Estimated Time To Read This: 2 – 3 minutes       In version 3.8 of PD Place, new functionality was added to the Qualification modules called “Qualification Clock Hour Rules”. If you do not currently track clock hours, I suggest you continue to read this document since there are preferences which allow you to change the clock hour labeling so that you could transform the tracking from clock hours to points, credits or any other category that is applicable to your organization. This new feature ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 2 – 3 minutes       We’ve all been there at one time or another.  With confidence we go and make a change and voila, it looks beautiful.  After we celebrate our prowless, a few days later we go over what we did and notice that something just isn’t right.  Why are all my people at the wrong location?  Why are they assigned to the wrong school? At times like these, the existence of a good backup and recovery strategy is paramount.  In the case above, the creation of a ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 2 minutes       Need a quick way to communicate with various groups within your school board?  The Email Groups feature allows you to do just that. *Note – click the images to enlarge Under the Supervisor section on MyPage click on the link “Email Groups”   Now you can use the value lists along the left side of the page to filter your email list by location, public or employee, employee group, supervisory role and more.  Simply click on the “search” button to make ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 3 – 4 minutes       Overview In PD Place there is a simple but unique capability that was introduced in version 3.7 called “Extra Credits“. Not many clients currently use this feature and therefore I would like to review its capabilities and give you some ideas of how it can be used. Extra Credits provides you with the capability to indicate that  the successful completion of an in-service will earn participants a specified number of special credit units. The number ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 1 – 2 minutes       With each new version of PD-Place, many new and exciting features are added. These features range from minor adjustments to large scale changes. How does the PD-Place team determine what new features are added? When the PD-Place team receives a new feature request, the request is recorded in a list of changes. This list of changes is reviewed by the PD-Place team between releases. If the request is a feature that many clients will find useful, the feature is ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 2 minutes       Are you a Professional Development Instructor at your school district? Then this blog post is for you!  We wanted to make sure you knew what PD Place software has to offer you. PD Place provides you access to valuable features that will help you manage all in the in-services you teach! Instructors can be given the ability to create new courses and in-services.   Instructors can mark attendance, course completion and assign hours or credits. Instructors can easily email ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 2 minutes       Have you ever been in that most undesirable situation where you want to do something, know it’s possible, but have no idea on how to proceed? Fear not, both ContinuED and PDPlace have an extensive help system that will show you the path you need to take to accomplish your goal.   In PDPlace, the help system can be accessed by using the rightmost tab in the upper left navigation bar.   In ContinuED, it is the second last tab, again in the upper left navigation ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 2 minutes       If you have ever had the task of organizing and managing an internal conference for your organization, you know just how much work is involved … a lot! With the Conferences feature in PD Place, it allows you to better organize and manage registrations, speakers, rooms for break sessions (complete with conflict checking), mandatory sessions and more. The latest version of PD Place has included even more features to help you: Waiting lists for conferences: now you can ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 3 – 5 minutes       In my last blog I introduced some of the features for managing External Training in PD Place™ and promised to expand upon these in subsequent posts. In today’s blog I’ll touch on budgets and funding allocation features which, in our latest version of PD Place, have been greatly improved. The budget capabilities have also been extended to the software’s In-Services section. Budget First, to view and maintain budgets, you must have ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 2 minutes       (Source: formrouter.com) Happy New Year!  I hope everyone had a very relaxing and fun-filled holiday. The time off was certainly welcome as it gave me time to think about many of the everyday items that we use; items, for some, that haven’t changed for many years. The thing that came to the forefront for me was the use of traditional paper-based forms. Paper-based forms, originally designed by hand and now commonly designed in many popular software applications ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 2 – 4 minutes       The external training module of PD Place™ v3.8 has been enhanced with new features and greater flexibility to help you customize the associated screens and processes. In this blog, I’ve provided an overview of two major features and give you examples of how you would utilize them. Funding Allocation This new feature allows you to allocate funds to specific groups of individuals within your organization based on employee groups. You can also assign a date ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 2 – 3 minutes       For your convenience, the In-services module in PD Place™ offers three different search methods. The first is by keyword. The keyword search field is found in the upper left corner of the In-service screen and will search all future in-services containing the keyword you provide. (Click on images to enlarge) Here are the results from this keyword search: The second in-service search method is the Quick Search. It’s found on the right side of the ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 2 – 3 minutes       We’re pleased to announce the release of PD Place™ version 3.8 is now available! Our team has been hard at work since the last release, making some incredible enhancements to PD Place. (Thanks team!) I also can’t forget to thank our insightful users who help drive the direction of the software with their feedback and suggestions; we hope you will like what you see! Here is an overview of some of the major enhancements: A new look: The PD Place logo had ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 1 – 2 minutes       Sometimes a simple change makes all the difference in terms of making your application easy to use. If you are a PD Place™ customer and only schedule events from Monday to Friday, it’s best to keep your PD Place Calendar on the 5-day setting.  