Once the activities sign up has closed you can make allocations, this can be done manually or using the auto allocation options. This article will explain what the auto-allocation process is and how to do it in SchoolsBuddy.
You can also watch the video below:
The Allocation Process
- Click the Activities Sign up Admin tab (this may be labelled differently due to your School's preferences)
- Click the blue Manage tab on the correct container.
- Click the Auto Allocate tab.
- When selected, you will see that nothing has been allocated at this stage. If a group is oversubscribed, SchoolsBuddy can handle auto allocation of pupils into that group by two different methods.
- Random: This option will use our algorithm to fairly allocate all your groups based on the choices made by your students.
- First come first serve: this will allocate oversubscribed groups based on the time stamp when your pupils/parents submitted their choice to the school.
When the system randomly allocates the pupils, it will first allocate the P1 choices, followed by the P2 choices, etc.
So in example below, for 'Badminton-Junior ASA', the system will randomly allocate 12 students from the 23 who chose this activity as their first preference (P1). The remaining 11 may receive their 2nd choice, 3rd choice etc. if they selected these options.
For 'Board Games Club', there is a maximum number of places of 4 for the activity and 3 have chosen it as P1. So the system will allocate those 3 students and then possibly the remaining 1 from the 3 students who chose the activity as P2, depending on the popularity of the other activities they have chosen.
Select the applicable oversubscribe option.
- To allocate groups/activities, click the blue Fast Allocate (Confirmed Selections). This will allocate all the confirmed selections.
- If you select Fast Allocate All this will allocate all the selections even if they weren't confirmed (this means parents have only saved and not confirmed their selections)
- When selected, within a matter of seconds your groups have all been allocated, this is shown in the image below. You can see the P1 and P2 allocations; there were not enough choices or demand to require P3, P4 or P5 choices to be allocated.
- If you have a policy that students can only have 2 activities per week, you are able to set the Maximum allocations allowed limit to 2. This means that students will only be allocated a maximum of 2 activities for the week. You are also able to limit the number of free activities they can join per week, but not the amount of paid activities as they generate revenue.
- To now see what pupils have been allocated select the Pupil/Student Allocation Overview tab.
- To learn more about this tab and the functions that can be performed within it, click here.
