilize Freshdesk to create tickets as a primary means of support. This method allows you to add in more details and context via written text and screenshots – which allows us to gain a better understanding of the situation and respond in a more timely, comprehensive fashion.

We will continue to exercise our best judgment in determining when an issue needs to be escalated and prioritized for response. With the large majority of our support department consisting of former school district employees, we know all too well that emergencies do occur that require faster responses than others.

Overall, this new method will improve our speed and accuracy of responses – respecting your time and providing you accurate solutions even faster.

User experience goes beyond the product itself

While we are particularly proud of the improvements we have made to our SIS over the summer, it is not the only endeavor Aeries Software undertook. We know that a great end-user experience also means access to helpful support resources and personnel,  especially with a system as vast and multifaceted as a Student Information System. Taking into consideration our support resources available to our end-users, we quickly made the determination that it would be of great benefit to consolidate everything into a single area – including documentation, videos, known issues, frequently asked questions (FAQs), field mapping, and more.

A single, all-in-one knowledge base

It has been over a year since we first implemented our modern support ticketing system – Freshdesk. It’s afforded us many positive benefits to our customer support, including better communication and expanded transparency with our clients. The next step with Freshdesk is to utilize the built-in, all-encompassing knowledge base. Updated and brand new documentation has already transitioned to be offered exclusively through this knowledge base: https://support.aeries.com/support/home

The benefits of a single location for all support resources is self-explanatory, but one notable little-known advantage is the fact that all knowledgebase articles are fully indexed and searchable. In other words, when you go to search for your particular issue, if there is an existing resource available, you will see it listed in your search results – whether it be from documentation, known issue articles, videos, FAQs, or community forum posts. All Aeries knowledge and resources, accessible from a single search field.

And if there is not an existing knowledge base article available to solve your issue, you can quickly open a ticket in Freshdesk from the same portal.

As more documentation and other helpful resources are transitioned to exist solely within the Freshdesk knowledge base, the help icon within Aeries SIS will be updated correspondingly. At some point soon, there will be a significant upgrade made to have the knowledge base directly accessible within Aeries SIS in its own panel on the right-side of the system once you click the help icon – further streamlining the ability to obtain help right when you need it.

Challenging the traditional support paradigm

While we feel that the knowledge base will allow users to help themselves in a quick and efficient manner, we didn’t stop there. In reflecting upon the support department itself, we looked at our two most important objectives: both the speed and accuracy of responses. To that end, we identified some procedural improvement areas that would provide a boost to efficiency, and complement our commitment to offering exceptional service to our customers.

One challenge we faced was that given the enormity and multi-faceted nature of Aeries SIS, we found that not all calls could be answered immediately without doing some research to come up with the appropriate solution, which sometimes translated to more time spent for both our support reps looking into open issues, and our clients waiting on hold for a solution. Meanwhile, tickets created directly through Freshdesk or by email were sometimes regarded with less urgency than live calls, despite the fact that they often contained more of the details necessary for our team to resolve the problem sooner (which wasn’t always the case with the typical support calls). These challenges were a major motivation behind the changes to our customer support procedures.

Soaring higher

With all that said, we want to circle back around to outline a picture of how your interactions with our customer support resources and personnel will change. Whether you’re an administrator, SIS manager, or a CTO, we have a few recommendations for you to help you get the most out of the new and improved all-in-one knowledge base and ticketing system.

The best place to start when you need assistance is our self-service portal, where all Aeries documentation and known issues will be published and searchable. Run a search with keywords relating to your issue to pull up relevant results as you type.

In the event that no resources are available to address your issue, we recommend you escalate to the creation of a new support ticket. Remember to include a descriptive outline of the problem, any steps you took leading up the issue, and upload any screenshots you might have taken. As we outlined earlier in this article, our team now considers support tickets as urgent as phone calls, and many issues that include a descriptive outline/screenshots can be addressed in a matter of minutes.

These are all changes we’ve implemented as a part of a larger commitment to better serve the educators and students of California. We will continue our commitment to improving both our product and internal procedures, and measuring the impact and effectiveness of those changes. As always, if you have any questions or thoughts for us on what we outlined in this article, don’t hesitate to reach out - we want to hear from you!

