zOld - Setting up Student Lunch Balance Exports - Manual Method

The lunch balance export is used for creating lists that can be used to message a student or parent/guardian when the lunch balance is low (approaching 0) or negative. Some schools choose to do low, negative and extreme negative for those students whose balances are so extreme that it warrants a different message. 

Frequency

Low balances are balances that are not negative yet but approaching 0. What that cutoff is is up to you. Generally these are sent once a week and we typically see these sent on Sunday evenings though you can send them whenever you want.

Negative balances are balances that are less than 0. We often see these sent twice a week.

Extreme negative balances are balances far below 0, you set the cutoff and we often see these set to anything less than -50. Because of the nature of these we often see these run more frequently, even Sunday-Thursday evenings. 

Setting up the Lunch Balance export

The export should be set up in DEM from District Office. For information on getting to DEM read Getting to Data Export Manager (DEM)

1. Category = Additional Data Sets
2. Export From = BrightArrow Student Contacts - legacy version
3. Fields -> Select the fields in this specific order
   1. School_Abbreviation
   2. Student_Number
   3. StudentPers_GUID
   4. StudentFName
   5. StudentLName
   6. Grade_Level
   7. Enroll_Status
   8. Server_Date -> We will use to ensure we are only importing new files from that day
   9. Balance1
   10. Balance1_formatted
4. Click Next
   
5. First filter
   1. Filter By: Enroll_Status
   2. Value: = 0
6. Additional Optional Filters
   1. Enroll_Status = 0 -> Use if you do not want to send balance messages when a student is no longer active
   2. Balance1 # 0 -> Everyone starts at 0, excludes people with no balance because they do not ever keep a balance or charge for lunch
7. Click Next
   Note: Before the next section becomes editable the entire template must run. This is not a quick process and the larger your district the longer this will take
   
8. Export File Name = lunch_balances.txt
9. Line Delimiter = CR/LF
10. Character Set = UTF-8
11. Click Save Template
    
12. Name = BrightArrow - Lunch Balances
13. Click Save as New
    
14. Switch to the My Templates tab
15. Find the row for the new template and click the calendar button to schedule this template. If you do not see the calendar button or the Scheduled System Templates tab you don't have permission to schedule exports. For more information on that read Enabling DEM Scheduling
    
    
16. Days to Execute = Pick the day(s) you want to send a lunch balance message
17. When to Execute = pick a time 5 to 10 minutes before you want the message to go out. There needs to be some processing time for PowerSchool to generate the file and send it to us. If you want the message to go at 6:00pm then export at 5:55pm.
18. Send Output To = BrightArrow
19. Email Completion Report To (optional) = your email or an email to keep a record of if the export and file transfer was successful or if it failed. 
20. Click 
    
21. Your export will go at the scheduled time and day(s). To send a copy now so that we can get started setting up the import of the file you can click the Send Now button which looks like the Play button from DVD player
    
22. Let us know that the file is ready so that we can set up your import. Also let us know if you want phone/emails to come from parents, students or both.