Cindy Loo-garcia: Well, thank you, everyone, for joining this afternoon. I know it's been a long day. Since the opening this morning, this has been a great conference. Love all the great information and speakers. It's been fantastic. So today we're presenting managing your data and ASAP. My name is Cindy Loo-Garcia. I'm a client success manager with ASAP. And prior to that, I was working for adult education in ESL and high school diploma. And my colleague Kevin-- Kevin, if you want to introduce yourself?

Kevin: Hello. This is Kevin with ASAP. I'm an implementation manager, so I normally work with all the new organizations that get on board. And I've been with the company for about five or so years.

Cindy Loo-garcia: All right. So I'm going to go through the first about 12 slides or so. And then we're going to switch over to Kevin, and he's going to navigate within ASAP a bit to show you how to get to the settings for managing your CAEP data in ASAP 4. So what we plan to cover this afternoon-- it's basically reviewing the data files and then talk about actually reviewing the data before you do the expert, so kind of preparing your data for exporting over to CASAS, export settings.

The three on the top, I'm going to go through fairly quickly because a lot of those slides-- it's really more for reference. I'm not going to go through the individual files one at a time, but I will point out settings in ASAP to help you configure what you need to do to collect-- for example, how do you collect your demographic data? How do you collect your class information? And so on. Then we're going to go into best practices, a little bit of data analysis, and then a couple more resources after that.

I want to try to run through this fairly quickly because I do want to open it up for Q&A. But feel free, again, to post questions in the chat. And Kevin and I will be monitoring that throughout. All right, we have a quick poll. I just want to see how many of you are longtime users of ASAP and how many of you are fairly new to the system. So you can-- give you a few seconds to answer that.

All right. So it looks like we have 64%-- or 62% of those of you that are longtime users, and about 40% are new. OK. Oh, it's changing. And Marjorie, I'm not quite sure when the--

Marjorie: Sorry. I stopped it. Go ahead.

Cindy Loo-garcia: OK, no that's fine. OK, so it looks like now it's closer to half and half. But it looks like we have 44% that are new users. All right, so I will get probably a little bit more detail than I anticipated to, but not to drag out because I have about 50 slides to cover. But anyway, thanks again, all of you, for joining. This is awesome.

All right, so the set of data files-- there's eight data files that are exported from ASAP and then brought over individually into TOPS enterprise. So we're going to go through a little bit about how to review, how to gather the data, in what order, and how to keep track of everything. So to start off with, I just want to show you-- this is a screenshot of ASAP 4. And again, Kevin's going to actually navigate you through this. So I'm just going to show the slides first.

Over on the left, there's a whole different navigation system with staff, students, classes and so on. So reporting is towards the bottom. From reporting, we have tabs at the very top. So instead of scrolling through the list of categories, the tabs are kind of nice so that you don't have to scroll as much. The Export TOPS page, this is found under Miscellaneous. And similar to ASAP 3, you can store that report, and that will be one of your favorites. So it will show in that tab.

And then this same window will appear from within ASAP 4. The TOPS pieces, the data management of the export files, and also when you're entering the update and goals, all of that you're going to see, comes from ASAP 3. So it's just knowing where to navigate to everything. But you're basically going to be working within the same reports and same windows. So this is the Export TOPS page. It has buttons for each of the data files, different options I'll go through quickly.

And the first two set of files that you typically bring over, you export at the beginning of the year are the personnel. So those are your teachers and your classes. And you're doing that at the beginning of the time period. As far as-- and then this is where it kind of shows on that export page-- as far as the class information within the class detail, this is where you assign the instructional setting.

So when you export that CLS file, you want to make sure that you're including that instructional setting. So that, again-- that's the classroom, classroom plus distance learning, distance learning only. So those are part of the detail page. You go to details and there's a CASAS tab specific to that. And then the next one is-- within that same area, there's another field for special programs.

That can also be configured, and again, is part of the class export page. If you are a Perkins-funded program, if your CTE programs or Perkins-funded, you want to make sure that you assign any of those classes to the special programs of Carl Perkins.