In PD Place Preferences, there is a preference in the Calendar section entitled ‘Calendar Show Weekends.’  Set this to ‘No’ if you want the 5-day calendar. The change will allow you to see all of your ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 1 – 2 minutes       One of the most frustrating issues I had with PD Place™ has now been fixed!  With our new Version 3.8 release, the preferences throughout the product have been re-organized to make them much easier to find. For example, in previous versions of PD Place, you had to manually hunt down all the preferences needed to setup PayPal. Now, all of these preferences are located in the Pay Portal preference category. Additionally, a preference search has been added that ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 2 – 3 minutes       I thought that I’d spend a little time this month talking about the Special Event field that currently exists in PD Place’s in-service detail screen. Though not the software’s most commonly-used feature, the Special Event field does provide some very useful reporting and search capabilities that may just fit for your organization. Here are a few ways you can make use of the Special Event field: The Special Event field is controlled through two ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 3 – 4 minutes       In this post, I continue my blog series on employee group LDAP-related functionality in PD Place™ version 3.7.1 and later. If you missed my previous blogs, check them out here, here and here. Challenge In Part 3 of this series, I mentioned PD Place installations configured for LDAP integration can also be configured so that a user’s employee group associations are updated automatically from the LDAP server once that user logs in to PD Place. One thing to ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 2 minutes       Growing professionally through training and development is a crucial piece of the success pie. After all, you can’t move forward using the same old bag of tricks. If we’ve heard this time and time again, why is it so difficult to buckle down and complete that online course, or sign up for that workshop, or read through that new procedures manual? We all start off with good intentions. We even schedule time to devote to professional development and training, but ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 2 – 4 minutes       Continuing with my series of blogs on the latest LDAP settings for PD Place™, this post is going to focus on employee group LDAP-related functionality. (Check out parts 1 and 2 if you haven’t had a chance to. They cover an intro to LDAP settings and some key preferences.) The Logic Behind Employee Group Updating from LDAP When a user logs in to a PD Place installation that is integrated with an LDAP server, if that installation is configured to update the ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 2 minutes       There are many new features in the newly released version of ContinuED® that you may find helpful to boost your software’s effectiveness. The first is the newly added register extension pages. With the old ContinuED 2.2 registers, you were limited to a specific number of days where you could record attendance and have it display on the printed register. Generally, this limit was anywhere from 42 to 60 classes. With the introduction of the register extension pages, ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 2 – 3 minutes       As of version 3.6 of PD Place™, the capabilities to announce the creation of new in-services to specific groups has been greatly enhanced. This blog examines these new features and will clarify questions recently asked of our team. As a Webmaster, you can edit and maintain Target Groups and the announcement capabilities through fields on the Target Group detail screen shown here: PD Place will send announcements of new in-services if the field “In-service ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 2 minutes       In this follow-up to my first blog about the new LDAP features added to PD Place™ versions 3.7.1 and 3.7.1.1, I’m going to explain what Key Mapping preferences are. This is especially of interest to PD Place users who are considering integrating, or have already integrated, their installation with LDAP servers, such as the Microsoft® Active Directory® service. The “LDAP Employee Group Key Mapping” Preference This field is used when the user signs into PD ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 3 – 5 minutes       I recently read an article on EdWeek.org about the decline of structured teacher professional development over the past few years. The blog spoke to a report released by the National Staff Development Council regarding a research study on professional development. Findings showed that while “New Teacher Induction” programs (info on NTIPs in Ontario) were on the rise, structured programs were on the decline and teachers were participating in more one-time ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 2 minutes       PD Place™ has the built-in ability to specify what anonymous users can and can’t view when browsing the site.  The Preferences section will allow you to select a start page that an anonymous user will be taken to upon viewing your PD Place site, and will also allow you to specify which pages these users may or may not have access to.  You may also provide a link for them to sign up for their own account in PD Place. If there are in-services that you wish to hide ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 2 – 4 minutes       PD Place™ provides two features, Learning Programs and Qualifications, which are similar in nature but have unique capabilities that can be useful in different situations. Unlike many of the features in PD Place, both Learning Programs and Qualifications are linked to Courses Templates rather than the individual workshop or in-services. Learning Programs are basically one or more workshops/in-services that specific individuals are required to complete. Learning ... Read More