September troubleshooting guide

If you need help with Arbor this September, you've come to the right place! Find links to common questions and answers to help you fix any issues and save time.

Logging in and access

Make sure all your staff have access to the system:

• If your password has expired over summer, you can reset this yourself by clicking the Forgot your password? link on your login page. If you’re still experiencing issues, work through these troubleshooting tips with your office team.
• Staff being asked for a date of birth or being logged into the wrong account? Check for duplicate email addresses
• Make sure teachers can access their registers from their calendar so they can all take attendance. There are three steps to check if they’re having trouble.
• Need to give more staff access to registers? There are a few different ways to manage access: Giving permission for other staff or teaching assistants to take attendance registers
• My Classroom - You can use layouts from past years as these are linked to the room, but you will need to set up seating plans each year as there will be different students in your classes. You can see how to do this here.
  

I need to change our timetable

As you welcome students back, you might need to make some changes to your timetable over the next few weeks. Here are our top articles:

• Staggered starts - If you have students who don't start right away or are undergoing Covid testing before they can return, take a look at this article: Staggered Start Dates
• Editing your timetable - If you need to make changes to your timetable, we recommend making edits in Arbor from the Timetable Slots page as this is usually much quicker than importing a new timetable. To make edits to your timetables, such as editing rooms and staff, or deleting unneeded slots, take a look at this article: Editing timetable slots and lesson times
• Timetable periods can be used to help align your attendance marks into set groups. If you want to use this feature again you’ll need to set them up by following the instructions in this article.
• Adding new lessons - To add new timetable slots just go to School > Programmes > Courses and click the lesson, and follow these instructions: How to set up Course, Class, Registration and Lesson registers
• Adding more rooms - If you need to move students to new rooms to keep them distanced, you can see how to set up a new room in this article, and move classes into a new room in this article.

Student enrolments and registers

Here's how to make sure all your students are in the right registers:

• Add new students - If new students join you who weren't added as part of the Applicants process, you can see how to add them then enrol them into registers: Adding a new student
• Enrolling in bulk - If you have lots of students you need to add to registers, see your options here: Enrol students into lesson registers in bulk
• Moving students to the right classes - Check your students are enrolled in the right registers and move them if needed: Moving students between classes or registration forms
• No registers! If you were expecting to have registers today but don't, you won't be able to take attendance! Follow these instructions: Why don't we have registers today?
• Students missing from your registers? You’ll need to check their enrolment using this article.
• Don’t have any meal registers or students in your meal registers? Check out this article to help resolve this.
• Duplicate students or enrolled applicants who are no longer joining may need to be removed. See this article to find out what you’ll need to do.

Assessments

Copying over Assessments

If you used Arbor Assessments last year, you'll need to copy over your setup to next year. Take a look here for how to copy over your assessments.

Data Collection Policies are linked to the Assessment policy. Because you need to select the assessments to create or copy over each year, you also need to define your Data Collection Policies each year if you use them at your school. You can see how to add Data Collections here.

If you've copied over your assessments but teachers can't access them or the boxes are greyed out, follow these instructions: Why can't the teacher mark the assessment?

We're new to Arbor Assessments

If you didn’t use assessments last year, you can set them up for next year to start learning from your data with simple, visual analysis screens.

• Primaries - we’ve created two ready-to-go assessment approaches for reading, writing and maths assessments. Use our handy quiz to pick the approach that’s right for you, and save time on setup with our step-by-step guidance.
• Secondaries - take a look at our Introduction to Arbor Assessments for a feel of what we offer, then use our easy-to-follow setup templates for English Literature and Language, and Double/Triple Science here, or more basic setups here.

If you’re looking to manage your assessments in a bespoke way, our expert consultants can work with you to help you tailor Arbor to suit your approach - contact your Account Manager for further details.

Behaviour

If you’ll be using Behaviour in Arbor from September you’ll need to copy over your setup to next year. Take a look here for how to:

• set up your behaviour policies for the first time if this is your first year using Arbor
• schedule your detention and internal exclusion sessions if you used behaviour in Arbor last year

I can't add students to a detention or internal exclusion session

Can't select detention or internal exclusion sessions to add students to? This means they haven't been scheduled for next year - you'll need to set them up following these instructions:

• I can't add students to a detention session
• I can't add students to an internal exclusion session

Communications

Make sure the right people can send email, SMS and in-app messages to the right people:

• Make sure you’ve completed the New School Year setup process to be able to choose the group in the To field for classes, registration forms, year groups, houses or custom groups.
• Sending communications -To send different communications, as themselves, the school or others, staff will need to be a Permitted Sender of the communication type they want to send. They will also need to have the right permissions. Check these settings here.
• Wrong signature at the bottom of emails sent - This is set from the staff contract, so check contract names on staff profiles to ensure the right job title appears in your searches and in communication signatures: Wrong job title or role in search and email
• In-app messages - Have guardians download the Arbor App and enable push notifications, or log in to Parent Portal to be able to receive in-app messages

Parent Portal and Arbor App

If you use the Parent Portal and Arbor App, guardians may have trouble logging in for the first time. Please advise parents not to contact Arbor directly, as we won’t be able to make changes to their data.

• Logging in - If you need to send login details to guardians you can follow these instructions.
  
• Why can’t parents log in? - Follow these steps to get guardians logged in if they're having trouble: Troubleshooting login issues for parents
• See what a guardian sees - troubleshoot issues and check your setup by Logging in as a guardian.
• Guardians may have issues if they have a profile set up for multiple children. See how this works here: Child at more than one school using Arbor
• Can't access a child - Make sure the guardians are linked to all their children to be able to switch between them on the Parent Portal or Arbor App: Linking siblings to each other and linking a guardian to a child

API and 3rd party connections

If your data hasn't updated in your 3rd party application, follow our Top tips for managing your APIs

Please contact the 3rd party first if you are having issues. If you have checked with the third party but still need to contact us about your app, please do so via email. Include screenshots and as much information as possible.