And then to get over to the update area from the class page, you're basically going to the ellipsis in the upper right. You're going to hear us talk a lot about ellipsis. Those are those three little dots in the upper right corner. You go to Manage CASAS TOPS, and it will bring you to where you manage and do the updates. And again, Kevin's going to show us how to do that.

Over on the left bottom in the screenshot, all of your classes must be configured to a WIOA course group. Even though if you're not WIOA funded, the WIOA course groups are going to translate over to CAEP instructional program areas. So WIOA, ESL, ELL, again, that's going to translate over to CAEP, English as a Second Language. They're all configurable within our Settings area. Again, the course group is required for any class, any set of enrollments that you're bringing over to TOPS.

And then finally, this is just a screenshot of the Manage CASAS update area. So this is where you enter the goals. This is where you do the updates. And then you can also import CASAS test scores into ASAP. So this is a really nice place for teachers to be able to go to quickly see the class test scores, make sure placement was proper, TOPS goals-- they can enter all of that per student, and, again, any of the update data. All right. So Kevin, I'm going to have you switch over.

Kevin: Cool. Thank you. Can you see my screen?

Cindy Loo-garcia: Yes.

Kevin: OK, thank you. So this is ASAP version 3. I just want to show you, to get to ASAP version 4, you would go to the lower left of the navigation bar on the left side, and click ASAP 4. So that takes you to A4 here.

And I just want to also point out, if you ever need to switch back to version 3 or ASAP Classic, we have added this link in the upper left corner, Return to ASAP Classic. You can also do that by going to the question mark icon in the upper right corner and then Return to ASAP Classic here. So that takes you back to version 3.

So I wanted to go to the Reporting section. As Cindy was talking about earlier, on the left navigation under Reporting and then the Miscellaneous tab up here, this is where you're going to see the export TOPS Files report. If you don't have access to reporting, you may need to go into the user access page to set this up.

So I'm just going to quickly show you. If you go to Setup on the left nav, over on the left side here, lower left, User Access, and then the User Access tab up here, at the very bottom, we have View Reports. So if you make this active, then you'll be able to see the Reporting option on the left here. So again, under Reports, Miscellaneous, and then Export TOPS Files. If you click on the star to the left, that will bookmark it and add it to the Favorites section, so you'll see it under the Favorites tab right over here.

So once I click on Export TOPS Files Report, you'll see that this opens up in a new tab as opposed to opening in a new Windows 10. In version 3, when you click on the Export TOPS Files Report, it opens it in a new window. But now, it opens in a new tab. So if you need to switch back to the ASAP, go back to the Home page or anything, you can click on the tab that you have in your browser on the left there.

So here, you'll see the personnel and class records View and Pick buttons, as Cindy was showing you earlier to get the staff records and the class records. I'm going to take a step back and go look at the class and show you how to set up some of the CASAS-related stuff. So on the left now, I'm going to click on Classes and go to an ESL class.

So I'm going to search at the top. And this class here has a few students, so here's a good example. And then if you go into Details tab, and then the CASAS tab, this is what Cindy was talking about earlier. So if I click on this pencil icon to edit, Instructional Setting is important. So this is where you can choose if it's in-classroom or if it's classroom plus distance learning or distance learning only.

And then you also have the special programs here. So if you're Carl Perkins funded, you can click in here, and the quickest way is, if you search Carl Perkins, you'll see it down here. You can click on that, and it adds it to the class. So then we want to make sure that it's saved on the right side.

Just quickly-- I'm seeing some questions in the chat. Yes, first of all, the user access-- if you don't have user access to the User Access page, you might need to speak to an administrator for that. And then also, reporting, just quickly, if you're in ASAP 4, you go to Reporting on the left over here, and that takes you to your Favorites first. And then if you go to Miscellaneous tab up here, that's where you'll see the Export TOPS Files Report.

Let me go back to that class again to finish up another note about the ESL class. And so on the lower left under Course Groups, this is where you can see or double check that it is in a WIOA course group for this course. Like Cindy said, that makes it so that our reporting works when you're exporting data from ASAP to TE. So WIOA is a really important one. Even if you're not WIOA funded, this is what we need connected to the courses so that you can report for CAEP or WIOA.

