The Activities section is where you create and manage the programs you provide to improve the lives of students experiencing homelessness. This article focuses on creating Scheduled Activities.
Scheduled Activities are scheduled for specific dates and times. Participants can sign up ahead of time and be expected to attend, or the activity can be an activity without pre-event signups. Activities such as Family Picnics or Professional Development are examples of scheduled activities; they are activities that program staff plan on offering at a certain date, time, and place and plan to record who participates.
Determining which site to set up an activity is very important for reporting purposes.
Set up the activity at the Admin site if any of these apply:
The activity is offered centrally. (Counseling is offered centrally at one location.)
Participants are offered the activity at all sites. (Counseling is offered at all school sites.)
It is not important that participation in the activity is associated with a certain school site. (It is only important to know how many students received counseling, not by school site.)
If the activity is related to administrative-type efforts, and participants are not students. (Coordinating Services with other Agencies or Professional Development.)
Set up the activity at a specific site if any of the following apply:
The activity will be specifically offered at one site or some school sites and not at all school sites (e.g., Counseling is only offered at the junior high and high school sites, not at the elementary school sites.)
It is important that the activity is recorded as having occurred at a specific site. (It is important to know how many hours of counseling were offered at each school site.)
Enter the name of the activity. This field is required, as indicated by the red asterisk. If the activity name you enter is the same as an existing activity name, the system will prompt you in order to avoid duplicates.
You can also enter a description of the activity if desired.
Custom fields may appear on this form. If they are required, as indicated by a red asterisk, you will need to fill them out.
Click Next Step.
Step 2 - Session Information
Next, you will establish one or more sessions for the new activity.
Enter a Session Name. If you plan to create more than one session, be sure to give each session a unique name.
You will have the opportunity to create additional sessions (if needed) at the end of the Session Information form.
Complete the other fields as appropriate for your program, including Session description, Session location, and Funder(s).
Schedule Type
Next, to make this a Scheduled Activity, select Scheduled from the Schedule type dropdown.
Next, choose the appropriate Frequency: One-time event or Recurring event.
A One-time event is only offered once. A Recurring event happens more than once but does not have to follow a certain pattern (e.g., every Monday).
For One-Time Events
For one-time events, click the date the activity will be offered on the calendar. The selected date will automatically turn blue. Alternatively, you can type the date into the date field.
Some dates on the calendar may not be selectable. This indicates that the site is closed, based on the Site Calendar, and/or the dates are outside the Reporting Term Date Range.
For Recurring Events
First, select the Start and End dates for the range of dates when the recurring event will happen. These dates will default to the Reporting Term Date Range but can be changed as needed.
There are two options for setting the Session dates. You may use a combination of both options.
Option 1
This option is beneficial if your event regularly occurs only on specific days of the week. If the event occurs on varying days of the week, Option 2 may be more helpful.
From the Scheduled Dates dropdown, select the days of the week this session will occur. All dates for that day of the week between the start and end date of the Reporting Term Date Range you entered will be automatically highlighted in blue on the calendar.
Option 2
Click on every date the activity will be offered on the calendar. The selected dates will automatically turn blue.
Some dates on the calendar may not be selectable. This indicates that the site is closed, based on the Site Calendar, and/or the dates are outside the Date Range.
You may notice yellow and blue circles underneath the calendar tool. The yellow number indicates the number of dates in the calendar on which the session cannot be offered because the site is closed. The Site Calendar settings determine these closed dates. The blue number indicates the number of dates that have been selected, indicating when the session will be offered. To learn more about the Site Calendar, please see this article.
• For Recurring and One-Time Events
Set this Session's Start Time and End Time by typing in the time or using the time selector. Click an up or down arrow to select and then fine-tune the time.
The End Time can never be earlier than the Start Time. An End Time that is earlier than the Start Time will be set one minute later than the Start Time.
Default Participation Time
When recording group participation for this activity, the system automatically stores each participant's start and end times.
Two options regarding the times that will be recorded for participants are available:
The Current Time option is best when entering participation in real-time at an event, and each participant's exact start and end times are needed.
The Session Start/End Times option is best if you want the participant's start and end times by default to match those of the Session. These times can be modified for each participant.
Choose the appropriate option for this activity.
Who can participate?
Next, indicate who can participate in this activity.
Typical activities are only for participants from one site. If this is the case for this activity, in the Who can participate? dropdown, choose Only participants from this site.
If the activity being created is for participants from multiple sites (for example, a summer program where students from multiple sites attend this activity), select the Participants from any sites option.
Enrolling Participants
Do you want to sign people up for this activity ahead of time so you know who is coming and can have adequate supplies/materials? Or can participants just attend without being pre-enrolled?
If you do not want to sign people up ahead of time, you can skip the process of checking names; this will make this a "drop-in" type of activity, where the activity is at a defined place and time, but it is not known ahead of time which participants will attend.
If you want to sign up people ahead of time, a list of all current participants at this site will appear. Using the checkboxes to the left of each name, select which participants are expected to attend this session of the activity. You can do this by scrolling down through the list or using the search field to find desired names quickly.
Note: if "Participants from any sites" was selected in the Who can participate? dropdown option above, the participant list will not appear.
Review the session information and the enrolled participant list to ensure accuracy.
If necessary, click Previous Step to edit the Activity Information.
If this is the only session for this Activity, click Next Step. If other sessions are needed, click +Schedule Another Session and repeat the steps above.
Note that an activity can only have Scheduled or Unscheduled sessions. One activity cannot have both Scheduled and Unscheduled sessions.
Step 3 - Review and Save
Review the Activity and Session(s) you have created. If necessary, click Previous Step to edit the information. If everything looks accurate, click Save Activity.
After you save the activity, a green notification will confirm that it was saved. You will then be redirected back to the main Activities page, where your newly created Scheduled Activity will appear in the list.
