Tutorial for Showing Graphs of Time Spent with Resources from Multiple Calendars

Tutorial for Showing Graphs of Time Spent with Resources from Multiple Calendars

How to Setup Graph Merging

A chief priority of the TimeTrack software is to allow the owner of the calendar to control their data as much as possible. For this reason, a calendar owner is given the control to “share” their calendar with other calendar owners in their school.

To share your calendar, the following must be true:

• You are the owner of a TimeTrack calendar or Complementary TimeTrack calendar.
• There are more than one TimeTrack/Complementary calendars for your school.

If the above 2 items apply to you, sharing your calendar for the Graph Merge feature is just a few clicks away! Just follow these steps:

1. Login to your TimeTrack/Complementary calendar.
2. Under the “User” menu, click “Calendar Access”.
3. In the area under the user access, a new section will be available for “Graph Merge Setup”, listing possible calendars you can share your data with for merging. Check all calendars you wish to share your data with.

NOTE: The calendars you choose here will be able to see your data for merging. If you would like to see their data on your graphs as well, make sure to have them share to your calendar, also.

1. Click “Save”.

That’s it! You have now setup sharing your calendar to be used in the new Graph Merge feature!

How to Use Graph Merging

This feature is intended to be able to show the amount of time spent with individuals (teachers and other personnel) by the principal and their supporting administrators, such as assistant principals, that have been provided complementary TimeTrack calendars. Therefore, only select graphs will have these options. Those graphs includes ones that compare individuals, show specific data for a single individual (such as the frequency of time spent with an individual or all descriptors for an individual), along with graphs that show time spent with all individuals over certain time periods (such as the “Instructional Time Use by Individual” and “Total Time Use by Individual” sections of the “Graph Wizard”).

When the Graph Merge feature is available for a graph, and the sharing has been setup, a new section will display above the graph, labeled “Merge with Calendars”, that will contain a list of all calendars that can be merged together, with check boxes next to each of them. Simply select all calendars desired, and click “Apply”. The graph will update, showing the desired calendars’ data for the graph chosen.

Using Graph Merge – Detailed (What Will It Look Like?)

Merging Options

When a user is viewing a graph that utilizes this feature and they have been provided “Graph Merge” access to one or more additional calendars, an options section will appear above the graph, labeled “Merge with Calendars”. In this section the calendar name of each calendar the user has “Graph Merge” access to will be shown, with a checkbox next to them, and an “Apply” button. Here, the user can select all, some or none of the checkboxes and click the “Apply” button. This allows for the user to see the graph as it has always been, which only shows the current calendar, or to combine the current calendar’s information with the like information from the selected calendars.

Graphs for Single Individuals

Graphs for single individuals, such as the “All Descriptors for Individual”, or “Frequency of Time Spent with an Individual”, will not look any different than it does for a single calendar, with the exception that the data from the other calendars will be added to the data for the current calendar. So, the colors used will still be coded to the different descriptors, etc. So, for example, in the “All Descriptors” graph, if there was a total of 5 hours spent with an individual on Modeling/Teaching, the bar would be a light blue and show 5 hours. If an assistant principal spent 2 hours with the same individual on Modeling/Teaching, when that assistant principal’s calendar was applied to the graph, the bar would remain light blue, but would show a total of 7 hours, representing the total time spent by the current calendar owner and the merged data from the additional calendar.

All other graphs that show data for a single individual will work in a similar fashion, where the look of the graph does not change, but the totals for the data are added together in an appropriate fashion/location.

Graphs for Multiple Individuals

Graphs for multiple individuals, such as “Total Time Use by Individual” will change color scheme slightly when data is merged from one or more calendars. In general, these graphs for a single calendar all use red bars for each of the individuals being compared on the graph. This will be expanded when merging data from multiple calendars. Red bars will be used to indicate individuals that are only present on the current calendar, meaning those individuals were not found to be present on any of the calendars selected to be merged in the current graph. Blue bars will be used to indicate individuals that are only present on merged calendars, but not present on the current calendar. Finally, purple bars will be used to indicate individuals that are found to be associated with the current calendar and at least one of the merged calendars, also known as “shared” individuals.

An Example

The principal’s calendar contains 2 individuals:

• Jim
• Bob

The assistant principal’s calendar contains 2 individuals:

• Jane
• Bob

When viewing a graph from the principal’s calendar, Jim’s bar would be red, Bob’s bar would be purple, and Jane’s bar would be blue. This is because Jim is only associated with the principal’s calendar (the current calendar), Bob is associated with both calendars, and Jane is only associated with the assistant principal’s calendar, and not associated with the principal’s calendar.

Setup to Ensure Proper Merge of Data

How Are Individuals Matched?

When combining data for individuals from two or more different calendars, there must be a standard way to determine duplicate information from those lists of associated individuals. In some cases, names may be put in to each list in a different format, for instance “<first name> <last name>”, “<last name>, <first name>”, or simply “<first name>”. So, in one list it may be “Bob Smith”, and in another it may be “Smith, Bob”, simply due to the preference of the calendar owner who entered the information. Because there are numerous variants that an entered name could take, the TimeTrack system relies on the more structured email address field that is provided with the individual name during setup. Therefore, as long as “Smith, Bob”, and “Bob Smith” have the same email address, the TimeTrack system can determine that is the same person, and combine that data across two or more calendars. For that reason, regardless of the format of the individual’s name, it is important that the email address for the individuals be entered, be accurate and be the same across all calendars, for proper merging of data.

Even if the names are exactly the same, such as “Smith, Bob” and “Smith, Bob”, if the email addresses are not entered and the same, there will end up being two “Smith, Bob” entries on the graph, because we have no email address to link these two entries in the separate lists.

How Will The Individuals Show on The Graph?

The TimeTrack system will do it’s best to use the name provided for the individual association form the current calendar. So, in the event that the current calendar has an individual listed as “Smith, Bob”, and a merged calendar has “Bob Smith”, but they both have the same email address, the graph will show “Smith, Bob”, and the bar will contain the sum of the two calendars’ values. If the associated individual is only in the merged calendar, their name will be displayed as they are entered in that other merged calendar.

Setup Recommendations

• Make sure that all associated individuals in all calendars have email addresses entered as well.
• Ensure that the email addresses for the same person are identical across all calendars that include that individual.
• Though the system will match individuals based on email address, it is recommended to use the same formatting for all names for individuals across all of the calendars used. This will ensure the best display for the graph when sorting and other operations are applied. This should include the order of the name (i.e. “Smith, Bob” vs. “Bob Smith”), but also the case used for the name (i.e. “Smith, Bob” vs. “smith, bob” vs. “SMITH, BOB”, etc.).