March 2019

If your school is approaching the 3rd quarter report, then these functions in FastDirect might need to be addressed.

Opening up teacher input for 3rd Quarter Report Cards will require:

  • Confirming the 3rd quarter dates in ‘Grades’ then ‘Report Card Input Controls’
  • Changing input for 3rd quarter Report Cards from ‘Not Yet’ to ‘Allow Input’ in ‘Report Card Input Controls’
  • Having teachers go through the 3rd quarter report card input process
  • Closing the input process by changing ‘allow input’ to ‘input complete’

Registration is an important part of the school year and FastDirect can help make the process easier.  In FastDirect, you can track new student applications, re-registrations of returning students, as well as the charging and depositing of registration fees. Here is some of the information that is tracked in the Registration report:

  • The number of students for each grade level
  • The number of students returning in each grade level
  • The number of new student applications in each grade level
  • An estimated number of spots available in each grade level
  • A breakdown of each existing family and their re-registration status

Here are some other features involved in registration through FastDirect:

  • The ability to allow your parents to re-register their child online
  • Time stamps for when parents re-registered their child
  • The finance account for Registration 2019-2020
  • A report showing all families and if they have been charged their registration fees
  • A report showing all families and if they have paid their registration fees

Click here to watch the Registration video tutorial in MP4 format

Click here to watch the Registration video tutorial in Youtube

Registering students for next year often means forms and paperwork.  With the file upload function, you can add these forms to the Links page, send them as attachments or create links to them on the login screen.  Making these forms available online means you won’t be spending your time making copies and mailing them out. Additionally, by allowing your parents to upload files, you can have a paperless process!  After you have uploaded the forms and made them available online, your parents can fill the forms out and send them back to you through our secure FDmail eMessaging. Here is how to turn on file upload for your parents and ways to help get your parents started:

You can activate this feature either for parents or students or both. To do so, you’ll go to Settings and click on FDmail in the left hand navigation menu. Check mark the option to Allow Parent File Upload and click ‘Save Changes’.  To allow students, repeat these steps and check mark the option for Allow Student File Upload.  To learn more about file upload, click on your FAQ Icon (the blue question mark), click on the “Look in: All categories” drop-down menu, select File Upload/File Attachment and click “View FAQ”. To help teach you parents and/or students how to use the file upload tool, you can point them to the FAQ section under the heading of ‘File Upload/File Attachment’. HelpDesk would like to help you get your Registration processes set up in FastDirect. Please send an FDmail message or give HelpDesk a call when you are ready to get started.

If your school is on trimesters, March may be too soon to be preparing for mid-trimester reports.

Registration is an important part of the school year and FastDirect can help make the process easier.  In FastDirect, you can track new student applications, re-registrations of returning students, as well as the charging and depositing of registration fees. Here is some of the information that is tracked in the Registration report:

  • The number of students for each grade level
  • The number of students returning in each grade level
  • The number of new student applications in each grade level
  • An estimated number of spots available in each grade level
  • A breakdown of each existing family and their re-registration status

Here are some other features involved in registration through FastDirect:

  • The ability to allow your parents to re-register their child online
  • Time stamps for when parents re-registered their child
  • The finance account for Registration 2019-2020
  • A report showing all families and if they have been charged their registration fees
  • A report showing all families and if they have paid their registration fees

Click here to watch the Registration video tutorial in MP4 format

Click here to watch the Registration video tutorial in Youtube

Registering students for next year often means forms and paperwork.  With the file upload function, you can add these forms to the Links page, send them as attachments or create links to them on the login screen.  Making these forms available online means you won’t be spending your time making copies and mailing them out. Additionally, by allowing your parents to upload files, you can have a paperless process!  After you have uploaded the forms and made them available online, your parents can fill the forms out and send them back to you through our secure FDmail eMessaging. Here is how to turn on file upload for your parents and ways to help get your parents started:

You can activate this feature either for parents or students or both. To do so, you’ll go to Settings and click on FDmail in the left hand navigation menu. Check mark the option to Allow Parent File Upload and click ‘Save Changes’.  To allow students, repeat these steps and check mark the option for Allow Student File Upload.  To learn more about file upload, click on your FAQ Icon (the blue question mark), click on the “Look in: All categories” drop-down menu, select File Upload/File Attachment and click “View FAQ”. To help teach you parents and/or students how to use the file upload tool, you can point them to the FAQ section under the heading of ‘File Upload/File Attachment’. HelpDesk would like to help you get your Registration processes set up in FastDirect. Please send an FDmail message or give HelpDesk a call when you are ready to get started.

