How do I configure behaviors?

Behaviors in Schoolrunner are very versatile. They're used to both assign and negate detentions. They can be used to add behavioral notes to students that carry no positive or negative values, or to give cash/points to students that they use at a school store. Just to name a few uses.

No matter how you want to use or configure your behaviors, start on the Edit Behavior Types page, accessed via the Configure page (you'll need the "Edit Behavior Types" permission to do this).

The Behavior Types page lists out all the individual behaviors at your school, along with helpful details about each, including how much each contributes toward detention, how many points each is worth, etc. Seem like a long list? Just use the search bar to filter things down!

Pro Tip:  The search bar on the Behavior Types page filters on name, group, and details (both generic and behavior-specific).

Adding Behavior Types

In the upper right click the "Add" button and choose "Type". On the following screen, you'll be able to specify everything about this new behavior type.

Here's a breakdown of each piece of a behavior:

Name	the name of the behavior, which will show in lists for teachers to select
Behavior Group	choose an existing group to place this behavior in, for organizational purposes
Details	additional info about this behavior, specific to this behavior (see more below, or learn about generic behavior details)
Demerit Value	determines whether this behavior adds to or subtracts from a student's demerit tally (assuming you track both demerits and cash/point balances separately)
Show on Homepage	if this behavior is important to your school, click Yes to display which students have earned this behavior today on the homepage, for all users to see (use this judiciously to avoid cluttering your homepage)
Hide from Students (formerly "Internal")	choose Yes if this is a behavior you want to track internally but don't want students to see on slips, report cards, or in the portal
Campus Cash Value	determines whether this adds to or subtracts from a student's cash/point balance
Show Multiplier	determines if teachers see a multiplier box for this behavior, allowing them to multiply this behavior's values when logging it just once
Is Purchase	usually used in conjunction with a negative cash/point value; this indicates that even though it takes cash/points away, it's not a "bad" behavior, for the purposes of calculations on the student dashboard. Purchase behaviors are usually associated with a school store or classroom economy
Detention Value	determines if this behavior is a step (or steps) toward detention (see here for more about detention settings)
Is Full Detention	determines if this behavior should be a full detention right away, regardless of scale, and applies X number of full detentions based on the Detention Value field above
Show on Detention Page	determines if this behavior shows up in the list of actions on the respective Detention page; this should be reserved only for behaviors related to detention management (i.e. "Detention Served", "Detention Skipped")

Note that you will see duplicates of the three detention-related fields for each type of detention you use. Schoolrunner supports up to three types of detention, so if you use all three of these, you will see rows for each.

Editing Behavior Types

When you edit an existing behavior type, you adjust the properties described above. On the Edit Behavior Types page, you can either click the behavior name or click "Edit" under the gear menu. Any changes made to a behavior type are saved in the change history, available in the gear menu, and are effective immediately. This means that a change you make today will not affect instances of this behavior that have already been saved.

Adding/Editing Behavior Details

If you want to get really granular, you can add details to a behavior. For example, a "Helping Out" behavior might have additional details like "Helping a Peer", "Helping a Teacher", or "Helping Admin". These additional details can be required or optional, and you can elect to let teachers select more than one or limit selections to one. Note that as you add details, an extra row will always appear below, in anticipation of your next entry. Once you're done, simply save your work – the extra blank row is no problem!

Pro Tip: Use your keyboard's tab key to quickly move from field to field as you add details.

Adding details like this to behaviors should be reserved for a few very important behaviors that you'd like to get really fine-grained with when it comes to analysis. If every behavior type has additional details that are required, it can add extra clicks for teachers. Some examples of good behaviors for which to add details are send-outs, nurse visits, or uniform violations, as in the screenshot below.

How to Use Behaviors

Now that you know the basics about behavior types, learn how to put them to work!