Managing homerooms

This is the how-to companion to the Homerooms concept, which explains what a homeroom is and why it’s its own object. This page is the doing: creating homerooms, setting their teachers, and moving students in and out.

Homeroom management is a roster edit, so it’s admin-only. Standard and Limited staff can view homerooms and their patrons (and Standard staff can still export the list) but don’t see the create, edit, or delete controls.

Where homerooms live

Go to School level navigation path: Roster then Homerooms (homerooms live in the school shell, not in any one library). The list shows each homeroom, its teacher(s), and its student count. Clicking a homeroom’s name opens its details page: the homeroom’s grade, teacher(s) (with the primary marked), student count and identifier, followed by a table of the students in it. The details page’s button: View patrons button, or menu item: View patrons in a homeroom row’s row action: ⋯ menu, jumps to the Patrons list filtered to that homeroom.

Narrowing the list

Search matches a homeroom’s name. Two filters are pinned below it:

button: Grade — the grades your homerooms are set to, plus No grade for the ones with no grade.
button: Teacher — every teacher who has a homeroom, plus No teacher for the ones with nobody assigned. A homeroom with two teachers shows under either of them.

Pick several values in one filter to see any of them, and use both to see only the homerooms that satisfy both; button: Clear all removes them. Filters ride along in the page URL, so a narrowed list is a link you can bookmark or send. They also scope the export: with a filter on, the button: Download menu says how many homerooms match, and the workbook you download covers those and the patrons attached to them.

Creating a homeroom

The button: Add homerooms button is a menu with two ways to add homerooms:

menu item: Add homeroom manually… opens a dialog to create one homeroom by hand. Teachers are optional: add any number, or none and attach them later (a teacher can have an honorific, Ms. Rivera, or not; both work). The first teacher you add is marked primary and fills in the field: Homeroom name unless you’ve already typed one. Give it an field: Identifier ( button: Assign makes one up) and, optionally, a grade. Creating it opens the new homeroom’s details page, where you can add students.
menu item: Import roster files… opens the same roster import used for the whole roster, including the homerooms and homeroom-teachers files. This is the way to add or update many homerooms at once, and reinforces the point above that most homerooms come from your roster.

Renaming and changing the teacher

A homeroom row’s row action: ⋯ menu, and the row action: ⋯ menu on its details page, have:

menu item: Rename… changes the homeroom’s name. Because students reference the homeroom object rather than a name string, the rename ripples everywhere the homeroom appears (the staff app, the OPAC, notices) with no effect on its roster.
menu item: Change teachers… changes which teacher(s) are attached. A homeroom can have any number of teachers, including none (a lead plus assistants, or co-teachers who share it). Choose button: Make primary beside each one who leads it, and select button: Primary again to take the marker off; a homeroom doesn’t need a primary, the same as one synced from OneRoster.
menu item: Set grade… sets or clears the homeroom’s grade.

Assigning students

A student belongs to at most one homeroom. You can set it from a few places:

From the patron’s record. The Edit patron dialog has the field: Homeroom field; assign one, or choose No homeroom to clear it. A teacher’s record has a field: Homerooms list instead, where you add them to any number of homerooms and mark the ones they lead as primary.
In bulk. Select several students on the screen: Patrons list and choose button: Set homeroom in the selection bar to assign, or clear, them all at once. Clearing takes students out of their homeroom but leaves faculty where they are, since a teacher leaves a homeroom from that homeroom’s own page. When the selection would change nothing, for example everyone is already in that homeroom, the dialog stays open and says why.
From the homeroom. A homeroom row’s row action: ⋯ menu has menu item: Add students…, which searches students and places the ones you choose into that homeroom; the details page’s button: Add students button does the same. Each result shows the student’s current homeroom; a student already in another homeroom is moved here. On the details page, button: Remove beside a student takes them out of the homeroom.

Deleting a homeroom

A homeroom row’s row action: ⋯ menu has menu item: Delete for removing a single homeroom; so does the menu on its details page. (Only admins see the create, edit, and delete controls; Standard and Limited staff see only menu item: View patrons on the row. The toolbar’s button: Download menu, which holds only the export, stays available to Standard staff, and is hidden from Limited staff along with the export itself.)

The Teachers column

When a homeroom has several teachers, the Teachers column shows the primaries inline and tucks the rest behind an and N more popover that groups primaries and assistants. When everyone fits, there’s no overflow trigger; when there are no primaries, all assistants are treated as primary so the column isn’t empty. Teacher names are plain text, not links.

Optional columns and export

The identifier column is hidden by default; turn it on from the button: Columns dropdown when you need to see homeroom identifiers (the join key used by imports). The toolbar’s button: Download menu downloads the whole roster as one workbook (menu item: Excel), or as a zip of CSVs (menu item: CSV files (.zip)) — the same file the screen: Patrons list exports, with a sheet each for students, faculty, homerooms, teacher assignments and community patrons. Searching and the two facets narrow it: you get the homerooms the list is showing plus the students and teachers in them, and nothing else. See Exporting the roster for what the file holds and how to upload it back.