From: Steve Simon [ssimon@prettydarngood.com]

Sent: Thursday, June 07, 2007 11:41 PM

To: 'gotthilft@optonline.net'; John McKeon (mckeon@nvnet.org); 'Stephanie DeBruyne'; 'Gallagher, Carolyn'

Cc: 'Wai-Nang Po'

Subject: IEP Bergen County -- Directors' meeting - Part I, the User Group Suggestions

Here are the notes from today’s meeting, regarding User Group Suggestions.

I highlighted the user suggestions that were approved today and noted the billable hours. For the benefit of users who weren’t at this meeting, unapproved suggestions didn’t mean they were bad, it just meant that there is a limited amount of funding and quite a few demands against the budget; such as the SMART ID changes, the State mandated changes to the document, the set-aside for the yearly support of users, the testing for VISTA and Office 2007, and these suggestions below.

o In order to prevent typing over the student’s last name in the first student data screen, the cursor should not be in an editable field on the screen. Perhaps it should be positioned in the Search box    (0 hour)

o Everybody should be able to access the ad hoc reports, instead of just the user who created them. Suggest placing the location of the report folder defined in the main configuration file, so they can be changed by a knowledgeable user or I/T tech – similar to the location of the IEP docs.    (5 hours)

o Ad Hoc reports should be editable. Once they are created, if you want to add a column or change a filter, you should be able to do so.   (20 hours)

o The Ad Hoc “Choose fields” are divided up by student data entry screen title. It is confusing to the user. They prefer to see all the fields in alpha order, searchable by incremental key press. Suggest adding another label in the “Choose Fields by Screen” dropdown. It should say “All Screens” and should display all fields.    (3 hours)

o It was said that an Ad Hoc report for students between grades 9-12 doesn’t return data. The computer reads the numbers differently than we do. It thinks “12” is prior to “9”. That is because these are really letters, not number to the computer. Here is a proposed solution:    (Actually, I believe Po already indexes all the grades with a separate numeric column; otherwise the maintenance utility that moves the kids to the next grade wouldn’t work); so he should be able to program the filter on Grade to look at the numeric index.     (4 hours)

o The “District” field on the “School/ADR” screen should be relabeled “District of Placement”. That is also what the label should say in the Ad Hoc list (instead of School District).    (0 hour)

o In Ad Hoc filters, the “Contains” operator should be available for any character-based field. For instance the user should be able to set a filter on “Placement CONTAINS THE WORD ‘NonPublic’”. Otherwise they need to set a dozen or more “OR” filters.      (5 hours)

o Next meeting of the Directors (June 7) they will determine what changes the State mandated and we can also make the change to add Science to HSPA  and take out Speaking. These will all be specified clearly next meeting. (To be determined)

In the Bio screen, once you click the parent option (Natural, Guardian, Surrogate), you can’t clear all the option choices. The users want to clear them. Perhaps if they delete the parent name, it should nullify all the options?   (3 hours).

o Add the student’s name (First and Last) to the page footer of the iep doc, after the student ID. Just the IEP docs, not the speech or other iep’s.    (1 hour)

o Export the Goals and Objectives report to a Word document, so that users can copy and paste from it and send it here and there.    (3 hours)

o In the future, when there are template changes, write some code to allow the user to copy the old template with a different file name. Use a common dialog window to allow them to do this. Some won’t care if the IEP.dot is overwritten, but others will. They will need to cut and paste their custom text from the prior template to the new one.       (0 hours)BUT WE DON’T NEED TO AUTOMATE THIS. We will just warn users when they do the update, “SAVE YOUR PRIOR TEMPLATES, THAT HAVE BEEN CHANGED”.

o The Labels report ignores the checkbox to disallow duplicates. Also the filter condition window is hidden by the main screen. That’s our problem to fix.    (0 hour)This works, IF YOU SPELL THE PARENTS’ NAME, ADDRESS, CITY, STATE, AND ZIP – EXACTLY ALIKE IN BOTH CASES. We will put a tool tip on the Duplicate checkbox to warn the users to spell these fields alike, if they parents belong to more than one student.

o If the user adds a Teacher to the code table, she does NOT have to exit the program to see that new teacher in her dropdown list. That was fixed. Opening the Maintenance/Code Table screen will shut the Student Data screen. So once you add the new teacher or guidance counselor, that new entry will appear when you re-open the student data screen.   (0 hour.  This was already fixed in the 5/29/07 patch on our website.

· PDG suggestions:

o Develop a website just for IEP Writer 2001, instead of being part of PDG’s website. It doesn’t have to be expensive.

o Add features to the website to allow list mailings to the subscribers; a bulletin board to post questions (PDG will monitor the BB); a calendar of events, such as user group meetings, etc.  (0 hours). Steve S. will create this without charge.

· Items from Eileen Thomas that were left out in the original notes on the Users’ Group meeting:

· Ad hoc reports – when choosing a field to put on the report, can we have the ability to double click on it rather that having to click on it once  and then click on add to field. 1 hour

· When info is changed on the bio screen (just the info on the left side of the screen) can the system give you a warning msg – “are you sure you want to change this info”. This would be helpful when having multiple users, just in case someone is changing the wrong person’s data.

· Re: your notes – ad hoc reporting for grades 9-12 and how the system reads alpha vs. numerical.  Please remember that PreK and K have to be read before grade 1.  Currently it is reading it after grade 12. (0 hours).

· Re: your notes on adding the first and last name to the IEP Docs document – I think it should also be added to the Speech IEP and the eligibility document too (0 hours).  The student’s name is already in the footer of the Eligibility docs. We will put it in the footer of the regular and Speech IEP.

· Something new I didn’t bring up at the meeting – on the bio screen, when you add a new student, the gender automatically defaults to male.  I’m suggesting to leave it blank, this way if for some reason you forget to change it, a female would not automatically be shown as a male.  So when you do reporting that requires gender, if you forgot to choose gender when you added the student, it would show up as blank and “force” you to choose gender.  If this doesn’t make sense, call me and I can try to explain better. Can’t change this because many reports require a gender to be chosen or the report fails. Even if the gender is wrong, the rest of the information works.

The suggestions approved total 22 hours of programming time.

Regards,

Steve Simon

201-951-6488 (cell)

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