And if I go over into the upper right corner under the ellipsis, and then Manage CASAS TOPS, this is where, first, at the top here, you'll see TOPS Goals. So if I click on that, you can set the goals for each of the students in the ESL class. There's also the Instruction Level Entry Records right over here. So it's a similar popup. And you can set that for each student. And this is the same as it was in version 3, so this hasn't changed. Can tell right now that we're pretty much pulling this from ASAP Classic at the moment.

The class test scores, you can see over here if you click on this link. You can also look at test scores for individual students if you click on Test Scores down below for any of these students to the left. And then you can also click on Update next to any student to get the popup window for doing updates. And you'll see, this hasn't changed at all either. It's the same layout as it was in version 3 as well. Oh, sorry. There we go.

And I also wanted to point out that if you click on Advanced ESL, upper left here, this will take you to the class page. So it returns you back to wherever you were before.

I'm seeing some questions. Let's see. Can you have only one special program?

Cindy Loo-garcia: Yeah, I believe you can have one or multiple, Karen. You can definitely enter additional special programs. But you can have just one. And then the other question, does marking WIOA course group also apply to ASAP 3 or just 4? It's both. So ASAP 3 and 4, it's just the look that's different, but the data is the same. So you definitely want to make sure that you configure your courses to WIOA course groups.

Kevin: And then another question-- are e-test scores imported from TE or manually entered? So they are imported from TE into ASAP. Yeah.

Cindy Loo-garcia: And I have a couple of slides at the end of the PowerPoint that have instructions for importing the test scores. All right, and the other one, the student bulk editor-- I need to do barrier to employment in bulk by class. So those would be the customer groups. And I'm trying to think. Kevin, maybe we can do that a little bit later. I don't want to--

Kevin: OK, sure.

Cindy Loo-garcia: We'll definitely-- and I'll make a note and definitely get back to-- let me just make a note of that. All right. Oh, and then taking attendance-- so Kevin, if you can quickly show where that Take Attendance link is.

Kevin: Yes. Sorry. Yes, so it's going to be the ellipsis in the middle over to the right side at the top of this roster. So if you click on that, you'll see Take Attendance here, the third option. And this is the Attendance page on ASAP 4. So you can change the date range at the top here. And then you can also click on the little arrow to expand and see the roster for each date. And then you can mark them present or absent. And then it automatically saves.

Cindy Loo-garcia: All right. And then can you go back and do the bulk hourly as well?

Kevin: Yes. So under that same ellipsis here on the right side, Take Hourly Attendance is the last option. Then you'll notice that this is the same view as it is from version 3. So I think the first thing I have to do here at the top, you'll see, is select attendance type. Once I do that, it shows the roster, and then I can plug in attendance here.

Cindy Loo-garcia: And so this is where you're differentiating between seat times scheduled classes versus anything done outside or in Zoom meetings. You can definitely separate the attendance hours that way. All right. And then, Kevin, if you can go back to the class detail and the custom fields-- let's see.

Kevin: Oh, is that under Course Page?

Cindy Loo-garcia: Oh, you know what? You're right. So Judy had a question about the custom field-- so the A-22 and the CIP. And from what I understand the A-22, I think it's now called the CALPADS number but, basically, still refer to it as the A-22 code. And the CIP code is used for the community college classes-- so if you have classes at the Adult School that could be brought over for credit, I think, to the community college. Right.

There's another question, how do I find out who can give me access? Everything you're doing, I'm not able to, and I'm the program administrator. Steve, if you can reach out to us-- we'll have our contact information at the end, and we'll definitely go in and just make sure that yours is updated. OK.

Judy, if you have two, then one of them is the default. So if you have two A-22, you should definitely be using the A-22 code. You do have the ability to add another field. And it sounds like your school probably added the one that just says A-22. So make sure that you're entering the data under the A-22 code for that field.

All right. OK, Kevin, I think I'm going to steal the screen from you. Let's see.

Kevin: Oh, could I show one other thing really quick? Sorry.

Cindy Loo-garcia: Oh, sure. Go ahead.

