What are the different Report Card format types?

This guide explains the four types of Report Cards available in Arbor—Standard Report, Long Report, External Report Card, and Custom Report Card—and outlines the main features of each one. This will help you decide which format best suits your school's needs. The type of report card you select is a General Setting and cannot be changed after you've set it up, so it's important to choose the right one from the start.

This is the first guide in our comprehensive series on setting up Report Cards in Arbor.

1. What are the different Report Card format types? (You are here)
2. Creating Standard and Long Report Cards 
3. Importing and sending External Report Cards
4. Crafting Custom Report Cards 

Permissions

You'll need the following permissions to complete the setup process for any report card:

• School: Report Card: Administer - import, share, email and download report cards
• Students: Report Card: Administer All/My Students - download report cards for students

If you don't have permission, you'll need to ask your admin team to grant it to you using these instructions.
 

The Four Report Card Formats

Arbor offers four distinct report card types. They are split into two categories: Arbor-generated reports and external/custom reports.

Arbor-generated reports have limited editability and customisation. You can control which assessments and students to include in these report cards, but, unless specified otherwise in the guidance, the format and layout of these report cards cannot be changed. These report cards are great for creating out-of-the-box, quick reports to share with parents.

External/custom reports take longer to create and distribute, but they are highly customizable and allow you to include more data and custom formatting.

Once a report card is added, you cannot change the format of your report card, so you cannot convert a standard report card to a long one, for example. For existing report cards, you can refer to the General tab of the report card's settings page to confirm the Template used when it was set up.

Arbor Standard Report

• This is a built-in Arbor format.
• The report is in landscape orientation and can span multiple pages, depending on the amount of content included.
• This format is ideal if you want a clear, concise, and structured overview of a student's performance.

Read more on these here: Creating Standard and Long Report Cards 

Arbor Long Report

• This is also a built-in Arbor format.
• The report is in portrait orientation.
• It includes a front cover, with the subjects and their associated comments starting on the second page.
• This option is ideal if you require a more formal, multi-page report that features a distinct cover page.

Read more on these here: Creating Standard and Long Report Cards 

External Report Card

This format is designed for schools that have already created a bespoke report card using an external system, such as Microsoft Word or a publishing tool.

• It allows you to upload and send out your pre-set reports using the Arbor platform.
• You use this if you have a report design you love and don't want to recreate it from scratch in Arbor.
• As reports need to be created or merged outside of Arbor and then uploaded to Arbor, these are likely to take longer to set up than a built-in report card.

Read more on these here: Import and send out External Report Cards 

Custom Report Card

This format gives you the highest level of control and flexibility without ever having to leave your Arbor site:

• You can create a completely bespoke format for your report card.
• You have the ability to edit the layout and text using an HTML editor.
• Crucially, you can use custom merge fields pulled from a report in the Custom Report Writer to include almost any data point you need.
• Choose this option if you require a specific layout or need to incorporate highly unique data fields not available in the Standard or Long reports.

Read more on these here: Crafting Custom Report Cards