The Support Programme Validator is an ingenious, time-saving feature and it will be well worth spending time reading the following associated topics. The Validator can auto-create and auto-update estimated and actual cost items in Spirals for all your TEAM support programmes - in one go! The feature will also check for any errors or gaps in information that is required for cost item creation, ensuring that your support staff records are accurate, up-to-date and correlate with the cost items on Spirals.
The Support Programme Validator has three main elements:
1.Checking your support programme details for errors, omissions and inconsistencies
2.Guiding you through correcting the errors
3.Calculating the cost of support and allowing you to quickly turn this into new/updated cost items
What can the Support Programme Validator do?
Enables you to view hours and cost information that has been calculated from support programme data
Auto-create and Auto-update Estimated and Actual student cost items from a support programme
Using the Support Programme Validator for the first time
To begin the process of checking your support programmes go to Main Menu > 7) TEAM and Support Programme Management > Support Programme Validator
(Alternatively you can open the Validator from the Support Programme Manager.)
The initial test screen will appear. This checks all programmes and calculates support programme hours and weeks (estimated and actual) for the specified date range, then opens the main Support Programme Validator screen.
You can choose to check programmes within a certain date period. We envisage you checking your support programmes at the end of a term or half term when some of the support programmes have taken place. You therefore need to enter dates from the beginning of the academic year to the end of last term. There is little point in checking dates where support has not yet been delivered.
Although it is currently possible to run the checks and cost calculations separately, we recommend that you always select both to start with (both are selected as the default).
For more information about the option 'Don't check for Covering Staff...' see Fixing Error 5. We recommend that you leave this tick box ticked the first time you run the checks.
Click on the 'Run Support Programme Checks' button and follow the prompts.
The system runs tests which can take a few minutes depending on the number of programmes, sessions, students etc. Normally allow 1 second per programme therefore if you have 300 programmes it might take 5 minutes to run all checks on the records of work and sessions for each programme.