Kevin: So this is going to come up later, but I want-- since I have a screen right now-- to look at the help articles for California adult schools and managing CASAS TOPS. You can go into the question mark icon at the top, click on Get Help. This takes you to our help articles, or we also call them Learning Center. And the fastest way is if you actually go over to the logo in the upper left, this takes you to the Home page of the Learning Center.

But then if you scroll down, you're going to see California Adult Schools category. And from here, there's a bunch of useful stuff. But for managing CASAS TOPS, if you scroll down this page, you'll actually see we have an entire category for that. So if I click on this where it's blue now, that shows you all of the articles relating back to that. And we'll talk about that at the end of this presentation as well.

Cindy Loo-garcia: All right. And there is another question about the A-22. You are required to have that information in there. It exports over with the CLS, the class file. So make sure any of the classes for those that you're bringing over to TOPS Enterprise, definitely make sure there's an A-22 code. If you have a class that's only for concurrent high school students, those you don't need to worry about because those are funded separately. But you do want to make sure that you're aligning your data to all the CASAS or the CAEP requirements-- CAEP and CASAS requirements.

All right. OK, go back to our PowerPoint here. So I just have a sample of an export file, so I pull up one just for a class. And it just kind of shows you what that data file looks like before it's brought over to TOPS. You're going to have a vendor code-- so it's just showing that it's coming from ASAP so that TE knows it's imported from a third party-- California, your four-digit agency ID. And the agency ID is your CASAS agency ID, not your TOPS four-digit.

We also have a four-digit number. So make sure that when you're in the TOPS page-- so when you're actually on here-- that you're using your CASAS agency number, not your ASAP ID. So again, this kind of gives you an idea of what the Export file looks like.

So there is a data exchange manual that explains every single one of the data files, and it goes into detail onto what the selections are, what's required, every piece of data that's brought over from ASAP to TE. All right, so the next couple set of data sets-- you have your Demographics, and then you have your Student Program Status, which is basically the instructional program start date.

Your demographics-- all of that information is collected through the ASAP registration form. And so when you're setting up that form-- and again, most of you are a quarter of the way through the school year, so you've been collecting data all along-- but just make sure that all of your CAEP and WIOA fields are required. Make sure you're requiring ethnicity. Make sure you're requiring date of birth.

When you're running the DIR after the date has been brought over to TOPS, you run the CAEP DIR report in CASAS, you shouldn't have anyone with a missing date of birth. As long as you make it required, then your data should be clean. You want to control your data collection.

Just make sure that you're filling in all the blanks so that later, you don't have to go through and do a lot of editing and adjusting within the two programs. Right. And so this is where the DEM files and the student program status.

In the next file are your entries. So the entries are important because it carries the barriers-- so those are all those barriers to employment. Those are critical. And again, this is separate from the demographics. And then this is where it lives. And then the next one, once your school year has started, you want to make sure to export your attendance hours minimally monthly. Twice a month is even better, and even weekly as ideal.

CASAS is recommending that you export as daily attendance hours. So if you've done that since the start of the new year, since July 1, that's great. If you're doing cumulative or updated, which is the other option, you need to stay in that course through the end of the school year. So if you're doing cumulative, don't switch to daily right now. You have to stay within that same option that you chose at the beginning of the year.

All right, and this explains that a little bit. So daily, it's literally a record for each individual date. Cumulated, it's the grand total of whatever record that you're exporting at that day and time-- so for that class up to that date. And then Update, you're actually building. So you're doing September 1 to September 15. And then the next time around, you're going to do September 16 through September 30. It's a little bit more to manage, but it is another option. And again, I just put a note here that CASAS does recommend daily.

And then here's the page for that and some of the options within there. You do have to enter a date range, and there's also an area where you choose either Cumulated or Daily with each of those. And here's an example of daily attendance from ASAP. So it's actually marked as DAILY, and the hours converts into minutes. So that's how CASAS can do the math. As you're bringing these in weekly or monthly, these are marked as DAILY attendance. And then this is an example of how it actually looks in CASAS once you bring the data over.

All right, and then a couple more data files-- I'm getting closer to the end here. This is when you're finishing a class, leaving a program, or the end of a semester. But it is an optional piece to bring over. Not everyone uses this one. And so that's down here, number 7.