The new and improved user interface included in Aeries version 8 was only just the beginning of the planned user experience enhancements to our web vewrsion.  The Aeries development team is committed to improving on every page in the system to enhance the user interface and introduce brand new features. As part of this effort the Student Classes screen, where office staff and counselors view and edit student class schedules, has a streamlined new workflow and a reworked user-friendly design.  Along with new features, this screen retains all previous functionality but wrapped in a new template to optimize usability and performance.

The Highlights:

In the past, manually entering a student into an individual section was a different process from entering course requests and letting the system schedule the student (aka – the Walk-In Scheduler).  This new page combines these processes for a faster experience.  Additionally, when in "Edit" mode, any class can be quickly changed or deleted and new courses or classes added quickly.  Fundamentally, this new design allows users to quickly view the available periods of a course and switch students between classes.

This process starts off with a new, faster way of finding courses to add to a student's schedule.  A new auto-complete search box allows users to add or edit courses.  Then immediately after selecting a course, all available sections of that course are displayed for each available period, letting the user select the period and teacher in which to place the student.  Information like "Term", "Seats Remaining", and "Days of the Week" are quickly visible with additional information only a click or mouse hover away.

Available sections of a course are also color coded to make the visual experience even more intuitive and easy to use. Red means a section is full, blue means there are still available seats, and green indicates the current section associated with that course. The yellow color is meant to show the teacher in that section is overloaded if the Monitor Teacher Overload settings are on.

The most significant advantage with this approach is that the class schedule adjustments are not saved until the final "Save" button is clicked.  This allows counselors to try different "what-if" scenarios before locking in a final schedule for a student.

Another option for entering course requests is the ability to select a course request packet, which now supports adding multiple packets at a time. These common groups of courses are customizable for each school and save counselors the hassle of looking up common courses every time they are needed.

These changes will help streamline the jobs of counselors and office staff who face significant pressure to help as many students as possible perfect their schedules at the beginning of every school year.  With quicker class schedule changes, counselors can find that perfect schedule quicker and get the student into their new classes right away, minimizing lost instructional time.

Let’s play a game of Tag!

There is nothing quite like a report. All the bits and pieces of data; all the raw facts, figures, numbers, grades turn into meaningful, organized, clear information through a report. Data transforms into information. They organize the unorganized bits spread all over a school information system into something you can read, understand, and present. 

But what if all that is not enough? What if you want to get your hands on those student’s records listed in that attendance report and print their grade reports? What about querying the kids who turned up in a missing immunizations report for a quick call list? Unfortunately, in most SIS products, there is no bridge that will help you access data based on a report.

From the very early days of our Aeries Client Application, a great innovation named Query Tags helped our users make the jump from reports back to data and allowed them to query, list, and keep lists of students. As we adapted this feature for Aeries Web Version, we continued the tradition of innovation in Aeries and revamped it into a more robust and powerful tool. Now this feature is aptly called “Report Tagging.”

Different from the classic Query Tags, Report Tagging is saved per report and per user, which means different people running different reports will not reset or change each other’s data. In addition, a user can now run many different reports and keep tag information for each report separately without overwriting the previous one. There is one catch though. If you run a specific report a second time with different options, you will end up modifying tagging data for that specific report.

If just tagging students is not enough for you and you want to get your hands on a calculated numeric value in that report, we have good news. For all the tagged students, we are also recording a pre-determined value as a Query Value (QV) so that you can query them wherever it is applicable.

We have a great article in our knowledge-base about Report Tagging with many query examples to get you started: https://support.aeries.com/support/solutions/articles/14000069538

We have included this feature in the following reports and more to come soon. Stay tuned…

•Students with N or More Discipline Demerits

•Avery 5160 Labels 1 Per Family

•Avery 5160 Labels for Birthdays By Teacher

•Students with Unverified Period Absences

•Students with Unverified Absences

•Students with perfect Attendance (Perfect Daily Attendance, Perfect Daily Attendance by Teacher, Perfect Period Attendance)

•Information Confirmation Status

•Student Immunization Status

•Students with N or More Absences

•Students Without Student or Parent Email Addresses Options

•Physical Fitness Status Summary

•Students Without Portal Accounts

Please join us in welcoming the new and improved Query Change Form in Aeries Web Version. It is powerful, it is useful, and yes, it is fully adapted to the web. Let us introduce this screen which you might also call “another Aeries innovation at work."

The idea behind Query Change is running a LIST query using Aeries query tool, and by a click of a button, turning the resulting records into a fully editable grid that can bypass all business rules, except security settings. Considering the power of this tool, it should be used carefully. With the ability to easily navigate each cell using the keyboard and quickly typing values, dates, or codes, you can easily change many records with many fields from many tables in no time.

All of this does not mean that we don’t do our part to keep your data straight. The fields in the Query Change form will only accept correctly formatted data in the correct length. A date field will display a date picker and only allow valid dates, a numeric field will not allow you to type non-numeric data, and a six-character field will stop you at the seventh character.

If you don't possess the photographic memory needed to memorize all the various code sets you might need, worry no more. Any field that uses a set of values from COD table will be displayed as a searchable list. Yet, it will still allow you to directly type in codes as long as they are valid.

Best of all, as you type and move on to the next field, your data in the field before will be saved automatically without further action needed.

The Query Change form in the web version allows you to edit the fields from all the tables involved without the need to pick one over the other, like in the Aeries Client days. You can always lock/unlock a whole table or individual columns when you get to the screen. Talk about convenience!

To learn more about this great new feature, visit our knowledgebase: https://support.aeries.com/support/solutions/articles/14000073533-query-change

Remember, Aeries Users: the Great Power of Query Change comes with great Responsibility. Use it wisely and use it well!

There are numerous benefits established by identifying which students are siblings within a school or district. Going beyond the practical, real-life benefits of this knowledge, there are the benefits provided by having this clearly identified within a Student Information System. This is immediately apparent when enrolling a new student into the SIS, as users are invited to lookup if a student has a sibling existing in the database through probable common datapoints like last name, phone number, parent name(s), address, and email address. If a sibling is identified, these commonly shared data fields are automatically populated, including address, Parent/Guardian information, and emergency contacts. Aeries links multiple students together by a numeric field called Family Key.

The siblings form displayed under “Student Data | Other” on the Student Demographics page

On the other hand, when this link between siblings through a Family Key does not occur during their enrollment for one reason or another, it can be difficult to accomplish down the line, especially at districts with thousands of students to consider. In the past, the narrative surrounding linking common data between siblings went something like this: manual linking of siblings is too tedious, but automatic matching is prone to errors. With a balance between automation and user-controlled options, Aeries has a solution for you! First of all, a new Sibling Lookup form has been added to Aeries on the Student Demographics, Siblings, and Contacts pages. Each potential match will show relevant fields from the other student's record. Fields that match will be highlighted. Each row also includes a Match counter, which is a number between 0 and 100 that indicates how strong the match is based on the number of fields in common. The best match will appear on top, and so on.

The new Sibling Lookup form

While the Sibling Lookup form can help with the process of identifying siblings manually , we have a new Mass Assign Family Keys page to intelligently match students based on the criteria the user sets. You can define which contact records should be analyzed when processing siblings and then mass assign only those with the highest matched criteria. The same page can then be used to manually assess the remaining students, including the ability to create new family keys for a student who is an only-child or for siblings who do not yet have a family key defined.

The new Mass Assign Family Keys page gives users the flexibility to define the matching criteria and confidence levels

The Contact Processing Options will help tailor the Sibling Lookup to meet needs specific to your district by limiting with Contact records are analyzed when matching siblings.

• • Only process Contacts based on the following Code(s) in CON.CD

Enter a comma-separated list of code values for contacts to include: e.g. “P, G” where “P” is defined as Parent in the COD table and “G” for Guardian, and so forth.

• • Only process Contacts based on the following Relationship Code(s) in CON.RL

Enter a comma-separated list of code values for contacts to include: e.g. “M, F, G” where “M” is defined as Mother, “F” for Father, and “G” for Grandparent, and so forth.

• • Only process Contacts based on a Contact Order below:

Enter a numeric value to limit to contacts below that contact order

• • Only process Contacts based on “Lives With” flag (CON.LW = “Y”)

Checking this box will limits to only contacts the student lives with

• • Only process Contacts based on “Ed Rights Holder” flag (CON.ERH = “Y”)

Checking this box will limits to only contacts that hold educational rights to the student

The options defined in the new Mass Assign Family Keys page are also utilized when adding a new student, allowing you to view the potential siblings and selecting either to match or to create a new family key.

