Alan Siu's Blog

Tag: powerschool

  • Escaping an apostrophe on a PowerSchool custom page variable

    Acknowledgements: Thanks to Roger Sprik on the PowerSchool forums for this tip. I have a custom page that uses the last name field: ~([05]Last_Name) The only problem with that is if the last name has an apostrophe in it, that can lead to unexpected stuff when used in jQuery. Apparently, you can strip out the…

  • Using GET input to search in a PowerSchool custom page

    As far as I can tell based on what scant documentation there is for PowerSchool custom pages, on trial and error, and on PowerSchool forum responses, there doesn’t appear to be a way to use a not-equal-to comparison operator. Any PowerSchool power users who want to correct me—I’d love to be wrong about this. If…

  • PowerSchool tlist_sql fails but SQL Developer query is fine

    Full props to Romy from the PowerSource forums for helping me sleuth a problem with a query working just fine in SQL Developer but then failing (with a blank-loaded page) in tlist_sql on a PowerSchool custom page. Basically, a colon, even within quotation marks, messes up the query within tlist_sql, so I had to use…

  • Converting seconds to time in PowerSchool custom pages

    I know someone’s going to jump in here and tell me that PowerSchool’s custom pages have no problems with SQL statements but are just less forgiving of syntactical errors than SQL Developer is, but I couldn’t get any of the convert-seconds-to-time standard SQL approaches to work in a PowerSchool custom page using tlist_sql, even when…

  • PowerSchool Custom Pages Exporting Tables to .csv Using jQuery

    Someone on Stack Overflow made a jsfiddle to export existing HTML tables to .csv using jQuery. It does not, however, translate directly to PowerSchool custom pages, because PowerSchool has its own implementation of jQuery that’s a little funky. I’ve done a little playing around with it, and this tweaked code seems to work. For the…

  • PowerSchool custom pages and REGEXP_LIKE

    In general, if you test a SQL query in SQL Developer against your PowerSchool database, that same SQL query should work in a PowerSchool custom page using ~[tlist_sql][/tlist_sql]. It does not, however—I discovered just now—work if you include a REGEXP_LIKE as part of your query. Will work fine in SQL Developer… just not in a…

  • PowerSchool custom pages tlist sql queries for specific courses

    Usually if you’re doing a tlist_sql query on a PowerSchool custom page, any SQL query that actually works in SQL Developer will work on the custom page. I found an odd one today, though—if you have a SQL query that actually works in SQL Developer that uses course names (e.g., ((course_name=’Name of One Course’) OR…

  • Using “current selection” of students in PowerSchool custom pages

    I didn’t come up with this one on my own (big shout-out to Roger from the PowerSource forums), but I wanted to document how you use a “current selection” of students in the PowerSchool custom page: ~[tlist_sql; SELECT st.dcid, st.last_name, st.first_name, st.grade_level FROM Students st INNER JOIN ~[temp.table.current.selection:students] stusel ON stusel.dcid = st.dcid ]<div class=”photo_box”>…

  • Getting GPA methods into a PowerSchool custom page that uses tlist_sql

    Acknowledgements: the actual genius of this workaround approach (including the important snippets of code) is from Adam L. on the PowerSource forums (you can search the forums for a thread entitled “tlist_sql and GPA methods”). I find ~[tlist_sql] handy for doing reports out of PowerSchool, because it’s transparent (someone can look directly at the page…

  • Using text variables in tlist_sql queries in PowerSchool

    On custom pages in PowerSchool, you have the option to use something called tlist_sql to run SQL queries on your PowerSchool database. Sometimes, you can insert variables in your query. I’ve had good luck with SQL queries using built-in variables that are essentially a number: ~[tlist_sql; SELECT t.Name, to_char(st.Test_Date, ‘MM/DD/YYYY’), st.Grade_Level, ts.Name, ts.Description, sts.NumScore, sts.studenttestid…

  • Creating a custom page in PowerSchool for a .csv export

    Even though teachers can easily get their own class lists out as an export from Gradebook, and you can also use DDE (Direct Database Export) to get such a list out after having selected the group of students, I thought it’d be nice to have a page that’s dedicated to get a .csv out of…

  • Making PowerSchool custom pages useful for sophisticated reporting

    If you don’t want to use PDO on a WAMP server to connect to and report from your PowerSchool database, you may still want to do some sophisticated reporting from PowerSchool’s custom pages. Unfortunately, custom pages is a bit of a coarse tool that’s also not well documented (in terms of sophisticated reporting—simple reporting has…

  • Using PDO on a WAMP server to run PHP reports from PowerSchool

    SQL Developer Queries General ODBC Access 🙁 WAMP and PDO Prerequisites Strongly Consider Using SSL Install Drivers Use PDO to Connect to Database This may be a niche setup, but I’m going to try to document it here, in case anyone else is interested in how this gets done. SQL Developer Queries If you are…

  • Packaging PowerTeacher Gradebook for Munki

    Important Update: As of April, 2017 (possibly earlier), the LaunchGradebook.ptg file appears to be tied to the specific user logged in, so it can’t just be generically distributed. So if you don’t have an older version of LaunchGradebook.ptg for your organization, you essentially won’t be able to distribute Gradebook to your users. Fortunately, (hat tip…