And then finally, Updates-- Updates is at the end of your term. These are the outcomes. This is what the end goal is. Obviously, you want to mark if a student got a job, if they got a better job, earned a high school diploma, passed a GED-- any of those. So this is what the teacher's typically entering into ASAP. And then this is where you can grab that from. All right--

Kevin: There's a quick question.

Cindy Loo-garcia: Any question, yeah, on the data files?

Kevin: There is one question asking why it's recommended from CASAS to do daily attendance.

Cindy Loo-garcia: So daily-- initially, it was if you're WIOA funded, it's to be able to track the periods of participation. It's also more, I want to say, granular and allows you to really view student data over-- they're doing these periods of participation. They're analyzing the data for a student over a 90-day period. They can see exactly when the student came, when the student stopped coming, and, hopefully, when the student came back. So it's just a lot-- as Lydia says, it's a lot more efficient for reporting. But again, if you're not doing daily, don't switch until next year, next July. So just keep on the track that you're doing at this time.

And then also, Francisco, great comment-- teachers tend to forget who is in class a day after attending class. So you just want to make sure that they're really keeping track of it. OK, that's a really good point.

OK, so you're using ASAP to collect the demographic data. You have the class enrollment. You have the outcomes at the end of a term. How do you review the data before you bring it over? And again, you do want to make sure that you review. You can bring the data over and not review, but then you end up having to edit the data in TOPS, and then you have to go back and edit it in ASAP. So it's better to be efficient and review before. So you really want to prepare the data before it leaves ASAP.

So one example is as you're bringing it over, and if you, for some reason, have some students not enrolled in one of the seven CAEP program areas, it's because it wasn't assigned to this WIOA course group that I had mentioned earlier. So this WIOA course group is critical to assign a student to these CAEP programs. To do a quick inventory on whether you have your courses set up properly, there's a report in ASAP called All Courses By Organization, and that allows you to check whether-- it'll say, WIOA yes/no. There's a column to the right, and it'll tell you if it's missing.

All right, the other two reports that you can actually find on this TOPS page allow you to check the demographic data and also review the update before you export. So the demographic information it's literally a spreadsheet of all the student data, so you can easily go through.

So this is an example. You can easily spot check and see where the holes are. But as I mentioned earlier, you want to make sure that these fields-- highest degree earned, ethnicity, labor force status-- make those required so that you don't have these missing pieces.

Again, this allows you to not only see the basic registration form. This report also includes the primary and secondary goals. So the demographic, it shows the class enrollment, and it also shows goals. And then reviewing the update data, that's to check to make sure that the teachers are doing what they're supposed to at the end of a term. It's just a really good way for them to-- for you, actually, to make sure that they completed everything, and it's all ready to export.

And so here's another report I recommend for that same purpose. It's the Class Summary Grid by Time Period. It's a very busy report that has a lot of data. But if you scroll over to the right, there is a TE_Update_Count, so it tells you how many students have a TOPS update completed, and it also tells you the last date. So if it was done early on or just recently, you'll know that the teacher has done their homework. So this report, the class summary grid by time period, and then also this review update data. So either one of those allows you-- again, that's closer to the end of the term. But again, this is how you make sure and prepare that your data is accurate.

All right, any questions, Kevin, that you want me to--

Kevin: Nope. We're good for now.

Cindy Loo-garcia: OK. And then just a few slides on Export Settings and Options-- so you can definitely filter by fiscal year or full year and then course groups, courses or classes-- however you want to manage your data. If you want to bring over multiple course groups, let's say, maybe you want to bring over your ESL and your high school diploma classes together so you're not doing it separately, you can create a special course group for you to capture all of those. And then on the opposite end, maybe you only want to grab beginning ESL. You don't want to do intermediate yet.

You can just create a course group just for that level. So there's a number of ways. It really depends on the size of your agency, depends on how many people you have managing TOPS.