The Sibling Lookup and manual Family Key creation within the Student Demographics page during the student enrollment process

With these new tools, it doesn’t matter whether your district has proper Family Keys clearly defined for all but a handful of students or has a majority of siblings not linked together. The Mass Assign Family Keys process will help to get caught up on those missing links in a quick and efficient way, and the new Sibling Lookup form will help to keep things on track and accurate moving forward.

Documentation for managing siblings can be found at https://support.aeries.com/support/solutions/folders/14000118170

Times are changing and over the last few years, the focus of all major development for Aeries has been on the Aeries Web Environment. As a result, the Aeries Client has only received minor adjustments and compatibility changes. In some cases, changes to Aeries Web have resulted in areas of the Aeries Client being disabled. Last Summer it was Supplemental Attendance. This Summer, there will be much, much more…

The following forms, reports, and functions in the Aeries Client are scheduled to become read-only or completely disabled by August 1, 2018 due to planned or already existing changes made to Aeries Web that are incompatible with the Aeries Client:

Student Demographics

Due to recently passed CA law (SB-179), schools must begin to support the new "Nonbinary Gender". Adjustments are being made to Aeries to support this new Gender Code that will not be made to the Aeries Client. Additionally, a new field, STU.GN, will be used instead of the older STU.SX field. Because both fields will need to match to maintain backwards compatibility, making the STU table in the Aeries Client Read-Only will be necessary. This includes editing, adding, and transferring students.

Attendance

New guidance from the CDE requires that a new feature be added to Aeries Attendance Accounting to allow for individual student absences to be flagged as counting for ADA. This is to support Saturday School makeup days as well as monitoring chronic absenteeism and truancy. New fields will be added to the ATT table and new logic will be added to ADA calculation reports. As a result, almost all attendance reports in the Aeries Client will be disabled or removed (including ADA calculation and auditing reports) and editing attendance-related information will be disabled (ATT, Attendance Notes, Attendance History, etc). It may also be necessary to prevent even the viewing of student attendance starting with the 18-19 school year.

Secondary Grade Reporting

GRD in the Aeries Client already lacks support for the new Composite Course feature of Aeries. Although running reports will still be allowed, editing of GRD will be disabled.

Elementary Grade Reporting

SBG in the Aeries Client already lacks many new features only available in Aeries Web. Not all areas of SBG will be disabled, but most areas that have an equivalent in Aeries Web will be disabled.

Transcripts

Both editing and printing Transcripts will be disabled. New fields have been added to HIS that are not supported in the Aeries Client and new logging and change management features are planned that are not compatible with the Aeries Client. Likewise, new transcript printing features are being worked on that the client version will not support.

Graduation Requirements and UC/CSU Eligibility

A new algorithm for calculating the Graduation Status of a student was added to Aeries Web during the 2016-2017 school year. This new method is far superior in optimizing student credit and is not available in the Aeries Client. Also, the UC & CSU Eligibility Calculations are being adjusted to include better calculations. The forms and reports displaying this information in the Client will be disabled.

School Options, Calendar, Courses, Master Schedule, Teachers and Staff

Many new fields and options have been added to these areas in Aeries Web but will not be added to the Aeries Client. These forms will remain in the system, but will be read-only.

Student Classes

Last Summer, the Classes page in Aeries Web was redesigned to greatly improve the speed and efficiency in scheduling new students and adjusting the schedules of existing students. This summer, a wonderful new feature is planned to allow the scheduling of future changes to a student's class schedule. Additionally, due to changes to scheduling to support gender balancing of nonbinary gender students, changing student class schedules will be disabled in the Aeries Client.

Scheduling and Course Requests

The need for gender balancing of nonbinary gender students requires extensive changes to the scheduler and to the scheduling tables in Aeries. These changes will only be made in Aeries Web. Scheduling will become almost completely read-only or disabled with only a few features left to add new course requests to students.

Assertive Discipline, Discipline, Interventions, Contacts, Programs, and Course Attendance

In the Aeries Client, these forms all lack new fields and features available in Aeries Web. To maintain data integrity, these forms will all become read-only in the Aeries Client.

