Custom Fields give every student 25 free-text boxes for detail that doesn’t fit a tag, like the specific provisions behind an AARA (Access Arrangements and Reasonable Adjustments) flag or notes for a case-management process. You set the 25 labels once for the whole school, type data straight onto a profile, or collect it in a spreadsheet and bring it in with the Custom Fields template.
In this article
Setting up your field labels
Entering data on a profile
Exporting the Custom Fields template
Collecting data in the spreadsheet
Importing your data back in
How the import handles existing data
Guide
What custom fields are
Custom Fields sit beside tags on the student profile, and the two work together. Tags handle categories, like a risk-management group or an AARA flag. Custom Fields hold the extra detail behind a category, in free-text boxes you can type anything into.
For example, you might add an AARA tag to a student to mark that they have access arrangements, then record their specific provisions in an AARA details custom field.
Setting up your field labels
Each student has 25 custom fields. Open the cog on the Custom Fields panel to see all 25 and set a label for each one, such as AARA details. You can set these up however your school wants, which leaves room for plenty of uses.
Entering data on a profile
To add data by hand, first find the students you want. From the Home page you might open the Find Panel and search for everyone with a particular tag, such as AARA, which gives you a Found Set of those students.
Open a student’s profile and click the tags option. The custom fields appear on the right, alongside the tag and a record of when it was added and by whom. Type your detail into the relevant field, then click through the rest of the Found Set to do the same for each student.
Exporting the Custom Fields template
For larger jobs it’s quicker to work in a spreadsheet. Go to the Export tab and choose Custom Fields. There are two options: export with the data already in TrackEd, or export a blank template built for data collection.
Choose the blank template when you want to gather new data in Excel and bring it back in.
Collecting data in the spreadsheet
The exported file has the student ID, the student name, and one column for each of your custom-field labels. If you’re collecting data for just one field, collapse the columns you don’t need so only the relevant one is visible. The other columns stay in the file.
Fill in your data and save. Because it’s a standard Excel file, you can complete it away from TrackEd, for example at home, or hand it to someone who doesn’t have access to TrackEd.
Importing your data back in
When the file is ready, go to the Import page. The Custom Fields import sits under the Data Collection heading, select Custom Fields, drag and drop your saved file, and run the import.
How the import handles existing data
The import replaces whatever is currently in a field with the value in your file. A blank column is left alone, so empty cells won’t wipe data that’s already there. If you’d rather edit existing values than start from scratch, use the export-with-data option, change what you need, and import the file back.