I know one school, they actually have two TOPS data people. One is working on the career tech ed end, and the other's doing diploma and ESL. It really depends on, again, your agency. We're giving you the tools, the filters to grab your data. But it's up to you to determine, do you want to have one time period? Or do you want to have multiple time periods? Or you can have multiple time periods and just include it in one fiscal year. It really depends on who, basically, is assigned to what or how you want to manage that data.

I was on a call recently where one individual was actually exporting one teacher at a time. And so I asked why. Well, we changed it, so there was one class, just one class that this one particular teacher didn't need to have reported to CASAS. So by doing it per teacher, she was eliminating that error.

So instead, we moved that class that the teacher was teaching to a completely different course. We just added something in parentheses at the end. So now, she's able to not have to do the teachers individually. She can do it all at once in one group or even one time period. So again, these are very broad filters up here, and it's kind of up to, again, the size of your data, how many classes you have, how many teachers you're managing, and all of that.

And some additional export options-- so these are the options for when you're exporting daily attendance or cumulative. Sorry, this got chopped off here. And then we get a lot of questions about Export Extended Class ID, the one in the lower right here. What that simply means is if you have multiple time periods within a school year, it allows you to export and include the time period with that class, OK?

So again, this is one of those things, if you've been doing it all along, perfect. If you haven't, well, don't start doing it midstream because you're going to end up with duplicate data in the system. So just be careful with some of these options. Feel free to reach out to us. If it's something you have a question on about a lot of these features, just reach out to us.

You can also view headers if you want If you're doing data analysis before you bring the files over. If you're exporting and you're downloading the file-- so you have the-- and I think I have my-- here's my little list of files. So this is like sample files that I would have downloaded. Before you do-- I should say, if you want to do the data analysis, open the file, validate that everything is correct, but then re-export it.

Once you open one of these files, the problem is, you're going to lose-- if you have any data that would have a leading zero, especially with the demographic record, you're going to have a leading zero for the month, it's going to remove that leading zero so data set won't go into CASAS. So if someone had a January birthday where it's 01/03//1993, the zero in front of the one is going to come up with an error when you try to bring it over. So definitely analyze your data if you feel you need to. Open it, but then re-export it.

So maybe this is the one I opened. Delete this one, and then bring in the new one. Again, that's just the nature of Excel. It will delete a leading zero.

And then the other thing-- if you bring headers over to the file as you're viewing it, that's good and well. But you probably should uncheck it. If you uncheck it here, you won't have problems bringing it over to TOPS Enterprise. If you show the header, you simply need to-- as you're going through the Import Wizard in TOPS, you just have to make sure you delete that top row. And it'll prompt you to do that. It really will prompt you to do that.

All right, some other options for student records-- OK, some other options for student records, you can include students with just attendance hours. If you're collecting Social Security numbers, you can include that in the demographic export. And then if, for some reason, you want to include concurrent high school, you can do so. We automatically leave those out if you have them flagged as the customer type of concurrent because those are, again, funded by a different source. But again, these are different options for the demographic export.

All right, and, again, these are the core groups I was talking about. Again, it's the wheel of course groups. We do have course groups called CAEP Course Groups. Those are really for an internal report for ASAP. That used to be where you can report out of ASAP.

So now, we're going through the clearinghouse of CASAS. So because of that, you're actually needing to use these WIOA course groups for anything that goes over to CAEP, OK? So again, and that causes a lot of confusion. You can definitely assign a class to both. And Kevin, do you mind bringing that up? I'm going to have you switch over to ASAP, If you don't mind.

I just want to show you you can-- I want to say, best practice is assign a course to a CAEP and a WIOA just to have that in the system. But internally, we have a way for you to run these CAEP reports in ASAP. So if you look at this one, here's Advanced ESL. And it says, Course Group, it says CAEP Programs, J18/19, and then the WIOA. So this course is assigned to three course groups.

So you do want to try to include all three. The WIOA one is for TOPS. The J18/19 is an annual report. It's an old annual report. But a lot of schools still use it. And then CAEP allows you to run these internal reports that we have in ASAP. So for the most part, to be safe, Assign your courses to one of each-- one WIOA, one J18/19, and one CAEP. What you don't want to do is assign a course to two WIOA course groups because the only one of them is going to win. So make sure that you assign it to just one. All right.