Academic Plan

The Academic Plan has been greatly enhanced in Aeries Web. The Aeries Client does not have the new features and will need to be completely removed.

Golden State Seal Merit Diploma, State Seal of Biliteracy, and CALPADS Extracts

These major features will either not be available or will only be able to be run against prior year database. The business logic behind these programs has been changed and those changes will not be supported in the Aeries Client.

Query

Although Query itself will not be removed from the Aeries Client, saving and using saved queries will no longer be available due to compatibility issues and planned enhancements to Aeries Web Query.

Although we feel this is a relatively comprehensive list, new features and enhancements are being added to Aeries all the time. Some of those feature enhancements will result in areas of the Aeries Client being disabled. This could even occur mid-year. It is recommended that starting with the 2018-2019 school year, the Aeries Client only be used for functionality not found in Aeries Web. The primary system being used by Aeries Districts should be Aeries Web, NOT Aeries Client. The Aeries Client is NOT going away and there are still many valuable features available in the Aeries Client that are still available to schools, but the point has been reached where the need to advance the feature set of Aeries outweighs the need to maintain backwards compatibility with the Aeries Client.

We would happy to assist any customer with a transition to Aeries Web. Training resources are available, along with extensive documentation. Please contact maximize@aeries.com or visit http://maximize.aeries.com for more information.

Have you ever wanted to track some custom data in Aeries that doesn’t seem to fit into any of our built-in pages? Are user codes or supplemental fields not enough? Do you want more restricted access to the data? Custom tables can help store any student-related data the way that you want.

In Aeries, we have supported custom one-to-one student-related tables for many years, but recently added the ability to create one-to-many student-related tables. One-to-one means that in the database, there is only one record in your custom table for each related student. One-to-many, on the other hand, stores multiple records per student.

A custom form can be developed for users to view or edit many common types of data including dropdowns, date, time, checkboxes (yes/no), comment fields, and more. Here’s an example of what a custom form might look like for entering Court Orders into the system.

Another example of a senior checkout form that could be used instead of a traditional paper checkout system. Imagine this form available for your office staff, library, finance and other offices available to complete, but additionally displayed in read-only view to parents and students.

Once a custom table has been created and available for use, other areas of Aeries will pick up on this. This data can be queried just like any other table in Aeries. Users can also be granted specific security permissions, including displaying to parents and students, or limiting to read-only. Student Documents allows a document to be secured to only those users with access to this specific table. Red Flags tied to custom tables may also be used.

For more advanced Aeries Administrators, SQL Views can be created to display any variety of existing data onto a read-only student-related page. DBAs could also create scripts to automatically populate data in custom tables based upon specific data event triggers, or many other automated tasks.

Another new feature is the ability to customize the Aeries Navigation. Both Pages and Reports sections of the navigation can now be modified, including hiding pages, or adding your own page links. This introduces the option to direct link to your SSRS reports or any third-party reporting server, and provide a link to run that report for the current student, current school, or many other variables available to be included in URLs. You can even add a link to third party websites such as CALPADS to look up additional student info.

For more information on any of the above described features, be sure to check out our documentation on custom tables, custom navigation, and data event triggers.

CDE has released a letter to the county and district Superintendents and Charter School Administrators outlining the transition to electronic student score reports (SSRs) for the CAASPP tests. For the last several months Aeries has been working with the TOMS development team and several other SIS vendors and LEA's to create an interface between the SIS system and the TOMS site. Using this interface users (staff, teachers, parents and students) with the appropriate permission set will be able to view and download or print student score reports one student at a time.

CDE is planning a three-year transition for the electronic score report as outlined below:

- Phase 1–Pilot (2017–18) During Phase 1, LEAs and SIS vendors who volunteered to participate in the pilot will work with our testing contractor, Educational Testing Service (ETS), to test the technology solution for delivering electronic reports. All LEAs, including the LEAs participating in the pilot test, will receive paper SSRs, as usual.

- Phase 2–Initial Implementation (2018–19) During Phase 2, the California Department of Education (CDE) and ETS will work with all LEAs to implement and test the electronic reporting technology solution. When CAASPP reports are available for the 2018–19 administration, the default delivery method of the SSRs will be electronic. The CDE will offer support to select LEAs that demonstrate a clear need for continued support.

