Staff: Initial Course Planner Configuration and Setup Guidance

The first step in configuring Course Planner is to set up the basic configuration settings. These settings are district-level and establish the basic behavior of Course Planner for all schools in your district.

Configuration Settings Page

Click Admin in the side navigation bar, then select Course Planner Configuration.
From the Setup Guide page, click Configuration Settings.
The Course Plan Configuration Settings page contains several settings that control how Course Planner behaves. You will need to set each option based on your district’s needs, and click Save at the top to apply your changes.

‼️ Important Note

These settings can be updated at any time! Please remember to revisit these before launching with students to ensure all are set up based on the conversations had throughout the configuration.

Configuration Options

Expand each section below to learn about each setting.

Enabled Course Plans

These options determine if Course Planner is available for high school and/or middle school, and which grades will be using Course Planner.

Enable high school planning: Enables High School planning
- Select grade range for students who will be using high school course planning (typically grades 8th-11th)
  *Note: 12th graders cannot plan, but can still review their historical and current courses in their course plans.
- Select the default graduation plan (optional)
Enable middle school planning: Enables Middle School planning
- Select grade range for students who will be using middle school course planning (typically grades 6th-7th)
- Select the default graduation plan (optional)
  *Note: This configuration can be set after graduation plans are created.

Academic Terms

This section configures the number of academic terms or semesters that your district has each year.

Set the number of terms: 2 semesters, 3 trimesters, or 4 quarters.
*Note: You can also preemptively set the number to allow students to plan for summer courses, for example, 2 semesters, plus 2 summer school sessions would be 4 total terms.
Set the name and abbreviation for each term: These names will be how you reference each academic term. For example, "Fall" with "F" as an abbreviation and "Spring" with "S" as an abbreviation.

Course Planning Deadline

Set the date when all course requests will be exported, and current plans will be archived. This final deadline is often referred to as the "SIS transmission date". *Note: Plans cannot be edited after this date until next year's course plans open.

☝️Reminder

Set up student submission and counselor approval deadlines in Scope & Sequence Configuration. Learn more here 👉 Scope & Sequence Overview and Configuration

General Configuration

Select "Yes" if you want students to be able to exceed the yearly maximum credit limit defined in the grad plan.
*Note: If No is selected, students will see an error noting that they have exceeded the yearly credit limit on their Course Planner summary page when they submit their plans.
Determine if high school credits awarded in middle school should fulfill requirements, or should be used to indicate if students can take certain courses in high school. For example, if a student has taken Algebra 1 in 8th grade, and they still need to take four years of High School math to graduate, you would select "Placement Only”.
If this setting is enabled, counselors will be able to view and edit incoming students' course plans. For example, high school counselors can view and edit 8th-grade plans, and middle school counselors can view and edit 5th-grade plans.
If this setting is enabled, courses are eligible to be taken as an elective while also satisfying another graduation requirement. Elective-eligible courses will be displayed, along with any other requirements they satisfy. If this setting is disabled, courses will not be displayed as electives if they already satisfy another requirement.

Alternate Courses

Alternate courses optionally allow students to indicate which courses they would like to take if one of their planned courses is not available.

If this setting is enabled, students can select alternate courses, which can be helpful when scheduling. For example, if your students request a course that is full or if the course doesn't get enough interest to offer it, you can have a list of alternate courses ready to fill in the empty period in their plan.
*Note: Other fields will not be displayed if this setting is disabled.
Add instructions for students if alternate courses are enabled.
Determine how the requirements will be measured for alternate courses, the number of courses, or a specific number of credits.
Depending on your selection for number 3, enter how many credits or courses will be required.
When alternate courses are enabled, you can select which grade levels can select alternate courses. For example, if you prioritize scheduling for seniors and don’t need them to have alternates, you can uncheck the box for 11th grade.
Check this box to suggest courses mapped to career clusters in the course planner. For example, courses mapped to the student's career cluster will be shown at the top of the course picker in the course planner

Plan Changes

These options determine if students or staff can make changes to their planned school or graduation plans.

If this setting is enabled, admin/counselors can manually select and update the planned school for their students. If this setting is disabled, the planned school can only be set via data upload.
If this setting is enabled, students can change their planned school. If this setting is disabled, students cannot change their planned school.
*Note: Typically, the school students will be attending is specified by the data we receive from your SIS, and students cannot change their planned school.
If this setting is enabled, admin/counselors can manually select and update the graduation plan for their students. If this setting is disabled, the graduation plan will automatically be set to the default, or it can be updated via data upload.
If this setting is enabled, students can change their graduation plan. If this setting is disabled, students cannot change their graduation plan.
*Note: Typically, the graduation plan students will be planning for is specified by data we receive from your SIS, and students cannot change their graduation plan.

Course Display

The course display settings control what information is shown on courses within Course Planner.

If this setting is enabled, credits and expected credits are displayed in students' course plans with a denominator. For example, 0.5/1 credits, instead of 0.5 credits.
If this setting is enabled, academic term abbreviations set up in the Academic Terms section are shown on courses.
If this setting is enabled, grades earned on taken courses will be displayed on students' course plans.
*Note: By default, these grades are not displayed on course plans to keep course planning positive. However, in some cases, it may be desired to show the earned grades.
If the setting above to display grades is enabled, this setting allows you to determine who can see the grades: guardians, counselors, or students.

Course Request Exporting

This allows you to view what data SchooLinks will export at the end of the planning season.

*Note: If you need to change these settings, contact your Customer Success Manager.

Course request export schema: Identifies the format that will be used for exporting courses to your SIS.
Student identifier type: Identifies which student identifier will be passed in the course request export
School identifier type: Identifies which school identifier will be passed in the course request export
Alternate courses: Indicates if students' alternate course selections will be included in the export.