School Management System for teacher

[Brecht]

I have been working with Filemaker for 1 month and want to set up a sort of 'agenda' for teachers. I had already made something that worked well but then came to the conclusion that my base was not okay so I can start again ...

It's like this: A teacher teaches in multiple schools, each school has several departments. When the teacher opens the app (or logs in), he wants to assign students to one of his schools and then assign lessons to that student. The teaching moments differ from school to school. It is not the intention that he sees the lesson moments of school B when he adds and assigns students in School A. I mean by this: If school A has following lessons: "Monday 16h-17h mathematics" and "Monday 17h-18h gymnastics" than I do not want to see these possibilities in school B if they do not exist there. I would work with either predefined teaching moments (teacher makes these first) or through choice lists in lessons, weekdays, courses ... Perhaps predefined will be the best solution?

So I should actually have a choice when opening the app to which school environment the teacher wants to go. But he also wants to be able to switch between the schools ...

Below you see the ERD that I made. I'm not sure how to proceed now:

Do I need 2 layouts where I filter by school? Can I filter these lessons and the students? And which table will that layout be best based on?

Thanks in advance if someone has time to check this and to help me further.

Brecht

Edited January 23, 2019 by Brecht

[comment]

Suppose a user starts by selecting school to work with; you can capture this choice in a global field and use it as the match field in a relationship to present only the selected school's classes in a portal. The same relationship can be used to filter the value lists.

 

[Brecht]

Thanks for your reply!

Yes, the steps for the user are: 

1. Add/Create school
2. Create Departments: Do I need a new table for this?
3. Enter data for the value lists (courses, weekdays, hours)
3. Create Classes
4. Create Students
5. Assign Students to Classes

In my first solution I started from the students table. Knowing the choice for the school is captured in a global field, can I still start from the students table? At this moment I do not know how to set up this global field as a match field, same for filtering the value lists. 

Could you give me a 'tip'?

[comment]

A lot here depends on how you want your user interface to look and behave. If you wanted, you could build this similar to web site, e.g. start by showing schools, giving the option to select an existing school or add a new one. Once they have selected a school, show that school's classes (or departments, if that's the next level). This could be in a portal placed on a layout of Schools. Here again, they would have a choice of selecting an existing item or create a new one. And so on, drilling down in the hierarchy - and moving to a layout of the corresponding table once a selection has been made.

I am not sure why you would want to start from students. It seems to me they should be last - that is, you would be on a layout of Classes, showing a portal to Enrollments, and let the user create a new portal record for each student  they want to enroll in the current class.

And of course you could also offer direct access to any table from your "main" page. So if the user wanted to start by entering their students first (without enrolling them to any class at this point), they could do this too.

This method would also enable you to minimize (perhaps eliminate altogether) the use of value lists for selecting.

[bcooney]

Just in case you’re not aware of this well known Filemaker solution:

https://proofgroup.com/software-services/academics/

[Brecht]

@comment: It is not the intention to share data with multiple teachers. The application is separate from a school and is for personal use only. The user wants to keep track of the data of his students, wants to mail homework to his students, wants to see, modify, sort and print class lists.

In attachment you will find what I have already made. I am quite satisfied with the functionality but the problem is that I see all the students in one list and all the value lists of the different schools together and I want to see them per school. All this is built from the student table.

Perhaps your final sentences are the direction that I should go out. But I do not understand how I can eliminate the value lists because classes have to be made of a number of parameters (course, weekday, hour) before students can enroll in it. And those parameters are value lists, not?

Students2.fmp12

[comment]

I don't see schools in your file. But what's more important, your ERD shows that a student is not related to a school until he/she has been enrolled in a class of that school (and at least in theory, a student could enroll in classes of more than one school). So if you're hoping to start from the Students table, and have a value list showing only classes from a particular school, you would have to select the school first in a global field AND have a relationship based on that global field. Which is why I am not convinced that the Students table is the best context from which to build your interface.

 

On 1/24/2019 at 10:43 AM, Brecht said:

I do not understand how I can eliminate the value lists

You can select from a portal or from a list view, and have a script take the value from the record in the clicked row and do something with it: enter it into a field or create a new record in another table, as needed.

[Brecht]

@comment Thank you for your advice!!

I have added the table school and am even starting my solution from that table now. Almost everything works fine. I am able to create schools, courses, students, ...

I still have some issues but I am learning, trial, error... 

[comment]

1 minute ago, Brecht said:

I still have some issues but I am learning, trial, error... 

Aren't we all.

[Brecht]

One more question: I am on the "Schools" table and I create 3 schools (so I have 3 records). Then I create Courses, SchoolYear, Departments, etc... All on the layout based on the "Schools" table. So far, so good.

Next step is to create classes. I also do this on the "Schools" table with a portal to "Classes". That works fine but I want to have a dropdown list with the SchoolYears so I can select the current SchoolYear. 

Ok, I only need one SchoolYear per year and that is ok but when it is june, a teacher is planning his Classes for the next SchoolYear, so he needs to have the possibility to make his provisional Classes for the next year. And when it is september (new SchoolYear) he wants to start with the new Classes. 

How do I accomplish this?

 

[comment]

I am not sure I fully understand the question. I think you want to have a global Year field in the Schools table, and use it to filter the relationship to Classes. 

 

[Brecht]

Yes, that is correct!! I tried for a couple of hours but I don't find how to do it...

Edited January 31, 2019 by Brecht

[comment]

If you define an auxiliary relationship (using another occurrence of the Courses table) as:

Schools::SchoolID = Courses 2::SchoolID
AND
Schools::gYear = Courses 2::SchoolYearID

you can use a portal to Courses 2 to show courses in selected year only. If the relationship is allowed to create related records in Courses 2, then any record created via the portal will automatically inherit the parent school's ID and year.

You could also use the existing relationship and filter the portal to show only courses in selected year. But then it's more difficult to get newly-created courses to auto-enter the selected year.

 

To select the year by clicking into the portal to SchoolYears, define a button that does:

Set Field [ Schools::gYear ; SchoolYears::SchoolYearID ]

and place it in the portal (or make the field shown in the portal a button).

[Brecht]

I will look into this. Thank you for your help and time!