Accelerus Report Fields

When a template is created or refreshed in Accelerus, internally it has all of the data required to link it to the relevant database fields, eg student, cohort, subject, class and assessment item fields. In order to work on the templates and insert these fields into them, the Accelerus Word Add-in must be installed on the computer.

Once installed, Accelerus templates, with the exception of style templates, will display an Accelerus Fields pane, as seen here.

SRP AccelerusAddInIcon

The Accelerus Fields pane in a template generated from Accelerus contains all of the fields available for insertion in the particular template.

If the Accelerus Fields pane is not displayed, you may make it visible by selecting it from the Insert ribbon.

You may insert any of the fields into the template, in the positions you want substitution text to be printed. In this way, each printed student report includes the relevant student data and results, for the relevant subject.

NB	At the top of the Accelerus Fields pane, if your school uses the Accelerus Goals Management System, you will see additional tabs relating to Goals fields, as shown here.

SRP AccelerusFieldsGoalsTabs

The Accelerus Fields Result tab groups the different available fields by their entity type, eg Student fields, Year Level fields, Subject fields, etc. Within these, further subgroupings of fields may be found, as shown above, in the case of the Student entity, whereby Custom Properties are a subbranch of Student and, within this, Restricted Properties are grouped together.

Different types of entity fields are available in the different types of templates:

•	The first five branches of the Accelerus Fields pane – Student, School, Academic Cycle, Report run and Subject List – appear in every Accelerus template, including Layout and General templates. These are generic fields that apply across the board, at all schools.

•	Branches will appear for each of the cohort types that have been defined by your school, eg Year Level and Home Group. If cohort types have been defined, fields for these will appear in all types of Accelerus templates.

•	The remaining Subject, Class and Assessment Items groups of fields, shown here, are only available in Subject templates.

When looking within each tab of fields, you should note the structure and naming conventions of the fields. Each field is preceded by a code, eg St. in the case of student fields, AI for the assessment item fields, and so on.

Also, the field names found under the Cohort tab will be school-specific as each school creates their own cohorts, including naming them and assigning a code, via the School Settings window.

SRP AccelerusFieldsAssItemsInserted

At the top of the Results tab you will find:

•	A search field in which you can enter text to find fields containing the text. Only the fields that meet your search criteria will be displayed. As shown here, comment was entered in the search field and only the four fields under the Assessment Items branch were found and are displayed.

Remove the text to redisplay all fields.

•	Three sort buttons that allow the fields in the Accelerus Fields pane to be sorted within their branches. This is particularly useful for assessment items where there may be scores of them.

➢	System is the default sort mode. In the case of assessment items, this means in the order in which the assessment items appear in the Assessment Item tab of the subject for which the template was created.

➢	By code uses the unique field code to sort.

➢	By name lists the fields by their name, eg Student Code, Subject Level, etc.

SRP AccelerusFieldsSortSearch

A hierarchical coding system is used for the Accelerus fields, with each type of field beginning with a particular prefix, eg St.Family, Sb.Name, Cl.Code, Ct.YRLV.Code, etc.

The codes appear when you have inserted Accelerus fields into templates, as shown in the Visible Field Text column below.

SRP FieldCodeDifferences

However, these displayed codes are an abbreviated or more readable form of the underlying autotext field code. When you press Alt F9, the underlying autotext codes are displayed, as shown in the second column above. It is these that are used when Accelerus is processing the template and substituting data for the fields. Therefore, great care must be taken when setting up templates that the underlying field code is not accidently changed.

Pressing Alt F9 hides the underlying field codes.

You cannot simply change the visible code of an inserted field, eg from TASK1 to TASK2, as the underlying field will still be TASK1 and the wrong result will be inserted in the student’s report at print time. You should delete the field and reinsert the correct one.

Also, should part of a field code be deleted or modified inadvertently, you should delete the whole inserted field and re-insert it.

At the bottom of the Accelerus Fields pane is a Variations panel. This will vary according to whether the field belongs to an assessment item or student custom property, or to one of the other categories or subcategories of items.

Generally, when you click a field, a Value checkbox will appear. You may insert the value of the field by ticking its Value checkbox.

If the Value checkbox had been checked in the example shown here, the value of the Subject description found in the database will be inserted, whether this description exists or is blank. Instead, here, the Value branch has been expanded to reveal its variations, a series of fields that allow you to insert the value of the field if it is not blank, and to delete aspects of the template if it is blank.

SRP AccelerusFieldsVariations

In the case of assessment items, and student custom properties, the latter found under the Student branch, additional field variations are available.

SRP AccelerusFieldsAssItemsVariations

These allow different aspects of each assessment item and custom property, and the results and data therein, to be inserted into the templates. Some of the checkboxes are available for all types of such fields, whereas others only apply to assessment items and custom properties using particular marking schemes.

Different aspects of the one data field may be inserted at the same time by ticking the boxes of those required before inserting the field.

An example of each of the six fields as they appear in a template is shown here, where the assessment item coded T1EFF has been inserted.

SRP AssItemFieldVariations

Three description fields and three result fields are available for assessment items and custom properties:

Field

Usage

Description

eg T1EFF (desc)

This will insert the actual textual description of the item, eg If the item T1EFF has the description Effort, this is what will print on the report. This field is available for all assessment items and custom properties.

If an item has text in both its description and long description fields, the long description will be used. Otherwise, the shorter description will print.

Short description

eg T1EFF (short desc)

This field, if used, will always insert the description field, even if an assessment item has both a long and short description. This field is not available for custom properties.

Long description

eg T1EFF (long desc)

The Long description field is not a mandatory field for assessment items and is not available for custom properties.

Inserting this field will always insert the long description field, even if it is blank, which it often is. This may be useful where the long description is used for subheadings, eg strand names.

