Activities Scheduler
Quick Start Guide 
 
Administrative View
November 2021
                                                                                    
 

To access your rSchoolToday Activity Scheduler (AS), go to the web address provided, click Login, sign in with your username and password, and you are ready to start! 

This Quick Start Guide will take you sequentially through the setup steps to post your schedules, starting with the competitive ones. Some steps may seem out of sequence at first, but working on the AS program will be easier once you complete this guide.  This guide doesn't cover ALL the setups, only those necessary for getting schedules posted. Thus, we HIGHLY recommend some training to learn the rest.


CALENDAR EVENTS

When you log in to the main Administrative (Admin) area, you will notice three different types of calendar events: Conference, Team Schedules, and School Only. 

  • Conference activities are those competitive activities where you participate against another member of your Conference or league (Home or Away). In this case, either you, the opposing AD, the Conference Commissioner, or the Executive Secretary can enter the Conference Schedules into the Activity Scheduler, or they will instantly show on 1) your calendar, 2) the opponent conference schools calendar, and 3) the conference-wide calendar for all schools.
  • Team Schedules activities are those where you participate against a school that is not part of your Conference or league (Home or Away). You may use the Team Schedules area to schedule your activities if your School is the only one in your Conference or league using rSchoolToday. Team Schedules events do NOT write to the other Schools' calendars even if they are using rSchoolToday, but they do write to the Conference-wide Calendar.
  • School Only is used for everything else that takes place in your School. rSchoolToday is an ALL School calendar, so it is ideal for posting meetings, club activities, concerts, field trips, fundraiser deadlines, test dates, holidays, practice schedules, etc. School Only events do not ever share with other schools' calendars.


Let’s set the program up for your scheduling needs

Your Scheduler/Calendar uses drop-down menus for choosing almost everything when scheduling. This allows a consistent data entry every time while needing to enter the items only once during setup. So, begin by setting up what appears in each of these drop-downs. Again, this is a one-time setup. Once you add the items, they will be available for all future scheduling. Of course, you can go back, add and edit the information at any time. 

Go to Set-Up in the Main Control Panel and click Edit.

 

Locations

1) Conference and Team Schedules Locations - These are all the locations where you engage other schools in competitive activities. The locations in rSchoolToday can contain an address and phone number, up to 2 maps, and complete driving directions. They are saved to a vast national database, so if one person has entered this information for a location once, no one else will ever have to. You can subscribe to it, and every time you use that location, it shows to your public as a link that opens with detailed information, which is printable and emailable. If someone updates information about a location, it's instantly updated for EVERYONE who uses it.

Examples of Conference or Team Locations would be Princeton High School, Apple Valley High School, Mankato American Legion Park, Wilson Natatorium, Eagle Ridge Golf Club, etc. You DON'T want to list these at the field level or room level detail, like Princeton High School Softball Field. But if you play baseball at the American Legion and not at your high school, you may want to get the Mankato American Legion Field listed. You may want to add the list of all of the locations you use for your competitive activities. If you email us the name and address of all locations you use, WE will post them to the site for you with maps at no charge. Email your list with your school name to , and we will take care of it.

2) School Only Locations - The other type of location is what we call School-Only Locations. These are also referred to your competitive schedules as "Location Detail" to differentiate them from a Location. These are the specific locations within your campus.

Here is where you get specifications such as Large Gym, Gym 2, Room 102, Media Center, High School Pool, Soccer Field 3, Football practice field, etc. These locations rarely need maps or directions, as they are all well known to your school community, but you can add them if you wish. This is also where you would post locations for any outside activities like field trips. There might be some locations here that are not on your campus. 

In rSchoolToday, it is not required to use both "location" and "location detail" when setting up your Activity Schedules, but it is hugely beneficial for you and your public if you use them since it gets them to the right and exact location. These relationships will be set up once in your Set-Up. If you set them up ahead of time, then your Girls Varsity Basketball game at home will show the location as "Princeton High School – Large Gym." To set all this up, we start with your School-Only Locations.

Build your School-Only Locations


Notes:
- This is NOT the place to list all the other school locations that are your opponents in competitive activities. Choose from Existing Location Database ONLY if you are going to add a location outside of your school. As this is rarely needed in School Only, we will skip it for now.
- Choose from Existing Location Database applies ONLY if you are going to add a location outside of your school. As this is rarely needed in School Only, we will skip it for now.

 

Adding Locations for Competitive Events
 

If your whole Conference or League is using rSchoolToday, your Executive Secretary or Commissioner will be responsible for adding all the Conference locations for every activity.

They usually send us the list of locations and their addresses, and we post them to the system (with maps) for you.  If you wish, send the list to .   This is centralized to your Secretary or Commissioner to avoid a lot of duplicate entries and keep the list as clean as possible.

If only If only a few of your Conference schools are using rSchoolToday, you will be posting all of your schedules (conference and team schedules games) to the Team Schedules area of the Scheduler. Next, we want to build the list of Locations you use for your competitive activities.  


Locations for Competitive Schedules


All of the locations you selected will be already listed here.  If you find any locations not listed in the database, please send a list to , and we will add them.

Note: Anything more specific, such as High School Gym or Soccer Field, goes under the School    Only Locations are
a.

Another way of adding locations is via the Add a New Location button.

You can also post maps and directions to the location, but since we can do it for you at no charge, why not let us do the work! Once you finish adding the list of locations and their addresses, please email us at and ask us to fill in the maps for your locations list. Those with no address information, maps, or directions get added to the National Database of locations and can be subscribed to by other rSchoolToday users.

Create your list of Opponents 

Next, let’s add your list of opponents for all competitive activities to the program.