And then I don't know if you want to go to the Setup Course Group, just so they can see where that lives.

Kevin: Yeah, so Setup on the left, and then Course Groups on the left, and then if you click on the dropdown box on the right side, you'll see those course groups. And so if you were to select one-- for instance, WIOA ESL here, I can see the current courses that are under the WIOA ESL course group. And if you need to add other ones, you can do that on the left side by searching for the course, and then you can click on the plus sign icon to move it over to the course group on the right side.

Cindy Loo-garcia: Right. So this is where you manage those course groups. Again, this page comes from ASAP 3, so you're still working within that same format as before.

Kevin: There is one thing someone wanted clarification on-- so under Reporting, if I go to Miscellaneous and Export TOPS files here-- so if they select a fiscal year, correct me if I'm wrong, Cindy, that you also have to select a time period. So you're not going to be able to export all at once for multiple time periods. You do have to select a single time period here.

Cindy Loo-garcia: Yeah, no, if you have all fiscal, you have to choose one. So if you choose FY 2022, it will actually bring all of those over.

Kevin: Oh, got it.

Cindy Loo-garcia: Yeah, yeah, so that does work that way. And can you show them how to set up a fiscal year as well?

Kevin: Yes. So if you go into Setup, and then Terms on the left, and then go to-- so the fiscal year section is here at the top. Your time periods are down here at the bottom. But fiscal year, this section, if you click on the plus sign to the right, you can add more fiscal years. You can also modify or edit the existing ones below that area with the ellipsis here, and then Edit.

Cindy Loo-garcia: Yeah, so this whole area, it's set up in terms, which is really nice. It's altogether. Your holidays are here. So everything is in place. So that's good. All right, so I'm going to swap over again. OK, and, again, this allows you just to pick the result, either all at once or individually.

And I'm going to pop over to best practices. OK, basically, we're recommending that, as you're doing and as you're exporting these files, importing them into TOPS, you're doing it first of the year, middle of the year, then January, you want to keep a record of all of that, OK? And what we're recommending is that you basically use this frequency. So the personnel or your teachers, at the beginning of the new year or whenever there's a new hire, classes each term and so on.

So this is the frequency. And then this is what we recommend that you include in a log sheet. You want to create your own log sheet because, again, you're going to own this. This is your method of figuring out what you did two months ago to validate that you did bring over that one ESL class that was new, but did you grab that data or not? You want to bring over the-- to record the file type, the date that you brought it over, check that it's completed, any notes, that type of thing.

Now, we have a sample here from a veteran user who is a great resource. And so he was able to provide me with a log that he would use. So you're entering a process date here, marking things off that are done. Maybe you want to actually put in the code of every single class so that you really have an idea of exactly what you brought over.

Note how many records, which file was it? Was it a personnel file or the attendance file? And then if you notice here, if you're doing daily or even updated, you want to make sure that you include your date ranges for the attendance files as you're bringing them over.

But again, you're responsible for getting everything correct by the end of the school year. So these are ways to keep on top of it every week, every month so that, at the end of the year, you will have that confidence that, OK, yeah, I brought everything over from the first quarter, second quarter, the update records are in at the end of January.

When did I do those? Because I know there's another set of update records for June. That type of thing. You just want to, again, keep a really good log of everything that you bring over. And the other thing that's helpful too-- you are going to have your list of files, and it'll show the dates. But again, I think it's helpful to really document everything to have more of a journal of everything that you're managing.

All right, and data analysis-- we recommend that you use the CAEP Data Integrity. This aligns better with ASAP. The NRS Data Integrity looks at some of the program areas a little bit differently. So this is the one we definitely recommend. And I know there is a lot of focusing on the students with less than 12 hours.

I just want to show you the sample of this, and this is the report that you can run in ASAP to zero in on that population-- Class Enrollments With Total Hours and Home School Report. It's a long title, but this is the name of the file. If you go to the Reporting tab, it's an attendance report. Again, Class Enrollments With Total Hours and Home School.

