SIF - Setting Term Dates and Enrollment End Dates

[#1]

Overview:

In order to prevent student enrollments from being hard concluded (or dropped) at the end of a term, the Term End Date in PowerSchool must match a student’s enrollment Exit Date. These dates are sent to Canvas from PowerSchool and are associated with a student’s enrollment.

Conditions:

• If a student has an Exit Date that is earlier than the Term End Date, Canvas reads this as a drop and the student is hard concluded. The student will not be available for grading in the Gradebook.
• If a student’s Exit Date matches or is later than the Term End Date, the student will be soft concluded on their exit date. The student will be available for grading in the Gradebook.
• Term dates should not be edited in Canvas.  Teacher and Student access dates can be extended to allow assignment submission and grade completion.
  • PLEASE NOTE: Editing the "Term runs" dates in Canvas will cause enrollments to be hard concluded at the end of the term, causing teachers to lose access to grading, as described above.  

Locating the Exit Date:

The Exit Date for StudentSectionEnrollments can be pulled from multiple locations in PowerSchool.  Unfortunately, Canvas Support does not have any way of pinpointing which field your specific instance of PowerSchool is pulling that Exit Date from.  If you are not able to pinpoint the location of your Exit Date, we could recommend reaching out to PowerSchool Support for additional assistance.  

Changing Term Dates:

All changes to Term Dates should be made in PowerSchool and synced to Canvas.

No changes should ever be made to the "Term Runs from" dates in Canvas for terms that were created by the PowerSchool sync. If changes are made to these fields, they become ‘sticky’ and the sync is no longer able to make changes to those dates moving forward.

If you have changed your term dates manually in Canvas, please contact Canvas Support. Canvas Support is able to correct the Canvas term dates and restore the sync with PowerSchool.

Extending Teacher Access For Grading:

To allow teachers extra time at the end of the term to submit final grades, you can set teacher specific override dates [1] in Canvas. Setting user specific term override dates will not interfere with the PowerSchool sync.

Note: The Term Run dates [2] are defined through a sync with PowerSchool. Changing these dates in Canvas will cause the sync with PowerSchool to fail. If you manually changed these dates in Canvas please contact Canvas Support to reinstate the sync.

[nlatimer]

We are a K-12 school district and use Grading Periods. My understanding is that the "Close Date" is used to allow teachers to grade past the end of the term. Is this still the case, or do I have to go into the actual term and extend the teacher access as described in this document? Thank you.

[emily_allen]

Hi nlatimer,

To extend teacher access for grading you will want to extend their access dates as described above. However, while you're editing the access dates please make sure not to edit the "Term Runs" dates as that can cause the sync to break. I hope this helps!

Thanks,

Emily

[nlatimer]

Hi eallen‌,

Then what are the "Close Dates" for? That's what we had been using that for, as it was originally designed as a way to allow teachers to grade past the end of the term. Of course, it stopped working once we encountered the problem with the Exit Date and automatic course conclusions. But now that that is resolved, what is the "Close Date" for then?

Nancy

[emily_allen]

Hi nlatimer,

Close dates are used to extend the grading window at the end of a grading period. In theory, you could have several grading periods within your term and you might want to allow your teachers extra time past the end of each grading period to finalize grades. To avoid any complications with allowing teachers extra time to finalize grades, I would recommend setting the same date for the final grading period close date and the instructor access end date. Does this help answer your question? 

Thanks,

Emily

[nlatimer]

eallen, I have only set the closing dates for this purpose in the past. I don't understand why I would also have to change the teacher access dates in the terms as described above for this purpose? Is it just some sort of a "fail-safe"?

There's also no mention of doing this additional step in the documentation about close dates.

[emily_allen]

Hi nlatimer,

I just tested this and if the term access date ends before the grading period close date, a teacher is not able to enter grades in the Gradebook. Whatever you have set as the teacher access date in the term (either an extended date or the default term end) needs to at least be the same as the grading period close date to ensure teachers have access to enter grades. 

I checked with our SIS team and they indicated that the PowerSchool sync is not affected by grading period dates, but adjusting term dates can have an adverse affect on the sync, so the importance of those dates are emphasized in this document. Based on your questions we will look into clarifying and adding information about how term access dates and grading period close dates work together.

Thanks,

Emily 

[Gina_Hutchens]

How do I run or get someone to run this report in Powerschool?  Where do you go to run it?  Step by Step.  My data manager does not know about this report.

Our students were taken out of canvas as of 12/21/18 and our Term end date was set as 1/4, therefore teachers can't see students any longer to grade.

Viewing the Exit Date in PowerSchool:

The Exit Date (or lastday) is created in PowerSchool as part of a virtual table using PowerView, which combines fields from other tables. PowerView finds the last calendar day the student is in session and returns it as the Exit Date The Exit Date is then sent to Canvas and associated with a student’s enrollment.

Any changes to a student’s Exit Date must be made in PowerSchool and synced to Canvas. The Exit Date cannot be changed or remapped in Canvas.

The Exit Date (lastday) table may be named “pssr_student_section_dates” and looks like this:

select cc.dcid,

      cc.id,

      cc.studentid,

      cc.sectionid,

      cc.schoolid,

      cc.dateenrolled ps_dateenrolled,

      cc.dateleft ps_dateleft,

      cc.dateenrolled firstday,

      leave.leave_date lastday

from   cc

inner join (

   select a.schoolid,

      a.dateleft,

      (

           select max(c.date_value) from calendar_day c

           where schoolid = a.schoolid

           and c.insession = 1

           and c.date_value < a.dateleft

      ) leave_date

 from ( select distinct schoolid, dateleft from cc ) a ) leave

on cc.schoolid = leave.schoolid

and cc.dateleft = leave.dateleft

[ginger_mckenzie]

Hi Gina,

How did you figure this out? And can it be changed to only pull our exit dates from the actual section record instead of the calendar? That just seems crazy to pull it from that table that's not really a table but a view. That's not the last day of our term and it isn't the last day of the students time in that section either.

Where exactly in the SIF is this being sent? I'd like to change the date we are sending Canvas if we can.

Thanks, Ginger

[Gina_Hutchens]

No we never did find out how to run this report.  

I know that there was some discussion between Canvas and Powerschool and I'm just praying that the fix is in place before the end of this term.

[mbuonato]

I haven't figured out if we can modify the sif agent yet but we feel it should pull the dateleft directly from the cc table not the union in the view with the calendar.