Extra Curricular Update Webinar 2024 Q&A

My school uses Clipboard for extra curricular. It allows us to mark rolls, as well as producing time sheets for paying coaches. Is this something that is possible with TASS extra curricular? 

Yes, this is all possible within Staff Kiosk. You can also mark rolls in the Staff Orbit app and we plan to introduce timesheets within the app in the coming releases. 

Is the custom roll static or will it update as the team changes?

Yes, where a change to an Extra Curricular group has been made, future rolls will be updated. 

So are theses custom rolls dynamic?

Yes.

When adding students to the roll, it would be great to be able to paste in a number of student numbers rather than type and select individually.  Are there any plans to add this functionality?

Currently, you can start typing a student's name or a student number (or paste it). Our feedback so far hasn't indicated a widespread need to support bulk adhoc adding of students to custom rolls, however, if this is a common enough scenario, then we are certainly open to reviewing this functionality.

when adding a student to the roll, it will only add to the roll not the extra curricular group too?

Correct. 

For music ensembles, is there also a way to sort rolls by music part order instead of alphabetically?

Not currently. We have an upcoming piece of work looking at being able to split a custom roll. So there could be scope within that to cater for splitting/sorting your music ensembles.

Will external providers/coaches be able to have access sessions and fixtures for role marking?

If they have Staff Kiosk access, yes. If they don't, this is something we'll need to investigate. There's a few security/privacy considerations here such as, ensuring they're only provided with access to their own groups, how to provide access securely and adhering to the comprehensive Staff Kiosk permissions. 

Will there be functions to bulk upload session times for fixtures and trainings?

Yes, providing bulk upload tools is a key enhancement on our Extra Curricular roadmap.

Can you export a list of fixtures and results for a specific date?

This is not currently possible. However, signficant enhancements to reporting is a key part of the upcoming extra curricular improvements.

Can you run through a sign up and payment please?

Whilst we weren't able to do this within the webinar, we'd be happy to run you through this. Please feel free to reach out to Customer Care. 

Do the dates of the event roll into the calendar?

Yes, Events and Extra Curricular feeds are separate feeds within the eDiary and both feed through to the Parent and Staff eDiary. 

Can you run attendance report for the custom rolls?

Significant enhancements to reporting is a key part of the upcoming Extra Curricular improvements, including attendance reporting.

Can the timesheet be tied with whether coaches have marked the roll?

This is not something that we are currently considering as it did not get raised during our discovery sessions. However, we could consider if there is enough interest from schools.

how will external providers (not in TASS) access this and mark rolls etc.

This is something we'll need to investigate. There are a few security/privacy considerations here, such as ensuring they're only provided with access to their own groups, how to provide access securely and adhering to the comprehensive Staff Kiosk permissions. 

Is the medical alert for a student automatically uploaded from TASS medical conditions into the custom roll or is this entered each time for each activity?

Yes, it's automatically pulled through from TASS Medical. 

Do these projects cost?

Onboarding for Extra Curricular and Orbit are considered Professional Services projects. The cost of the project can be found here https://tasshub.tassweb.com.au/services-menu#admin. However, there are no additional costs for the new features.

Do you offer trial period on the orbit apps?

We have an evaluation area on our website which includes a working version of the apps for the school to play around with and consider. We can also do a tailored demonstration to the school. We don't currently offer the app to the school on a trial period. 

Have you reviewed Sign Up - parent approval and then submit to school is causing issues here. Can't approval just submit directly to school?

A thorough review of the sign up and parent approval in Parent Lounge is on our roadmap.

is there a way to have parents who have accepted on events be automatically put into a custom roll?

A custom roll can be easily created based on parents' responses such as accepted, declined or have not accepted. You will see these options when creating a custom roll and select "Events and Payments" as your Search Mode.

I have an additional question to todays session: how do you navigate 1. school camp providers asking for their information form to be filled in along with the school permission slip -what are other schools doing?   2. How do school issue out permission forms that have questions on it to be answered for an event/camp eg: What is your Childs swimming ability?

There are a number of options available to achieve these. We would recommend contact our Customer Care team and they can step you through how to best set these up for your situation.

Will the marking of a student in a custom roll impact or display in the normal class roll? e.g. can a class teacher see that a student has been marked present in a custom roll from their class roll?

A custom roll does not impact class rollcall directly. However, on a class roll you can view any concurrent Extra Curricular/Events/Appointments for each student. You would then need to go into the custom roll for that activity to see if the student was present on that custom roll.

We would like to be able to invite a full team of specific students to sign-up for an activity and have parents provide permission for their child to participate once invited - ie: not have the activity available to anyone. Is this part of the roadmap that was mentioned?  At the moment we do this via Events & Payments which isn't ideal.

Yes, this is one of our upcoming enhancements :)

Are you working on a more user friendly way to upload students to an Extra Curricular Group? Currently it is only available in the Data Upload Facility. Can it be included in the Extra Curricular program similar to Calendar and Equipment.

Yes, providing bulk upload tools is a key enhancement on our Extra Curricular roadmap.

If a student is doing 2 music instruments on different days with different teachers is there a way to mail merge this info when sending emails/communications to parents.

Unfortunately, there is no current functionality to combine these details together into one email. Enhancements to email templates will be introduced in the future, however, it didn't rate as highly as other enhancements when we surveyed schools. So, other enhancements will take priority.

We don't currently us Extra curricular. Particularly in the sport events when you you use Events and payments verses EC?

This is a great question… one typical consideration is whether it is a recurring event (EC) or a one-off event (Events & Payments). There are also differences in payment options between the two. Our Customer Care team would be happy to discuss the best setup for your specific needs.

