How to Schedule an Event in the SMS

How to Schedule an Event in the SMS

Overview

Your SMS includes a Scheduling management feature designed to streamline the organisation of academic schedules for students. It allows you to efficiently plan, manage and track class schedules and other important events.  

With Schedules in your SMS, admins and trainers can efficiently manage their time and resources by visualising plotted class schedules and other commitments. This also helps in minimising potential scheduling conflicts such as overlapping classes, enabling your administrator to resolve issues in advance. 

Using Schedules is a valuable tool that helps you to effectively organise your training schedules. 

What is an Event? 

An Event refers to any scheduled activity in the SMS that is plotted in the Schedule Calendar. Events could be classes for Units, Unit start and end dates for intake programs, class schedules, orientations, webinar, scheduled consultations or any other events that are related to groups within your Program Instances. 


Step Tutorial


The Schedule tab is where all events or schedules are plotted. Go to Schedules from the side menu > Schedule. 

This page will display a Filter section and the Calendar section. 

The Filters section allows you to filter what information will display in the calendar based on the filters selected.

  1. Has Enrolments - Filters the Calendar view based on student enrolments. This filter checks for any students enrolled in a group that is related to the event/schedule. 
    1. All - displays all the calendar events regardless if students are enrolled in the group or not. An icon in the shape of a person will signify if the scheduled event has any enrolments. 
    2. Yes - only displays events for groups that have students enrolled. 
    3. No - only displays events for groups that do not have any students enrolled.
  2. Student - filters the calendar entries for events where a specific student is enrolled. Requires a three (3) characters of the student's name to start the search. 
  3. Program - show events or schedules of the displayed month for ALL programs or selected program only. 
  4. Program Instance - show events or schedules of the displayed month for ALL program instance or selected program instance only. 
  5. Group - show events or schedules of the displayed month for ALL groups or a selected group only. 
  6. Trainer - show events or schedules of the displayed month for ALL trainers or selected trainers only. 
  7. Company - show events or schedules of the displayed month for ALL Companies or selected Companies only. 
  8. Show Inactive toggle - by default the calendar will only display active calendar events. Toggle this to show all events regardless of status. 
  9. An additional dropdown is also available if your SMS is on the Maximise plan. External Calendar Type - This dropdown allows users to select which Calendar type will be generated for the direct link and the iFrame code. 
    1. Calendar and Course List view - when this is selected the link and iFrame code will display both the external Course Calendar and the Course List View. 
    2. Calendar View - when this is selected the links generated will only display the External Course Calendar
    3. Course List View  - when this is selected the links generated will only display the Course List View. 

Note:

The Program, Program Instance, Group, Trainer and Company filters work together to further filter the displayed events. 

As an example, if a specific program is selected in the Program filter, the options in the dropdown for Program Instances, Groups, Trainers and Company will only display for the related Program. The same logic is applied if a specific Program Instance is selected, wherein the selections for Groups, Trainers and Company will only display whatever is related to the Program instance. 



Click Apply to filter the calendar view based on your filter selection. 

The Calendar Section provides you with details of the actual events/schedules. 

  1. Use the left and right arrows to move the Calendar view to different Month, week or day. Default is set to the current month. 
  2. Click Today to go directly to schedules for the day. This is only clickable if the Month or Week view does not include the current day. 
  3. Select your Calendar view as month, week or day. Default is set to Month. 




View Calendar Events

Existing Calendar events can be viewed, edited and deleted by clicking on the event schedule entry.

  1. View: When the entry is clicked, this will display information on the event, such as Date and time of event, Location. Trainer assigned, Related Group, Units and Notes. 
  2. Edit - to edit an event, click the Edit button and this will display the Modify Event Modal. 
  3. Delete - to delete an event, click the delete button. This will display a confirmation message. 
  4. Close - close the information window without doing any action. 

Creating Event Schedules 


To create an event (e.g. Class Schedules) for your Program Instances, follow the steps below. 

Please make sure that a Group has already been created. 

  1. Navigate to Schedules > Schedule. 

  2. Select and click on a blank space on a date in the calendar for your scheduled event or class to start creating the event. 

  3. An Add New Event modal will display. Complete the fields to create your event. 
    1. Group - select the group who will be attending this event. 
    2. Title - Add a descriptive title to your calendar entry. This will display in both the internal and external Calendar. 
    3. Location - Select a location for this event. By default, this will follow the location set for your group but users are able to change if needed. 
      1. When a Location is selected and the location has rooms available, the Rooms dropdown field will also display where users can set the Training room. 
    4. Trainer - Select the assigned trainer for this event. The selection here will only populate the trainer names that were added for the Group. 
    5. Colour - Select your calendar entry color for quick categorisation and visualisation of your calendar events. 
    6. Custom Recurrence - Select the repeat frequency of your event. 
      1. No Repeat - default selection, event does not repeat
      2. Weekly - event will repeat on a weekly basis depending on the recurrence interval set.
      3. Monthly - Day - event will repeat on a monthly basis on the specified day of the week and the recurrence interval.
      4. Monthly - Date - event will repeat on a monthly basis on the specified date and the recurrence interval.