 

Note: If you need to add schools (because they are not on the list), please email , and we will add them immediately.

Define Activity Parameters – Teaching rSchooltoday how you work  

This is the last setup you need before diving in and working on your schedules. It is not mandatory but beneficial to both you and your public as it will save you time later. It teaches the Scheduler about your levels, locations, and relationships, so they come up automatically when you create your schedules. Of course, you can change them for any particular game. Doing this will let you schedule your activities VERY FAST.

Note: If you have not added any schedules yet, the list will show blank. If you have already created the schedules, each Activity Level will show on the list here. Please note that if you want to use this feature, you must have all your activities and levels defined before you begin scheduling.

Start with Varsity and build this page for each of your Activity Levels to set the most common settings for each. 

Note: For Gender, use N/A for activities where boys and girls play together or where there is NO sport for both genders. For instance, Football does not have a girls’ team, so set the gender to N/A (not applicable.) Baseball has both boys’ and girls’ teams, so the gender needs to be set for Baseball.  

•    Select an Activity (sport,) and choose Gender and Level, for example, Basketball Girls Varsity.  
•    Select your Home Location for this Activity Level. If you are Princeton High School, then Princeton High School is usually the Home Location, but if the Activity is golf, or if you play softball at the American Legion Field, put in the correct location. 
•    Next, select the Location Detail. This is ONLY needed if a) the location is on your campus, or b) you play at American Legion field, and you want to list Field 1, Field 2, etc. The Location Detail list comes from your School-Only Locations. If you don’t see the entry here, go to the Set-Up for School-Only Locations and add what you need (See the instructions for setting up School-Only Locations on page 4 of this Quick Start Guide).


Note: For those who are also using the rSchoolToday Facilities Scheduler: Your list of Location Details will show all the locations set up in your Facilities Scheduler. This is what teaches the programs where to write your Activity Scheduler events in the Facilities Program.  

•    Set a Default Event Time for the activity. You can choose the most common start time for this activity. This is optional.
•    Duration - Setting the duration of this activity is optional unless you are using the rSchoolToday Facilities Scheduler. 
•    You can also add an Account Code here to track the event fee revenue by budget code for the business office. (This is optional, as well).  
•    You can Save & Add Another Level to add your lower levels, or Save & Exit if you are finished.  

When you add lower levels, you can define the Dates when they play with the Varsity game. You can also set whether they SWAP Home & Away Locations with the Varsity. 

If you've already added some schedules to the Conference or Team Schedules area of your Activity Scheduler, you will see them already showing on the list under Define Activity Parameters. The steps to set location details are the same except that you click Edit for each Activity instead of clicking on Add Activity Details.
Scheduling

Now you are ready to start building your schedules. If you are one of the only schools in your Conference currently using the Activity Scheduler, all of your schedules will go into the Team Schedules area.

Note: Regarding Gender, choose Boys or Girls ONLY if both have a team for this sport and don't play together. Otherwise, gender should be N/A. You DON'T select this when the whole Conference (or most of the schools) uses the Activity Scheduler, and someone else creates the Conference schedules for everyone. 

Note: You can also add locations and schools while scheduling by clicking on the plus (+) sign next to those fields when adding a game. However, it's quicker to add them all at once when setting the program up.  It's faster to add your bus times from the Transportation Area. If you need more event types that you can't find on this drop-down menu, you can ask your Conference Executive Secretary or our Customer support team to add them for you.  If it is a Home game and you've already defined your Activity Parameters, you will see that the Location Detail gets filled automatically. You can choose a different Location or Location Detail, if necessary.

Your List of Schedules shows as seen below:

Note: To avoid confusion, ONLY current school year schedules show to the public.  If your browser has a pop-up blocker, the schedule will not show up. As a one-time process, you need to "Always Allow Pop-Ups" from this site. Ask your IT person for help here, if required. 

Team Schedule Coop Teams' Events merged into existing AGLS Schedules

When Administrators create Team Schedule Events involving Coop teams, those Events are merged into an existing Team Schedule with the same Activity, Gender, Level, and Season (AGLS). This feature prevents the duplication of Schedules.

See the example below:

Conference Scheduling 

Conference Scheduling works the same way, except that you are writing the schedule for your whole Conference, say for Girls Varsity Basketball. Add a date, list all the Conference games on that date, and add the next date. The School's Team Schedule games are NEVER posted here. Usually, your Commissioner or Executive Secretary creates your Conference Schedules, or each AD selects 1-2 schedules and creates them for the whole Conference from the Conference area. If you are one of the schools in your Conference using the Activity Scheduler, PLEASE leave the Conference area blank! 

In the Conference Schedules, Commissioners and School Administrators can also see the date when a Schedule was sent to an Assigner for its Officials' assignation to the Conference screen of the School Competitive Events.


This modification helps Schools manage their assigning duties more efficiently and ensures that Sports Administrators, Commissioners, and Coaches have the correct Schedule information.

To view this information, click on the box to send a Schedule "To Assigners," and the system will automatically show the Da
te.


 

These are the basic steps to get you started creating schedules with your Activity Scheduler. Remember that other setups are still needed and many other exciting features not explained in this Quick Start Guide. You will find much more detailed information in the online manual for the Activity Scheduler found by clicking on the HELP tab once logged in to your Activity Scheduler. 

If you have any questions, don't hesitate to contact our Support Team directly ( or Toll-Free Number: 1-(800)-893-0914 from 7 am-8 pm M-F Central Time), and we will be glad to assist you.
You can also visit the Customer Support Website for more training resources including videos and a list of recent product releases. Go to http://support.rschooltoday.com/, or visit our Training Web at http://www.training.rschooltoday.com/.

For more training, please email us at .

 


 


 



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