The Self-Service Close School Year Procedure

Overview

After the end of the school year, you need to close the current year in Veracross. This can be done no earlier than one day after the final day of the year in your academic calendar; the most common month to run the procedure is July. You can read more about general considerations and results of closing the year.

What's New?

New for the close of the 2019-20 school year are: 

• There is a detail screen in Axiom that provides a checklist of everything to validate. This consolidates in Axiom — complete with links to the data — information you previously had to find yourself in documentation. 
• The truly new feature is that you can run the actual Close School Year procedure; you no longer need to submit a ticket in our support portal.

The Main Steps: Validate, Close, Confirm

To close the school year, navigate to the Close School Year link on the System homepage. There are three main steps to take, indicated in the tabs on the left of the detail screen:

1. Validate your data. Using the validation checklist, work through all the checklist items and mark them complete when done.
2. Close school year. Run the Verify Close School Year and then — assuming the verify step "passes" — run the actual Close School Year procedure via the Action menu. This is the fundamentally new step. Previously, you submitted a ticket in our support portal and an engineer ran a series of scripts.
3. Confirm your data. Using the confirmation checklist, work through all the items and mark them complete when done.

Validate Your Data

Work your way through the validation checklist. The steps with that have a "Details" link go to the additional tabs under "1: VALIDATION." 

The validation checklist

1. The steps are all laid out in the tabs. 
2. The school year being closed.
3. These fields confirm that the current year is valid — meaning that the Current School Year system parameter matched the year being closed — and that the year has ended. You cannot close the year until after the last day of the ALL grading period. If you see anything wrong with the "Closing School Year" or "Current Year Valid?" fields, contact Veracross. 
4. The system tracks your progress through the validation checklist items. The numbers refresh when you click Update or otherwise refresh the page. You need to manually mark each step "Complete" in order to close the school year.
5. Find relevant links to documentation. 
6. If there are links that are helpful to complete the step, click View...  Note that the links takes you to the appropriate tab on the left. 
7. Manually mark each step "Complete" as you go on the Validation Checklist tab. The date and person are automatically entered. All steps must be marked "Complete" before you can close the year.

Close the School Year

When you have marked everything in the validation checklist complete, you are ready to run the "Close School Year" procedure. To do this:

1. Navigate to the Close School Year tab.

The Close School Year tab

1. The year you are closing is displayed. After you run the procedure, the new school year will be populated.
2. The "Ready to Run?" field will be checked if you have completed all of the validation steps. If it is not, check the Validation tab for incomplete steps. The first time you ever use this self-service process, the two "Last Executed" will be blank, but will be populated after you run the "Close School Year" procedure the first time.  The "In Progress" field will be checked while the procedure is running.
3. After you run the procedure, the specific tasks are displayed in the "Results" section.

2. Run the Verify and Close School Year Procedures

First, run the "Verify School Year" Action Menu item. That checks your work and verifies everything that is required to close the year. 

• If it does not pass, there will be an error message you can use to troubleshoot what you need to fix or update.
• If it does pass, you are ready to close the year!

Second, run the "Close School Year" action menu item. 

Run these two Action Menu items — in order — to close your school year.

• You can close the Action Menu dialog box and let the procedure run in the background. 
• The procedure may take as few as ten minutes or as long as several hours to run. The size of your database and other factors affect the time, but you and all of your users can continue using Veracross while it is running. 
• When the procedure is complete, whoever executed the procedure will get an email that confirms the procedure succeeded or failed. 
• After the procedure has finished (i.e., after the confirmation email is received), log out and back to see the new school year option in year drop downs.

What To Do If the Procedure Fails

If you get a confirmation email saying that the "Close School Year" procedure failed:

1. Click the link in the email or navigate in Axiom back to the Close School Year detail screen.  
2. Click on the "Close School Year" tab and review the itemized list of results.
3. You can see which step(s) failed. Resolve the issues and/or reach out to your account manager for assistance.
4. When the issues are resolved, run the "Close School Year" Action menu item again. 

Confirm Your Data

When the "Close School Year" procedure is has successfully completed, you are ready to review and confirm the updated data. Using the confirmation checklist in the same way you used the validation checklist, work through all the items and mark them complete when done.

An example of a confirmation checklist. 

1. The new school year is updated once the procedure has completed. It should reflect the new year. 
2. The new school year, having been just updated, should match the Current School Year system parameter. Contact Veracross if either of the year fields are incorrect.
3. Your checklist progress is indicated in the header. You need to complete all of the confirmation steps for the year to be confirmed.
4. Mark each step complete as you go. Click "View" to navigate to the relevant queries and "Open" to discover relevant documentation.

FAQ

1. What are some considerations I should take into account before running the procedure?

   Many issues are laid out in the checklist notes, but you should also review our documentation on closing the school year for a number of considerations to take into account.

2. Can I continue using the system while the "Close School Year" Action menu item is running?

   Yes. It should not adversely impact system performance, so you can run the procedure when it is convenient for you and your team.

3. How do I know that the procedure is finished?

   Whoever runs the "Close School Year" procedure will get an email confirming success or failure.

4. I'm a SysAdmin and I can't seem to run the Close School Year procedure. What's up?

   You need to assign yourself the "Close School Year Admin" security role. 

5. Do I have to complete all of the confirmation checklist items for the year to be considered "closed"?

   No. Once the "Close School Year" procedure has completed, the year has been closed. The confirmation checklist items are not mandatory in the same way that the validation checklist steps are, but we strongly recommend completing all of them. 

6. Okay, we closed the year and completed all of the confirmation checklist items. What's next?

   After you have fully completed the steps to close the previous year, it's time to consider when you should start the next one in Veracross. Some schools run the "Start School Year" procedure right away, and some wait. Read more about the Start School Year procedure.