[FROG] WEEK A and B AUTOMATION

[eddyc]

Hi,

 

I'm sure that Frog used to automatically show week A or B back in August which then broke in late September.

Frog claim that it cannot automatically display the current school week.

Anyone know if it is possible and if so can you give me a pointer as to how to do it?

 

Thanks

[frogwoman]

HI,

 

My first guess would be timetable widget? Which will only work if you import the data from your MIS and if you are a teacher/student with a timetable.

 

Where are you trying to view the current school week from (meaning which widget)? If you know the page you used to view it from you could go back in the history and see if anything has changed between when you think it was working/broken.

[eddyc]

We have a custom timetable widget that was designed as a part of the build. It shows the current week at the top of the timetable and then the days timetable below this.

It was working and automated in the original build however after speaking with frog they are adimant that it was not.

The page has been restored to the 1st August but still fails to be automated.

 

Frog replied with;

Thank you for your time on the telephone. As discussed, I have had a meeting with the Design Team and they have informed me that the Week A / Week B system was created as a manual process. In the specification, it is noted that there was a requirement for Week A / Week B to be displayed on the dashboard – not that it had to be an automated system. Furthermore, the Design Team are currently unable to create this automated system; we do not have the functionality to be able to create the system.

 

Prior to calling you, the ‘Week’ page was reverted to the earliest state and I can confirm that the page was identical to how it appears now; just a text and pictures Frog Brick. I can confirm that there was no additional functionality that was linked to this page that is now missing.

 

The only way how the Week A / Week B could have been updated is manually. This would have involved one person making the change once a week.

 

As discussed on the telephone, you said you were going to check with people who have access to the Frog Toolkit to see whether they remember making these changes.

 

However, please be aware that because Frog is unable to create an automated Week A / Week B system then it will still require a person to make this manual change each week.

 

 

There are three of us which are Frog admins at the school, non of who have ever changed the week letter on the page - but it was working despite what Frog were saying and my two colleges can confirm this.

 

I think that it's a pretty poor show if this VLE solution which cost us thousands can't do this automatically - Moodle can do this and it is FREE!!!

Surely we are not the only school with a two week timetable that uses Frog and requires this fuction?

Frog has been around for a few years now so surely they have a solution to this problem (well they did but don't seem to want to admit it).

[sjatkn]

If you ever find a solution to this then I would love to know about it. We too have a two week timetable and I am sure it would be helpful to have this shown.

 

I would wonder if the information was pulled from your MIS. Perhaps someone was responsible for setting something in the diary or the timetable in the MIS. Did someone responsible for putting data into your MIS leave or change? Has the MIS extraction tool been upgraded?

 

As I have said before I like Frog but their support is slow and documentation almost nonexistent.

[mthomas08]

Moodle can do this and it is FREE!!!

 

When I see this I want to face palm, your 100% right but when it comes to problems like this you will have to resort to either paying for support or resorting to what your doing now - using Forums. Plus to get to the point of Frog will take you endless months/years and still be lacking in a lot of areas which is why we switched from Moodle to Frog. Although it did some things we needed over what Frog does, Frog gave us much more flexibility and they are catching fast.

 

As for your problem have you tried asking the Frog Community for what other schools are doing, I dont think you are alone on the two week timetable (I believe we used to be ages ago). Luckily we have not changed from what we are now but if it does happen - they like to change the timetables often here !!!

 

Would be great if every school used Forums let alone the Frog Community to see what everyone is doing but sadly not everyone has the time. If you are going to the Frog Conference take a pad with a list of wants/questions with you as we plan to. As for their technical support every time I have contacted them (like last night) I got solutions back within an hour.

[Ryan233]

We have frog at our school and the week does automatically change from Week 1 to Week 4. This is pulled from our MIS system into frog and then frog does the rest.

[TheCrust]

This is sounding very familiar to me.

 

We have a two-week timetable. At the design stage, we told the Frog consultant that we wanted to see a widget on the front page with "week 1" or "week 2" in it depending on what stage we were at in the timetable cycle. And he said, "Yeah, no problem, we'll build that in - Frog will do it automatically."

 

No it doesn't - and Frog support told us it couldn't and never would when we queried why it wasn't working. Disappointing wasn't quite the word.

Edited May 25, 2012 by TheCrust

[sjatkn]

And he said, "Yeah, no problem, we'll build that in - Frog will do it automatically."

 

No it doesn't - and Frog support told us it couldn't and never would when we queried why it wasn't working. Disappointing wasn't quite the word.

 

We have had a couple of other different problems that my boss 'reliably' informed me could be done. His information had come from someone senior at Frog. We looked at it, scratched our heads and came to the conclusion we couldn't do it and we needed help. We called tech support and they scratched their heads and said it couldn't be done. We then asked the boss to get this senior person to tell us how implement the feature. No surprise that we never heard back.

[eddyc]

We have frog at our school and the week does automatically change from Week 1 to Week 4. This is pulled from our MIS system into frog and then frog does the rest.

 

It is possible for you to make a FRG package of the files that do this so I can see if I can do this myself?

 

Many thanks.