Power PTC – Conference Scheduling – Resources

This information should NOT be modified while Parent-Teacher conferences are active!

If you add a new resource after building the master schedule, you will need to rebuild the schedule for the resource to be included!

Resources Overview

Resources in Power PTC define a teacher in a specific location during Parent-Teacher conferences. A Resource consists of room information, teacher information, and a building identifier. You will need to create a resource for every teacher that would like parent to be able to schedule appointments with. Resources in Power PTC are also responsible for managing teachers breaks. A break is simple an appointment slot that is reserved for the teacher and parents are not able to schedule into. Breaks can be used for lunch or dinner breaks for teachers, or simple as padding to allow teachers to catch up in the event that an appointment has run long. Another important element of Resources it that they are used to optimize a parent’s schedule. There are two properties of resources that are used to give parents the best schedule possible, and those are Floor and sector.

Floor

The Floor property is used to ensure that parent’s travel the minimum distance between their appointments. The floor value should be a number that identities the floor on which the appointment is on. What the Power PTC schedule attempts to do while scheduling a parent for a conference is try to make sure that two consecutive appointments are on the same floor, if possible.

Sector

The Sector property is very similar to the floor property, in that is attempts to minimize a parent’s travel between appointments. In Power PTC, a sector is a subdivision of a floor and the Power PTC scheduler will attempt to keep the parent in the same sector and floor for consecutive appoints, if possible. This setting helps in buildings that have very large floors keep parents travel to a minimum.

Adding New Resources

To add a new resource to your Parent-Teacher conference schedule perform the following steps:

  1. Log into the Power PTC web interface using an administrative account.
  2. Click on the PTC Config icon.
  3. Click on the Resources menu item.
  4. Click on the Add Resource menu item.
  5. In the add new resource dialog, enter a Room Number and Room Description. These are fields that will be visible to parents, so it recommended to been the room number short, like 341A, We also recommend making the description thorough enough to aid them in locating rooms that may be hard to find, like Room 127 (next to cafeteria)
  6. Enter a Floor, a number indicating which floor the room is on.
  7. Enter a Sector, a number that logically sub-divides a floor.
  8. Enter a Teacher Name, this is name that will be presented to the parent during scheduling, and will also be printed on their schedule.
  9. Enter a Teacher Number, this number must match the teacher number associated with the student schedule.
  10. Finally enter a Building, this number must match the building number associated with the student schedule. Click on Add Resource to add the resource

Managing Breaks

Resource breaks are only available after a resource has been created, so you will not see breaks listed when you are creating a new resource. They are only available when you edit an existing resource. Breaks in the resource section are only valid before the master schedule is built, they are merely break requests. After the master schedule is built, if you would like to add or remove breaks from the live schedule, you can not do that from this section. To modify breaks for a resource perform the following:

  1. Log into the Power PTC web interface using an administrative account.
  2. Click on the PTC Config icon.
  3. Click on the Resources menu item.
  4. Locate the resource you would like to modify and click on the Edit button associated with that resource item.
  5. In the resulting dialog, below the Update Resource button you will now see a table with a column titled Break and another titled Date/Time. To add a break to a teacher’s schedule, simply place a check in the box in the Break column.
  6. When you have completed adding breaks for a resource, click the Update Resource button to save you changes.