Entered value

eg T1EFF

This field is always available, no matter the type of marking scheme. However, in the case of date schemes, the Displayed format is the equivalent of the entered value.

It will print the result that was entered by the teacher, eg S or N in a Satisfactory/Not Satisfactory marking scheme, the comment text, etc.

Displayed value

eg T1EFF (disp)

This will insert whatever is found in the Displayed Value or Format of the marking scheme, eg Satisfactory when S is the entered result. It is not available for comment marking schemes.

Reported value

eg T1EFF (rpt)

When the Reported value field is inserted in a template and this field exists in the marking scheme, it is printed on the report. This is most commonly used for graphical marking schemes where a value is translated into a tick, for example.

Also, it allows dates to be printed in one of a wide range of formats, eg Monday 21 April 2014, that may be different to the format displayed within Accelerus.

The Reported Value field is not available for comment type assessment items.

As is the case with the other types of fields in the Accelerus Fields pane, for each type of assessment item and custom property field, a series of variations is available, allowing you to delete aspects of the template if the field inserted is blank.

Accelerus allows a school to define multiple roles for each class, subject or cohort group. For example, you may have two teachers teaching particular classes, or multiple teachers coordinating a cohort group such as a home room or year level. These roles are defined in the Accelerus Security window, accessed via the Tools menu.

Where there are multiple teachers in different roles, schools may want to insert the names of all teachers in the roles on student reports, not just the first one, especially in the case of the class teachers.

In order to facilitate this, an exhaustive list of options is available.

Under each Cohort, Subject and Class branch of the Accelerus Fields pane, in addition to the individual roles defined, eg Teacher1 and Teacher 2, an All Roles branch can be found.

As shown here, in the example of the Class entity, all of the different combinations of name fields are available, with codes beginning Cl.Roles.

SRP AccelerusAddInAllRoles

For each of these combinations, two options are available – comma separated and slash separated lists.

For example, the Cl.Roles.TPF.Comma field would print:

•	Mr Jack Smith if there was only one teacher of the class.

•	Mr Jack Smith and Ms Sue Davies if there were two teachers.

•	Mr Jack Smith, Ms Sue Davies and Mr Kyle Hsu if there were three.

The Slash version of each field separates multiple teacher names with a slash, eg Ms Brown / Mrs Zhou.

•	You may use these fields across the board in your templates, if you wish, instead of the individual fields for the teacher’s title, family name, etc.

•	Where there is only one teacher, these fields will only print the one teacher’s name and will exclude the comma and slash.

•	If there are two teachers, the comma fields will only put and between the two names, eg Mr Smith and Ms Brown.

•	If your teacher records do not have titles, the names will print without a title and there will not be extra space where the title should be.

•	It there are multiple roles and, in different classes, different roles are missing, no gaps will appear. For example, if four roles have been defined and roles one and four have teachers assigned, gaps will not appear for the missing teachers in roles two and three.

Other fields available in the Accelerus Fields pane, available for all types of templates, are:

•	A field to insert the name of the school, as found in the school’s Accelerus licence.

•	Fields for the name of the cycle for each of the academic cycle types defined.

•	Report Run fields that allow the insertion of the report run name, portion name and slot name to which the template belongs.

•	Subject List fields, as shown below, which allow you to print a count or list of the subjects in which the student is enrolled which form part of the portion or the report run.

SRP FieldSubjectList

At the bottom of the Accelerus Fields pane is the Variations pane. For each field that may be inserted into an Accelerus template, this pane displays the variations available for the field.

SRP AccelerusFieldsVariationsPane

For each field, you may:

•	Select its value field which will print the value of the field in the report, whether it is blank or not.

•	Choose from one of the four fields that contain special instructions if the inserted field is found to be blank or missing when the report template is being printed.

These options should allow you to decrease the number of templates, especially where subjects have a common format but each subject may have more or fewer of certain types of items, eg some subjects have two assessment tasks, some three, others four and so on.

If you do not use one of the Delete options, a blank will appear in the report if the field is blank, and an autotext error if the field does not exist, eg if a subject does not have a particular assessment item. The alternatives are set out in the table below:

Delete field	Usage
Delete the blank field from the template before it is printed	You may have a custom property that is used when the student is on a modified program. You could use the Delete field option to print the displayed or reported value of Modified on the report, but exclude it where the student is not on such a program.
Delete the paragraph in which the field is found	As an example, you may want to print the words Parent Interview requested by teacher Mary Smith on a report, but only if the teacher has entered Y in an assessment item. The text could be typed onto the report and include the fields for the name of the teacher, all as part of one paragraph. The whole paragraph would be removed when the report is printed if the teacher did not enter Y.
Delete the table row in which the field has been inserted	The table shown below has four rows which use this option. The rows for WH2 through to WH5 will only appear in the printed report if the description for the assessment item is not blank. Given that the assessment description field is mandatory, the only time these rows would not print is when the items do not exist in the subject.
Delete a table totally if a particular field within it is blank	The example above also shows the use of this field, whereby, if the first work habit, WH1, is missing from the subject, the whole Work habit table is deleted. Another example, could be where you have a template with three separate tables, for each strand of Mathematics. If a teacher does not assess a particular strand, the whole table could be removed, leaving the other two tables. Potentially, this means that the number of templates may be reduced to just one or two, rather than a separate one for each subject.

•	Use the description field rather than a result field to remove assessment items that are blank, where possible. Otherwise, legitimate assessment items, where a teacher has not yet entered results or missed a result, will be removed from the template prior to it being printed.

•	When reports are printed, Accelerus does a pre pass and removes fields from the templates where a field is missing or the value is blank. Therefore, the results for these fields will not be picked up by the Blank Result listing process as blanks.