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School Sessions

School sessions are used to segment data from different school years. The following is contained in a school session:

  • Students and Parents
  • Orders
  • Campaigns
  • Registration Flow
  • Volunteer Positions
  • Volunteers
  • Directory Invitations
  • Memberships
  • Translations
  • Attachments
  • Languages
  • Grades

The following is shared between all sessions:

  • Administrative Users
  • Funds
  • Stripe Connections

Managing School Sessions

To manage school session in the Admin, navigate to Settings > School Sessions.

Accessing School Sessions

Each site can have multiple school sessions. Most use one school session per year, but there is no reason they couldn't be used each semester or quarter. Each school session will have their own:

  • Registration
  • Store
  • Parent Profile
  • Admin View

In the Admin, the school session is changed with the School Session Selector in the upper right corner. When changing school sessions, notice the school_session_id parameter being appended to the URL. This parameter is required to uniquely identify the school session.

One school session is designated as the default session (only one can be specified at a time). This school session does not require special the school_session_id parameter to access. The default school session is the school session parents will use when you are live. When a school session is made the default school session, the following occurs:

  • Test mode is turned off
  • The previous default school session is no longer the default school session
  • The current school session is set to the default school session

To set the default session:

  • In the Admin, navigate to Settings > School Sessions
  • Click the View button next to the school session
  • Click the Make Default button

Starting a New School Year

For existing accounts, the best way to start a new school session is to copy and existing school session. This article shows how to accomplish this task.

  1. In the Admin, navigate to Settings > School Sessions.
  2. Click on the Duplicate button next to the current school session.

This will create a copy of the school session with the following items:

  • Registration Pages and Sections
  • Campaigns
  • Volunteer Positions
  • Funds
  • Grades
  • Custom Forms
  • Directory, Store, and Registration settings
  • Translations
  • Admin users and access control

The following information is not copied to the new school session:

  • Students and Parents
  • Orders
  • Members
  • Volunteers
  • Directory Entries

The new school session will not be the default school session and parents will not have access to it.

Enabling Test Mode

Test mode will allow orders to be placed with special credit card numbers to test the registration and checkout flow. To enable test mode:

  • In the Admin, navigate to Settings > School Sessions
  • Click the View button next to the school session
  • Click the Edit button
  • Check Enable Test Mode and press the Update School Session button

Closing the School Session

When the school year comes to a close, admins can disable access to the school session by:

  • In the Admin, navigate to Settings > School Sessions
  • Click the View button next to the school session
  • Click the Edit button
  • Check Make this school session publicly available and press the Update School Session button

When this is checked the school session will no longer be available and users will receive an error message when trying to access the site. The school session will be available in the admin for reporting purposes.