schooltoolers team mailing list archive

[Tom Hoffman <tom.hoffman@xxxxxxxxx>]

One of the rougher parts of SchoolTool is the implementation of
multi-term sections.

That is, if you have more than one term in a year, for example, a year
with two semesters, and you have a section which spans both semesters,
it is modeled as two linked sections, one for each term.  We knew this
didn't necessarily map to people's expectations, but it makes the
internal model cleaner and more flexible.

The intention was to hide as much of the implementation detail as
possible, which was done partially but in an ad hoc fashion.  Alan and
I are going to go over this issue in detail next week to make
multi-term sections easier and more consistent.  I've jotted down the
main use cases:

* Initially creating linked sections in one step (web & import).
* Linking existing sections in different terms (web).
* Moving students, etc forward to the next linked section.
* Moving between linked sections when viewing an individual section.
* Summary view of enrollment changes across linked terms.
* Spawning a new linked section from an existing one.

If you've hit any pain points in creating multi-term sections, now
would be a good time to chime in!

--Tom