- Phase 3–Full Implementation (2019–20) During Phase 3, all LEAs will be expected to use the electronic reporting process.

We are currently in Phase 1 (Pilot). Three districts in Aeries have been approved by CDE to pilot the electronic student score reports for the 2017-18 CAASPP testing administration. Since piloting the system requires extra set up for TOMS we do not require any additional volunteers to pilot the system, but we do appreciate all of the districts willing to participate.

During Phase 2 (Initial Implementation) CDE and ETS will work with all LEA's to implement the electronic technology solution for the 2018-19 CAASPP testing administration. Sometime during the 2018-19 school year we will open up the CAASPP Paperless Scores node to all districts and work with them to set up the fields to enable the process.

For more information and screenshots of our CAASPP Paperless Scores interface please see the following article: CAASPP Paperless Reports

Want to see CAASPP Paperless in action?

Link to video demo

It is with heavy hearts that Aeries Software announces the passing of a valued long-time member of the Aeries family: Mark Bergstrasser. Mark had been with Aeries for over 14 years as a member of the Second Level Support Department, and brightened the lives of our team members with his kindness and humor. As the IT Director of Wasco School Districts for 8 years prior to joining the Aeries team, Mark had been integral in providing feedback as an Aeries user and brought to Aeries Software a wealth of experience. He will be dearly missed.

For more information, please see: http://www.petersfuneralhomes.com/obituaries/Mark-Bergstrasser?obId=3106356#/obituaryInfo

We've made a lot of cool changes to the New Year Rollover process this year! In fact, it's hard to list them all! You can read all about it in our documentation linked at the bottom of the article, but we're going to highlight some of the more significant enhancements below. 

The New Year Rollover now includes a new option to Lockout All Users during the rollover process. This option will not kick-out users already logged into Aeries, but it will keep users from logging in while the rollover is running.  

When this "Lockout All Users" option is checked, users attempting to log into Aeries will see this message: 

A new option has been added called "Copy custom SQL modules" (ROL.CCS). Checking this option will copy custom SQL modules such as views, functions, stored procedures, and triggers for customers who have extensively customized their Aeries SQL database. 

For Custom Tables and Views defined in the "Define Custom Tables" form (CTD table), the SQL Table definition, Indexes, Constraints, Triggers, and Extended Properties will be created in the new year database prior to copying the data. When paired with the "Copy custom SQL modules" option above, this means that the Database Administrator will only need to run SQLMODEL.SQL on a newly created Aeries database for rollover! 

Curious about the "PGMS" custom SQL view defined above? Click here 

The Processes tab now includes a new AdminCS Maintenance Functions* summary of last run dates for: Repair Indexes and Relationships, Force Cascading DEL Tags, and Database Cleanup. The dates will be shown in red if it has been more than one week since they were last run.  If you see a red date, be sure to run that function in AdminCS prior to starting the rollover.  

*Please note that this section will not be visible to our hosted clients. 

A lot of new features have been added to make sure that cleaner data is rolled over. New Year Rollover will now automatically run "Force Cascading Del Tags" in order to ensure no orphaned records exist prior to the rollover. The process will now also ensure that teacher zero ("Unassigned") exists at all schools, recalculate SMS Totals for secondary schools, bypass copying expired substitute teacher accounts, clean up portal accounts, and clear out data in Supplemental Attendance Session Linked MST Section (ATS.MSE).  These steps reduce the amount of "Post-Rollover Cleanup" Aeries Admins used to do. 

In order to better serve our K-8 customers, the existing "Only copy Student (STU) records under 25 years of age" has been modified to allow a user-defined age (ROL.UWA), defaulting to 25.  Now districts can enter an age that is more appropriate for the communities they serve.   

These are just a handful of the recent enhancements to the New Year Rollover process. Visit our support site for more information! 

Documentation 

• New Year Rollover Overview 

• New Year Rollover Checklist (Updated May 22nd, 2018) 

• New Year Rollover Settings 

• New Year Rollover Processing and Reports 

• Pre-Rollover Audit Listing Report 

Videos 

• Preparing for Rollover 

• Reviewing Security 

• Data Review and Preparation 

• Beginning the Rollover 

• Finishing the Rollover and Reviewing Data