Custom Periods

Introduction

This feature allows a TODCM site to use custom time periods instead of the start date and end date in the units. This option is disabled by default and it has to be enabled in order for the units to utilize the custom time periods. The system comes with 2 predefined custom time periods: Class Period (365 periods) and Week (52 weeks). The maximum number of periods in one single custom period is 365, this implies there can only be one custom time period per day.

Each course has a custom period override feature that allows the administrators to precisely set a course's start period and end period since a course does not always start at the beginning of a year or ends at the end of a year. The override settings in a course affect the time period selections for all its units.

Start Using Custom Periods

To access the management page, click on the “Admin” button and then click on the “Custom Period” button:

This feature is not turned on by default therefore it would show it is turned off when access the above page for the first time. Please click on the Enable button to enable this feature. It is suggested to republish all existing units with the correct period ranges after this feature is enabled, no action is required if the site does not contain existing units. Enabling this feature changes the following features to use custom time periods instead of unit start date and end date: unit page, unit calendar and calendar mapping search.

Adding/Editing Custom Periods

	Add a new custom period.
	Edit an existing custom period.
	Delete an existing custom period. All existing units will retain the deleted custom period until it is modified by their editors. Units assigned with a deleted custom period will not be searchable in the related mapping searches until they are modified with existing custom period(s). The two default time periods - Class Period and Week, can be deleted if desired. The system needs at least one custom period therefore the last period can not be deleted unless a second period is added.
Name	The custom period name. This can be anything that identifies an academic time period such as class period, day, week, month, semester, quarter etc.
Number of Periods	This is how many time periods per year. The maximum is set to 365 even for time periods that are less than a day such as a class period. The system expects no more than one custom period per day for any given course therefore a course can have only one class period per day.
Default	This is the default selected custom period on the course and unit pages. This should be set to the custom period that is used most frequent by the course/unit editors.

Note: If only one custom period is used for the site then it is suggested to delete all other unnecessary custom periods so course editors won’t have to deal with the unnecessary custom periods.

Override Custom Period Range

This override feature is course based and allows the admin user and course editors to set a shorter range of the system custom period for a course. This is useful when a course does not take place for the whole duration of a school year. The starting period and ending period in a unit is affected by the course override settings. The course editors can modify these settings from the course description page. The admin user can use this feature when creating or editing a course using the admin course management page:

Period Type	Choose one of the predefined custom periods suitable for the course. This is not displayed when there is only one custom period defined for the system.
Override Period Settings	To change the minimum starting period and maximum period length for units belong to the course.
Starting Period	This is disabled when “Override Period Settings” is not checked. Change to a value other than the system default is always the first period. This forces the unit to start on a period no earlier than the value set here.
Number of Periods	This is disabled when “Override Period Settings” is not checked. The unit ending period is affected by this setting and it can be set to the maximum based on this setting or an earlier ending period.

Course editors can use the “Course Description” page to modify the overriding settings:

Note: All examples below are based on the predefined “Class Period” which has a valid range of 1 to 365.

Example 1 – Unit page period range without overriding the custom period:

The starting period selection starts from class period 1 and the ending period selection ends at period 365:

Example 2 – Unit page period range with override set to: Starting period is class period 6 and Number of Periods is set to 10.

The starting period selection starts from class period 6 and the ending period selection ends at period 15: