Some of the building highlights include a two-story indoor climbing wall, an indoor koi pond, and lots of trees and greenery both inside and out. The east wing is designed around a Grand Canyon theme – inspired in part by the CEO Charlie Kratsch’s visit to Havasupai! The west wing has the koi pond and lots of bamboo plants to create a Zen-like environment. The building itself is shaped like the USS Enterprise from Star Trek fame and has many starship-like design features. We’re still settling in, but we would be happy to give you a tour if you’re in the neighborhood. In any case, you’ll know where we’re hanging out these days – on the climbing wall!

If you happen to be in the area, join us for our grand opening celebration on Saturday, September 13th. There will be a parade, games, crafts for kids (and adults!), and food, of course. Please RSVP to Stephanie Wilson at if you plan to attend.

Census: Contingency Plans
We are all familiar with the adage “better safe than sorry.” Having a plan in place and guaranteeing access to needed resources helps reduce our response time and increases our ability to prevent emergencies from escalating in severity. This is why it is tremendously important to make sure your school is tracking emergency contact information for students (and potentially staff) in NASIS.

After a student has been entered into your system, make sure there are at least two other related people in census. One of these people should be a legal guardian. The other should be an emergency contact in case the guardian is unavailable. Some schools also track contact information for physicians, as well as allergy and other medical information in the student health module.

Census: Guardian/Mailing
There are several areas of NASIS, including the Student Information>Summary tab and the Census>Demographics tab which house contact information such as addresses and phone numbers. In many of these places, there is a Private checkbox. Although this box can be used for any of your school’s internal purposes, many schools decide to use it as an indicator to exclude this information from public directories or general distributions.

However, this data is not automatically excluded from canned reports such as mailing labels. The best way to exclude this information in a list of addresses and phone numbers is to use the Ad Hoc Filter Designer and filter on records where the private check box is not marked. This Ad Hoc report can contain information to build out a directory or can be used in conjunction with many canned reports within NASIS.

Census: Maintaining Relationships
Creating or modifying the Relationship Types in Census is simple.

We recommend keeping relationship types uncomplicated. Creating every possible combination of relationship type is going to put an unnecessary demand on your secretaries and registrars. See the illustration below for a solid example listing of clear cut relationship types. Note that it is unnecessary to specify the role of the student in the relationship. A descriptive label indicating the nature of the relationship for the contact is sufficient.

Census: Putting It All Together
In this issue we have looked at a few key areas of Census: Emergency Contacts, Relationship Types and the various flags on those relationships. Other processes in Census help build a complete set of student data, such as entering household and address information (primary and secondary), as well as defining relationships including non-household relationships.

The best way to “put it all together” is to use the Census Wizard. Below are the basic steps on using this tool. For more detailed steps, check out the March 2008 newsletter.

There are many benefits to uploading student and staff pictures into your NASIS system. Having the photos in the person’s record allows your staff to easily learn the student and staff names by associating them with their picture. After the pictures have been imported into NASIS, the pictures can be viewed in the following areas:

Staff photos (non-student)
Census > Demographics tab

Student photos
Mobile interface
Census > Demographics tab
Student Information > General > Summary tab

Instruction > Grading By Student
Instruction > Grading By Task
Instruction > Attendance
Instruction > Printed seating charts

See the notes at the end of this article to set teacher preferences for viewing pictures in these areas.

The beginning of a new school year is a perfect time to review and make necessary adjustments to User Security in NASIS. Since schools are starting the third year of using NASIS, User Security is already in place. However, it is a good time to look at the overall organization and set up of your existing security configuration. This article will provide recommended best practices, as well as some useful tips and tricks.

Recommended best practice is to have User Groups that are role-based and include a combination of Tool Rights and Calendar Rights. Even a group with one member is acceptable. If a staff member is being replaced at your school, simply add the new staff member to the user group. This type of setup is the easiest to maintain.