We’ve made some improvements to the Registration Report that we know you’ll love! Now when you click on the Registration 2019-2020 report in Reports, not only you will see a cleaner and sleeker report but you will also see a break down of some of the important numbers, as well as additional and related reports including the batch print option for parent information.  Here are some of the helpful totals displayed at the top of the report:

  • Total new students, separated by new families and existing families
  • Total students leaving, separated by graduating students and and students not returning
  • Total number of families who have not yet responded

Here is how to access this report:

  1. Click on Reports
  2. In the left hand menu, click on Parent Data
  3. In the left hand men, click on Registration 2019-2020

If you are unable to find this report, it may need to be turned on for your school.  Please contact HelpDesk to request the registration report.

In FastDirect, there are two levels of inactive parents. The first level happens automatically when a student is moved to transfers or graduates. The second level, which is not mandatory, has to be done by an admin at the school. In addition to making a family inactive individually,  there is a faster way to make multiple parent accounts completely inactive.

Completing the inactivation of a parent account is not necessary and is something that the administrators can decide if they want to implement. Parent accounts in the first level of inactivation are still able to log into the system, thus allowing them to send/receive messages and check finance balances. By completing the inactivation process, parents will no longer be able to log in.

Here are the steps to completing the inactivation settings for multiple parent accounts:

  • Go to People, then Parents
  • Click ‘Display’ next to the option for ‘All # Registrants’
  • Any parent account that has already been made inactive (first level), will have a button to ‘Make Parent Inactive’ in the PSM column on the right
  • Please note – once you have completely inactivated a parent account, the system will allow you to delete that parent account. We strongly recommend that you do not delete the parent account unless there are some special circumstances, such as a duplicate parent account.

Even though the ReportCard from the current grading period only has the comments for that period, you are still able to view/print the comments from the whole year. Furthermore, you can print those comments as a batch print. The same is also true for attendance. Here are the steps to print an individual student’s comments:

  1. Go to ‘Grades’
  2. Click ‘View ReportCards’
  3. Click ‘Print’ next to the student’s name in your roster
  4. When their ReportCard appears, click on the word ‘Comments’
  5. That student’s comments for the whole year will appear on a separate screen which is printable

Here are the steps to batch print your homeroom students’ comments:

  1. Go to ‘Grades’
  2. Click ‘View ReportCards’
  3. Click ‘Print Whole Class Comments’ which is above the roster list
  4. The comments will appear (one after another) and File – Print will print them all on individual sheet

Both sets of steps can be followed for Attendance as well.

If your school is tracking attendance hours for day care or before/after school care in our Timer feature, then you will have access to an Extended Care Report. Timer is a new component in FastDirect that allows schools to track the attendance hours of students who are in day care, preschool, before/after care etc.  If your school is using this component, then the time that you are being billed for in Timer will be in an Extended Care Report.  This report not only allows you to view specific date ranges, but you can also specify which children you want to appear in the report.  For those parents that need to submit forms to their employers or for taxes, this report will be exactly what they need! To access this report, follow these steps:

  1. Log into your parent account
  2. Scroll below your FDmail and below all of the grade viewing report options
  3. Underneath the line that reads ‘Extended Care Report’, select the dates you need and the student option then click ‘View Report’

If this report is not on your Home page, then consider talking with the administrators about using Timer at your school.

Watch this video tutorial to get a brief overview of the various controls and options in the Settings page!

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