We have a lot of schools that take advantage of this. It's just a really nice overview. It'll show you all your students have zero hours or the ones under. Those are the ones you want to reach out to. In the report, we include the phone number, so you can easily contact them, email addresses. So this has been a really helpful report. And again, that's for you to compare back and forth between TOPS and ASAP.

Another really good piece of advice from another veteran user-- whenever she's looking at the pre and post-test numbers, if you're post-testing numbers seem to be a little bit low, you want to make sure that you take advantage of when students are post-test eligible. And this is a report in ASAP that you can use to identify those students. So it's the Attendance Summary by Student in a Course Group. This is under the Custom Queries under Reporting. And it'll show you the total number of hours in a particular program. So you run the report by a program area. So in this example, we're looking at just the WIOA course group.

OK, I'm going to fly through this. I know time's running out of time. So importing CASAS test scores-- just know that this is here. This PowerPoint is available for you to download. So there's very clear instructions for importing CASAS test scores. This is a screenshot of CASAS and where you go to export those test scores. And then finally, Kevin, I'm going to have you kind of go over the resources here.

Kevin: Yep, so to look at the Data Exchange details and instructions on the casas.org website, once you get to their Home page, you want to click on Product Overview at the top in the header. And then on their left nav, you want to click on Software, and then TOPS Enterprise, then TOPSpro Enterprise Help, and then you'll see Data Exchange to take you to that page you see down below.

Cindy Loo-garcia: Again, this is the resource that tells you what's in the demographic file-- exactly what-- is it gender, race, ethnicity, and so on, what's in the class, the teacher name, the start date and all of that. It tells you exactly what's inside each export file.

Kevin: And then to see the CASAS TOPS related health articles on the ASAP Learning Center page, as I showed you earlier, the direct link is on this slide here under ASAP Resources, the title. But when you're on the ASAP side, you can go to the question mark icon, click Get Help. And then from there, if you click on the ASAP logo in the upper left, that takes you to our Learning Center home page, where you'll see a category for California Adult Schools. You can click on that. And then on that page, you'll see a section that says CASAS TOPS Management.

And then we have our support email, which is support@asapconnected.com. And we also have a direct support line, which is the number you see there, that 855-245-6946.

Cindy Loo-garcia: All right, and this is also a good way to get a hold of Kevin or I. So if you email support, and if you specifically want to reach out to one of us, our support team will tap us on the shoulder, and we'll reach out to you. All right, any other questions in the chat here? Oh, Genesis-- to everyone, the casas.org website has changed, so there's that link to the Data Exchange.

And Stephanie, instructions on student bulk editing-- OK, we can do that. All right. Let's see. Did I miss any?

Kevin: I think we were going to go over the Customer Grouping page for a second.

Cindy Loo-garcia: Oh, that's right. Yeah, I think-- you know what? We're just going to send that information over.

Kevin: OK.

Cindy Loo-garcia: OK. And Juliana, definitely reach out to support. I know you probably have already. But reach out to support, and feel free to have Kevin and I join into that. OK. So Ann, the bulk editor information-- I'm jotting your name down. And do you have an email address I could send that to? And again, I might be able to-- oh, thank you. Perfect. All right. So Ann, we will definitely reach out to you.

All right. Yes, I do. Perfect. All right. Thank you, everyone. I appreciate. You guys stayed in for the long haul here. [laughs] It's been a long day, I'm sure.

Marjorie: All right. Thank you, Cindy. Thank you, Kevin. And thank you all for joining today's session. I just posted the evaluation link in the chat box. Just remember to hit Next when you get there until you find the session block that you would like to evaluate. And as a reminder, all resources can be found in the Resource section of the vFairs platform landing page. You can add the resource to your swag bag or email it to your colleagues that may have not been able to attend this session, which I think is pretty cool.

You'll also be able to access the recording and all their sessions on the vFairs platform shortly after it's done processing. Remediated recordings will be added to the caadulted.org website in the new year. And all registrants will be notified by email and the newsletter about that. So thank you, everybody, for coming. It's been a great day. I hope you have a great evening, and we'll see you tomorrow. Take care, everyone.

Cindy Loo-garcia: Thank you, Marjorie.

Marjorie: You're welcome. Bye.

Cindy Loo-garcia: Bye.