Scheduling Students to Max Time Frame (Overscheduling Method)

The purpose of this article is to serve as both a tutorial as well as a reference. The processes shown below are by no means required, but are instead our recommendation for the best practices in regards to scheduling students in OnlineSMART.

When scheduling students in OnlineSMART, you always want the schedule to end on their Maximum Time Frame date.

To find this date, you first need to divide the student’s Total Contract hours by your Minimum Attendance Percentage

• i.e. You have a new student who is contracted for 1500 hours, and your school’s Min. Att. % is 75%.

1. Dividing 1500 by .75 results in 2000 hours


2. Now that you have this number in mind, you need to schedule this student UP TO the date they would cross over 2000 hours, and make sure that date is the final day on their schedule.

This is where our Overscheduling Method comes into play:

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1. First, navigate to the Schedule page in the student’s OnlineSMART profile




2. Click the Insert Schedule Date button in the bottom right of the screen




3. Select a schedule template from the dropdown menu on this page, or alternatively you can enter in how many hours on which days this student will be scheduled.


• When manually entering hours, enter a zero for any day/shift that has no scheduled hours (These zeroes prevent overlap if a student ever needs to change their schedule)


• For more information on this page, please watch our short training video on Student Schedules


4. Enter the student’s start date into the Start Date field, and then estimate an end date that will result in the student having too many hours


• i.e. a 1500 hours course is a little over one and a half Academic Years, so making the End Date two years from the Start Date in this step usually ensures that you overschedule them


5. Click Insert Range in the upper left corner of the window.

After clicking Insert Range, you will be taken back to the first Schedule page. From here, click the button at the top of the window, and select the List of Scheduled Days by Student report in the list of reports that appears (It’s the first option).

1. Once the report loads, click the Last Page button at the top of the screen.





2. Using the Cumulative Hours column, check to make sure that the student has more hours than they should when taking Maximum Time Frame into consideration
• i.e. in our example, we want the schedule to end on the day they cross 2000 hours, so for this step, you would want to verify the student has more than 2000 hours in the Cumulative Hours column on the last page




3. Now, using the Single Page button at the top of the screen, go back one page at a time until you find the date the student crosses 2000 hours (or whatever number of hours you came up with in the original calculation)



4. When you find this date, go to the NEXT DATE on the schedule and either copy it (with Ctrl+C), or record it elsewhere.





5. Switch browser tabs back to the student’s schedule page in OnlineSMART (Leave this browser tab open that has the Schedule report)


6. On the student’s schedule page, click Insert Schedule Date at the bottom right again


• You will need to use the Wipeout Template for the next step, so if this template does not already exist in your list of templates, fill every box (Monday-Sunday, Day & Night) with zeroes, type “Wipeout” into the Template Title field, and click Save Template.


7. Select the Wipeout template from your list of templates


8. Paste or enter the date AFTER the day the student crosses over your Maximum Time Frame date into the Start Date field


• For end date, you just need to pick an arbitrary date in the future, far enough out to cover the dates we entered in the first series of steps. In the below screenshot, 2029 was used as an arbitrary date, because we only scheduled to 2025. This will guarantee all scheduled dates past the Maximum Time Frame are erased.


9. Click Insert Range at the top left of the window

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If you left the other browser tab open containing the schedule report, navigate back to that tab and click the (refresh) button at the top to update it with the information you just entered.

1. When the report finishes refreshing, go to the Last Page again and verify the schedule ends on the date they cross your Maximum Time Frame number of hours (2000 hours per the example in this article)





2. At this point, you may also go back one page at a time until you see the day they would reach the number of hours they are contracted for. This will be your Contract Graduation Date which you can copy and paste or enter into the Contract Grad. Date field in the Financial tab of the student’s OnlineSMART profile.