EduTech’s PowerSchool Success Blog

Quarter 1 is coming to an end and soon many of you will be printing report cards! I would highly recommend printing them prior to needing them to make sure they look correct! There is an issue with the report name containing consecutive dashes. We have had several help desk tickets coming in with the following error.

Alert: Error encountered while accessing database

Report Not Queued: The report was not found
I searched on PowerSource and found the following information.

Reports With Two Consecutive Dashes in Title Return “Error encountered while accessing database”
Issue:

Two consecutive dashes in the name of any user defined report (Object report, Report Card, Mailing Label or Form Letter) causes the report to fail and the following alert to display in the browser:

Workaround:

Remove the two consecutive dashes.
To change the name click on reports, setup, object reports, the report name and choose edit main report paramaters!

A question that came up this week that seemed interesting enough to write about is transcripts and other reports coming up without grades for this or that…

The common result is that the report settings were for terms other than the first reporting term. (Y1, or S1 instead of Q1) Depending on the way the class is setup or the grade book even, you might miss some grades on that report if your reporting term is set for a term with a hole in it. S1 for instance at this point is still missing Q2.

Just something to keep in mind. Go look at the setup for the report you are trying to run and see what you are actually grabbing.

josh

With the rush of a new school year, we often quickly enroll students into classes without verifying their entry date into school, which often leads to Overlapping enrollments. These often don’t catch up to us until the end of year workshop when we run an audit report to verify our dates.  Well… I think there’s no better time to run the report than once your fall rush has settled down and you have a little time to peek at the report.

How do you run the report?

From the start page, select reports
Scroll down the screen to Membership and Enrollment
Click on Section Enrollment Audit

Did you have any students show up on the report?  If the results said no students match the selection, give yourself a pat on the back!! If a student or two show up - you simply need to verify the entry date into school on the “Transfer Info” screen with the entry dates into classes on the all enrollments screen.   The entry date into classes on the all enrollments screen can NOT be prior to the first entry date of school.  How do you fix them… Click on the edit link of each enrollment and modify the entry date into class, or set the entry date on the transfer info screen to match the students entry dates into their classes.

Mid terms are going to be printed soon and report cards time is coming fast as well. I learned a very useful tip while I was at PSU in San Franscisco this past summer!
I have found this tip to be VERY useful especially when I have been designing object reports but it also works when running other reports. Once you run a report, the report shows in your report que. If you have something in your report que, you will have a piece of paper located next to your log out button. Many times you need to make changes to the report after you view it. I first like to work on reports using 2 windows. To do this, you can right click on the PowerSchool logo and choose open link in new window. This allows to you edit your report in one window and use the other window to run the report. I finally learned that you no longer need to select a student every time you re run the report. After you have run the report you are working on once, you can edit it and then instead of going back to the home page and choosing a student to run it for, you can click on your report que, the job name, and click the box that says run job again! This has saved me a ton of time and it is one of those things that had been there that I had never known about. I guess there is always something new to learn in PowerSchool!