Run Online Registration in Multiple Portions

Run Online Registration in Multiple Portions

2/19/2024

 

One consistent request we’ve received for Online Registration is the ability to break the process into multiple portions (historically we’ve offered only one monolithic process per year).  Many districts would like to collect data on returning students before the school year finishes, but have parents pay fees in July/August (after direct certification files have been entered).  

 

In this release we added the ability to create “Collectors” (a term borrowed from online survey tools), each with its own forms, fees, start/end dates, and options.  This allows customers to break registration into multiple pieces, released at different times of the year. 

 

 

Each collector has options that previously resided at the district (or school) level.  The most prominent are start/end date, and whether the collector will apply fees.

 

 

As part of this project, we also improved the form/field setup process.  These were separate pages in the UI, and we unified them. Clicking the + on collectors expands the page to show forms. Similarly, the + on forms shows the fields. 

 

 

For customers who’d like to collect re-enrollment data early, but delay fee payment until lunch program status has been determined, the process is simple:

  1. We migrated your existing Online Registration process to a collector. 
    (You may need to create one if no process existed to be migrated.)

  2. Edit the collector and turn off the option to “Manage Fees.”  Set appropriate start/end dates.

  3. Create a new collector that does “Manage Fees,” and set dates. This collector does not need any forms. 

  4. Add fees to the new collector from the “Fees” sub-tab. 

 

For customers who prefer the status quo, one Online Registration process, we migrated each annual process into a collector.  It should run unmodified, our intention is to be backward compatible.

 

As always, we encourage Online Registration customers to enable Online Payments.  The entire process works better if parents pay fees online.  They already use our web portal to enter information, and staff will save time if parents pay fees online too.

 

The custom form engine in collectors could have many other uses outside Online Registration.  We’ve discussed using it to run surveys, collect paperwork/signatures throughout the year, etc.  In this release, we focused on Online Registration.  We would encourage customers to think about other cases where the technology would be helpful.  We’ll probably need to do some additional development to enable these possibilities, and are open to feedback.

 

We hope you like the new collectors in Online Registration.  As always, feel free to reach out to support@common-goal.com with questions.

 

 

The Common Goal Team