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Overview
The following points outline the benefits of managing calendars in Veracross.
1. All Supporting Data is already in Veracross
School-Level, Campus, Room(s), Resources, Contact Person, and Groups all combine to provide rich event functionality that is unavailable when events consist of only a date and a description.
2. Provide Faculty, Students, and Parents a Single, Comprehensive Calendar that Contains all Relevant Information
Faculty, Students, and Parents who use the Veracross Portals are already using the VC calendars to view assignments, behavior, attendance, homework, and more. Why make them go to a separate calendar for school events, fundraisers, meetings, etc.?
3. Enhanced Communication
When people are associated with an event, communication via email, text-message (SMS), or mail-merge is easy and straightforward. For events that involve RSVPs and/or attendance, people can be targeted based on their status (invited, confirmed, declined, attended, etc.). Parents who use the VC Parent Portal already use the VC Household Calendar and will thus be more likely to see school events, fundraisers, meetings, etc.
4. Integration with Student Attendance
When a student is involved with an event during normal school hours, his/her attendance will automatically be updated, whether he/she is off-campus on a field-trip or dismissed early for an athletic event. Attendance is more accurate and requires far less data-entry on the part of teachers/administrators. In addition, teachers/administrators can see student attendance exceptions in the future which can help with exam scheduling, etc.
5. Where is Student Now?
In addition to integrating with student attendance, any events that involve students will integrate with the “Where-is-Student-Now?” feature. When school events are entered in Veracross, VC knows where the student is at all times, whether on the bus destined for an event, at the event itself, or on the bus back to school.
6. Create Custom Calendars
The following fields are available for filtering the school calendar:
- School Level
- Team (for athletic calendars)
- Event Type
- Event Date
- Location
- Visibility
This enables you to create your own calendars simply by saving a query in Axiom. Additional event-types can be added as needed to support calendars for the Board, PTA, etc.
7. Resource/Room Scheduling, Conflict Management
Ensure that resources such as rooms, fields, etc are not double-booked. By associating one or more resources with an event, these resources are “reserved” and scheduling/approval can be managed using the Veracross Resource Scheduler. Resource/Room schedules will display events alongside “normally” scheduled classes.
8. iCal
Use the various Veracross iCal feeds to access VC calendars in Google Calendar, Mac iCal, Outlook, or any other application that supports the iCal protocol. In addition, VC calendar data is available via the open XML api.
9. Development Reporting
For schools that use the Veracross Development module, donations and pledges can be associated with events. Goals can be set and performance measured on a per event basis.
10. Maps & Directions
Veracross provides integration with Google Maps, so maps and directions (from the school or the user’s house) are one click away.