    7. Is Orientation - tick box if the event is an orientation
    8. Scheduled hours - enter the number of actual event hours, less the breaks. The Scheduled hours cannot be longer the duration of the Start and End time
    9. Show on External Calendar - tick box if you would like this event to also show on the External calendar. (Available only for SMS on Maximise Plan)  





Custom Recurrence selection

If the custom recurrence is set to No Repeat, the following fields needs to be updated:
  1. Start Date - Select the date event starts.
  2. Start Time - Select the time event starts.
  3. End date - Select the date the event ends.
  4. End time - Select the time the event ends. 

If the custom recurrence is set to anything other than No Repeat, the following sections needs to be completed: 

  1. For Weekly Recurrence: 
    1. Select the day of the week when schedule will repeat
    2. Recur Every - enter the number of weeks when each event will recur for the specified days of the week. e.g. If recur every 1 week is set, the schedule will be plotted every week during Mondays and Wednesdays.
    3. Start Date - select the date when recurrence will start. 
    4. Stop Repeat on Specific Date - select the date when the last recurrence will be created in the calendar. 
    5. Select the Start and End time for each of the days of your selected schedule
    6. Scheduled Hours - enter the number of hours of actual training time for the event. This excludes time for breaks. The Scheduled hours cannot be longer the duration of the Start and End time. 


            In this example, a calendar event will be created every week, every Monday and Wednesday starting from 7th of May and will continue to repeat until the last Wednesday before the 31st of December. 
  1. For Monthly - Day Recurrence
    1. Enter the ordinal day of the month
    2. Select which day of the month the event will repeat
    3. Set the number of interval for the monthly recurrence
    4. Start date - Enter the Start Date when recurrence will start. 
    5. Stop Repeat on Specific Date - select the date until when the last recurrence will be created in the calendar. 
    6. Select the Start and End time for each of the days of your selected schedule
    7. Scheduled Hours - enter the number of hours of actual training time for the event. This excludes time for breaks. The Scheduled hours cannot be longer the duration of the Start and End time.


      In this example, an event will be created every second Monday of the Month, from 3 June until the last 2nd Monday of before 31 December. 
  1. Monthly - Date:
    1. When Monthly - Date is selected, the following fields needs to be completed:
    2. Start Date - the Start date indicates the date every month when the event will repeat.
    3. Stop Repeat on Specific Date - select the date until when the event will recur and be plotted in the calendar.
    4. Select the Start and End time for each of the days of your selected schedule
    5. Scheduled Hours - enter the number of hours of actual training time for the event. This excludes time for breaks. The Scheduled hours cannot be longer the duration of the Start and End time. 




      In this example, an event will be created every 3rd of the Month, monthly from 3 June until the 3 December. 

Once your calendar schedule details is complete, you will add the units for this event in the Groups/Units Section. 

Note: Select the related Unit for this event/schedule. The schedule dates will become the start and end date of the unit as well. This is particularly important for plotting Intake schedules. 

The Groups/Unit sections allows you to select which Unit is each event related to. This could be actual class schedules for specific subjects (units). 



Click Add Event to add the plotted schedule in your Calendar. 

Repeat the steps above to create more class schedules or other related events. For units in an Intake Program Instance, schedules set for each unit/s will reflect as the start and end date of units. This will be reflected in the Units tab of Students Groups/Intake. 




Detecting Potential Scheduling Conflicts 


When an event is added or updated, your SMS comes with a feature that checks if the events created does not cause any potential conflicts with other schedule considerations. When a conflict or clash in the schedule is detected, your SMS will provide you with a Warning window which includes information on where the conflict occurs. 

Conflicts can be related to: 

  1. Rooms - the selected training room on the specified date and time conflicts with another schedule that uses the same room within the same date and time. 
  2. Trainer - the selected trainer on the specified date and time conflicts with another schedule where the trainer has another schedule within the same date and time. 

Users can IGNORE the conflicts by typing IGNORE in the text field. Otherwise, cancel the saving of the event and update the information to remove the conflicts. 



Editing an Existing Schedule


  1. To edit an existing schedule, click on the calendar entry then click Edit. 

  2. Users can edit the information for the event. Click Update to save. 

  3. A modal will appear for users to select if the updates or changes will only apply for this instance of the event, all instances in the future or all instances in this occurrence. Select which one to apply. 


The Schedules page of the SMS allows you to create and manage training events for your organisation. Schedules are a great way to effectively manage your different training activities across different programs, trainers and locations. Plotting your schedules in a Calendar makes it easy for your team to efficiently manage your events, elevating the student experience and the overall student journey. 

Events can also be used for setting up Automations in the SMS, using your unit start and end dates and event dates as the trigger. The Automation feature is available on the Maximise package. 

Congratulations for completing this tutorial! For any questions or further information on this article, you may contact our Support team at support@eskilled.com.au. Thank you! 

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