If students choose preferences when signing up to an extra curricular eg primary after school sports, how can they be easily distributed into different activities for different terms without having to manually add to the separate groups? Hope that makes sense!

It sounds like you might be best to create each sport as its own activity, which would then create the separate groups. However, our Customer Care team would be happy to discuss the best setup for your specific needs.

Is the extra training you mentioned all online? and doe sit come at a cost to the school?

The additional training is online, yes. However, we do offer onsite training as well. The training and onsite costs do come at an additional cost. We've linked the details here: https://tasshub.tassweb.com.au/services-menu

Is it possible to schedule the creation of a custom roll? Say 5 days out from the scheduled training session or game? It would allow changes to the students to happen, and those changes get reflected in the custom roll closer to the event date.

Selecting "Dynamic List" when creating a Custom Roll will automatically update any changes to the students. This is the default behaviour when automatically creating Custom Rolls at the time of creating a session/s.

Can a medical incident/injury link back to medical notes in TASS.web or Student notes?

Yes, this enhancement will be introduced in the future, however, it didn't rate as highly as other enhancements when we surveyed schools. So at this stage other enhancements will take priority.

If a classroom teacher marks a student absent, can the music tutor override this by marking them present in their session

Yes, custom rolls and class rolls are separate entities. So, in your example, it sounds like the teacher would mark the student absent from class in the class roll and then the music tutor would mark the student as present on a custom roll.

If it is possible to have a bulk upload is it also possible to an API connection?

When we are scoping the enhancements for bulk uploads, we will seek school input to see how widely any associated API endpoints would be used.

Can an App user (external coach) have the ability to edit rolling training sessions

Access to the app is controlled by Staff Kiosk access so the external coach would need to be provided with a login. For TASS payroll schools, schools will assign the employee record to 'payroll 99'. 

If we add a student to a custom roll after it has been created - does it update the extra curricular group list too?

No, adding a student to a custom roll will only add them to that instance of the custom roll. If the student will be joining the Extra Curricular group for all future sessions then they must be added to the Extra Curricular group.

Just to clarify; the Attendance module will be linked in future?

There will be the option to have custom roll default values reflect school attendance. For example, if a student is absent from school, they will be defaulted to absent when a custom roll is marked. The custom roll marker can then mark the student as present (because a student may still attend an EC activity even if absent from school) or leave them as absent.

In the future updates to Sign Ups, will there be a feature to release the sign up as a particular time (e.g 6:02pm), not just at midnight on a given day?

Yes, this enhancement will be introduced in the future, however, it didn't rate as highly as other enhancements when we surveyed schools. So at this stage other enhancements will take priority.

Would you consider rebrading the title - "Co-Curricular" - this is much more common language than the older fashioned "Extra-curricular"

This isn't something that has been raised during our discovery sessions, however it is something that we could consider if there was enough interest from schools.

Will a rolling timetable be available for activities that occur on different days/times each week? E.g. - For music lessons.

Yes, this is an enhancement that will be part of the upcoming Extra Curricular improvements.

With the split teams function for marking buses can this be added to Events and Payments also??

Yes, this functionality will be available to custom rolls that are created from Extra Curricular or Event & Payments.

Can we record student extracurricular 'points' within this system?

You can record points against matches i.e. School A plays School B in Tennis and School A won 3 matches to 1. 

Will there be a capability of incident reporting and Game match reporting for coaches?

Yes, this enhancement will be introduced in the future, however, it didn't rate as highly as other enhancements when we surveyed schools. So at this stage other enhancements will take priority.

Notes against attendance - can these be extracted in a listing for an individual student / class over a date range?

Significant enhancements to reporting is a key part of the upcoming Extra Curricular improvements, including attendance reporting.

How will this all work with external coaches, when they are not staff members with a TASS login. Our College does not allow non staff members to TASS access

Currently, they do need to have Staff Kiosk access. Providing access to coaches who don't is something we'll need to investigate. There's a few security/privacy considerations here such as, ensuring they're only provided with access to their own groups, how to provide access securely and adhering to the comprehensive Staff Kiosk permissions. 

What if a student is in 2 extracurricular groups that are scheduled at the same time? How will this look in the rolls (if happening in class time)? Will it have 2 activities listed in the alert or will there be a default precedence, if so what would that be?

It will indicate every instance a student has been marked present on a custom roll for that day

also second question, if the student is marked absent in the classroom roll and custom roll. Is there anyway to have notifications/workflows similar to PC entries? If we have a student absent from the class and absent from custom roll. We would like PC staff members to be notified to locate those students.

This is not currently available, however, in the future we are looking to create closer links between custom rolls and class rolls so that we can implement notifications like you've suggested and have improved visibility of students' whereabouts.

So to confirm, custom roll marking will link back to classroom rolls live? And update classroom rolls so teaches know that students have been marked present or absent.

A custom roll does not impact class rollcall directly. However, on a class roll you can view any concurrent Extra Curricular/Events/Appointments for each student. You would then need to go into the custom roll for that activity to see if the student was present on that custom roll.

Will the custom rolls created from EC events default to dynamic lists of students?

Yes. 

Are there any plans to have attendance data from custom rolls show up in TASS web for rolls clerks?

Yes, this enhancement will be introduced in the future, however, it didn't rate as highly as other enhancements when we surveyed schools. So at this stage other enhancements will take priority.

Is this only for students within the school or can be extended to the public (siblings of students wanting to enrol in an activity)

It is only for students enrolled in the school.

Can we do reporting of attendance stats eg for Awards we require 80% attendance to get an award?

Significant enhancements to reporting is a key part of the upcoming Extra Curricular improvements.

Will there be a bulk upload of appointments for Private lessons eg a CSV upload?

Yes, providing bulk upload tools is a key enhancement on our Extra Curricular roadmap.