Academic Year vs Holidays

[howartp]

Hi

 

We use Salamander for various things including timetables into exchange calendars.

 

Salamander are telling me our academic year / holidays are "unconventional" (my wording not theirs) and causing issues with when timetables should/should not apply during summer/in readiness for start of term.

 

My post:

I have a note in my diary to come back to you pre-holiday this year about start/end dates of term versus holidays etc.

 

Do you have any update from your conversations in-house as to how this should be handled?

 

Our term ends on Friday 09/07/24 and new term starts on Monday 02/09/24, the same format as it always has.

 

2023/2024

 

 

2024/2025

 

 

Peter

Their reply:

That looks like we may have the same issue as last year, unfortunately, we haven't been able to develop the rollover mechanisms in which we'd hoped for this year.

 

To avoid the timetable syncing early, as it did last year, I would advise disabling the timetable-scheduled task "Salamander_Timetable" on your last day of term, and switching it back on the night before you would like it to sync for the new academic year.

 

Unless you can bring back the end of the holiday for a few days in SIMS?

 

Many thanks

Are we doing anything wrong/different to everyone else?

 

Why should the school holiday not accurately represent the school holiday?

 

Any thoughts?

[Steve21]

Reading between the lines, is the issue that they're syncing the new years timetable prior to the academic year starting and you want it to show blank until it starts? (From the "Unless you can bring back the end of the holiday for a few days in SIMS?" line)

 

If so there used to be an option to enable/disable that in the tool ("whether to override the change of academic year behaviour. By default, data processing is limited to the current academic year.")

 

Steve

[howartp]

We don't want the new timetable showing until the start of term; not bothered if it shows on Staff Training Day (which is always first day of term), but we don't want it showing beforehand.

 

I don't understand why moving the holiday affects anything.

[howartp]

More updates from last years ticket (to refresh my memory on the issue):

 

Me: (during last week of holiday)

I've just spotted that students can see their timetable for Tuesday (the first student day of term) on their Exchange calendars which they shouldn't be able to do.

Salamander:

This is because our calendar process truncates on the academic year-end date =2. This has likely happened because your academic year ends 1 or 2 days before your new academic year's start date.

The most common practice is to end your academic year with the final term date, in July.

Me:

Our academic year ("Summer Term" in SIMS > Routines > School > Edit Academic Year) ended on 21st July, and new term starts on Monday 4th September with a staff training day.

Salamander:

As far as SIMS is telling us it ends on 2023-09-03. The last term ends on 2023-07-21, but not the academic year itself.

 

It looks like the Summer holiday is a bit delaying the end of the academic year, I would generally advise against having this marked in this way, as it makes rollovers more predictable in general. Ending the academic year with the last term generally stops anything untoward from happening in the 6 weeks' holidays, of course, it should be fine as it is, but if there is no value on your end for marking it in this way, then it may be worth considering.

 

I am in discussions with my development team on this behaviour to see if we can improve it in the application code, so, with any luck, this should behave a bit better for you next year and should automatically not sync the first day back next year.

So they're expecting no Summer Holiday to be defined, instead ending the Academic Year at the end of July? Surely this is wrong?

[Steve21]

The only thing I can think of was it used to be that by default SIMs makes Academic years 365 days as a default and would auto fill holidays in anywhere there wasn't a term. Therefore meaning that you would have clashing days on 3rd/4th. But I thought that was fixed previously and when you make a new academic year that clashes it'll shorten it automatically.

 

Just to confirm, you do have Salamander turned off not to publish next year items? As I'm sure there was an option to enable/disable this in the sync tools automatically.

 

Many thanks,

Steve

[howartp]

Yes, next years events is turned off.

 

We have no clashing days on our academic years - I set the Summer Holiday to end the day before the start of Autumn Term/new academic year.