Creating a preference based After School Activity Sign Up in SchoolsBuddy

If this is the first time creating a preference based sign up, we advise you to arrange training on this module. Please email help@schoolsbuddy.com to arrange a preference based container training session.

When creating a preference based sign-up, it consists of two phases. The first phase is creating the activities container and the second phase is creating the activities/groups that will be within the sign-up container.

Creating a Sign-Up Container:

1. Click on the 'Menu Icon' in the top-left
2. Select 'Activities & Clubs Admin' tab in the Menu Panel OR click on the 'Activities & Clubs Admin' icon on the homepage.
3. Click the 'After School Clubs (Preference Based)' tab (Please note, this may be labelled differently depending on your school settings).
4. Click the 'Add' button.

Fill in the following details as follows for the After School Club Sign Up.

1. Sign Up Title: Name of the After School Club Sign Up
2. Description: Description of the After School Club Sign Up
3. Selection type: Select Preferences
4. Preference Selection Scope: Select Daily (students can choose 1st, 2nd and 3rd preferences for multiple events every day) or Weekly (students can only choose 1st, 2nd and 3rd  preferences over a week).
   Ignore Day of the Week: Only select this option if using the container for School Trips so it is not repeating weekly.
5. Number of Daily Preferences: By default, this is set to 5 preferences, but you can reduce this if desired.
6. Minimum Weekly Student Selections: This is the minimum number of choices that students and/or parents must make. Set to 0 if you do not wish to set a minimum. 
7. Activities Start date: This is the first day that your activities start.
8. Activities End date: This is the last day that activities will take place.
9. Activity Default Start Time: The time selected will be the default start time of the Container activities, for example the end of your school day (for after school activities).
10. Activity Default End Time: The time selected will be the default end time of the Container activities.
11. Event type: Select the type of events you will be creating, e.g. After School Club or Breakfast Club.

12. Booking Confirmations include linked person(s): tick to include all those linked to the student when the selection confirmation email is sent.
13. Responsibility for Confirmation: The user(s) selected will be responsible for signing up to activities and will receive an email confirming both their selections and allocations. Choose from Parents Only, Students or Parents, or Parents Only.
14. Sign Up Open and Close: The period in which parents/students can Sign Up for Activities. This is different from when the activities run from and to. It is recommended to close your sign-up in advance of your first activities starting by a few days to allow for allocations and manual changes.
15. Allow parent/student re-submission of selections: If checked, this lets parents/students change their selections after they have submitted their choices. Once the sign up period has ended, this is no longer possible.
16. Allow post allocation join requests: If checked, this allows for parents/students to request to join an activity once the sign up has closed and the allocations have been made. The activity organiser and the "Signup and Join Request" admin will receive an email that a student would like to join an activity which would need to be approved or denied.
17. Use Organisation Block Dates: If selected, events will not be created for dates entered within the block dates tab. These should be set before generating your events.
18. Terms & Conditions: You can add your sign up Terms and Conditions in the relevant box, or link to them using the Terms additional info (URL)'.
19. If you wish to capture additional data, you can choose to add a Booking Data Form which parents/students have to fill in at time of submitting their choices. Please contact help@schoolsbuddy.com to arrange this.
20. If you have the Transport Module enabled, you can choose to link the container to a Transport Timeslot.
21. Once all the relevant details have been entered, click the green Save button.

The container has been created, it will appear in the Activities & Clubs Admin tab.

Now, you will need to create groups/activities within the container - please use our guide here for more information: Adding Activities to your Container