Automatically extracting timetable data from WCBS PASS

[jwinters]

I'm completely new to WCBS PASS but I'm quite familiar with other school MISs.

 

I'm looking for a way to extract the whole school timetable (not just individual timetables) from PASS in a machine-readable form. This is something which I've done in the past from SchoolBase (using direct database access) and iSAMS (using a combination of the API, and then direct database access where the API was deficient) and I'm now hoping to do the same for a school which uses PASS.

 

Can anyone with PASS experience offer me any pointers about what approach would be best on PASS? I don't want to start off doing it one way, only to find out down the line that there was a much better way to do it.

 

Many thanks

[mark-h]

Hi there - link via ODBC. I normally link it to Access, run some queries and then link to an Excel. It is quick and dirty solution.

[jwinters]

So you're saying to go direct to the database, rather than trying to use any extraction facilities provided by the MIS?

 

John

[mark-h]

Pretty much - the timetable outputs in PASS are really slow and frustrating. What is it you want to use the data for?

[jwinters]

To load into a school calendaring program - https://github.com/XronosSchedulingLtd/scheduler

[mark-h]

ODBC should be the ticket then. If you pull through AC_TIMETABLE I think... Does it need to have the projected dates or will it map to timetable weeks? If the latter, you can add the combination of the day and period as key fields to limit the number of instances of each lesson. Not sure how zronos works though - our room booking for instance has its own calendar structure so it maps our tt week for the academic year.