What's a scheduled task, and how is it configured?

In Schoolrunner, scheduled tasks add ease and functionality to your school's system. Tasks can be configured to assign behaviors or reset detentions or merit values. To get started, look for the "Scheduled Tasks" link on the Configure page. Click "Next" and follow the screenshots and directions to begin:

Task Type: Give a Behavior

• "Student Group" may be left blank for any type of task. If this menu is left blank, the task will apply to all students, rather than a particular subset.
• Choosing "Give a behavior" will assign one of your school’s behaviors to a specific student group. One of the most common behaviors that schools use is deposit of merits or cash for present students.
• Any tasks that involve the "Give a behavior" option will not run on weekends or school holidays.
• Tasks involving "Reset" will run any time.
  • If you want your task to run on holidays, select "Yes" under "Ignore Holidays". The default is "No", which instructs your task to respect Schoolrunner’s weekday-only programming.
• More commonly used is "Ignore Absent Scholars". If you want your task to apply only to students who are present that day, click "Yes".
  • By default "No" is selected, meaning that all students in the group you select get the behavior, regardless of absence status.
• The "Floor Balances" option relates to cash values only and is set to "No" by default. Selecting "Yes" here will bring any students with negative cash values up to zero.
• "Add/Subtract Days" is rarely used. By entering a negative number, it allows tasks to be run for a previous school day’s data (it will not recognize weekend days).

Task Type: Reset All Detentions 

• If you want detentions to be brought down to a particular number, enter that number in the "Max value" field. For example, if you want any student with four or more detentions to only serve 3, you would enter 3 in the "Max Value" field. Any student with fewer than three detentions will not be affected by this task and their count will not change.
• Use the "Detention Type" dropdown to select which type of detention this reset should apply to.
  • Detention reset tasks are specific to detention types; if you use more than one detention type, you'll need to set up more than one reset task.
• For more details on resetting detentions, see this article.

Task Type: Reset All Cash Balances

• "Reset all cash balances" allows you set all student balances back to a specified number. 
• If the "Max Value" is left blank and "Set All to Max Value" is set to "No", all students with negative cash balances will be brought back up to zero. All other students' balances will be left untouched.
• If you were to keep the "Max Value" field blank and "Set All to Max Value" to "Yes", then you'd see all students' running cash count clear down to zero (on the Scholar Dashboard and on student slips).
  • If you want a group to start each week with a balance of exactly $50, for example, then enter that number into the "Max Value" field and select "Yes". 
  • "Year-to-Date Balance" will remain untouched.