Selection Matrix

This needs to be the course code that you would enter into your timetabling software. If your school uses an extension to break up students into different class groups for the same course, we recommend that you don't put this in, as most timetabling software will separate the students into classes. You can change a course code, but you can't merge or separate them. For this reason, it's really important that you get this right from the outset. 
Course codes can be made up of letters, numbers, and some characters. You cannot use spaces or commas. 

This is the name that will appear for students. If there are different levels of the same course (for example, ATAR and General English), make sure that you use a consistent naming pattern for these, is it will look much cleaner when the students are making their selections.

You can put a short description into this field. Please bear in mind that no formatting is available here (including new line/paragraph), it should just be to give very basic information. Remember that you can put a link to a a handbook in the main area of the selection process, so this is not the most appropriate area if you have a lot of information for the course (more on this in the subsection called Selection Process). What you can do is point to an external website, such as your school's specific web page for the course or learning area. In the example below has been coloured to show you where things should go if you do want to point to an external site.

Red text shows you where normal text should go.
Blue text is where you should paste the URL.
Green is the text the student can click on to access the external website. 
Black text is formatting required to make the external link work. 

Regular text can go here, and for an external website <a href="http://pastethewebsitehere.com/" target="_blank">put the text they click on here</a>.

If we used the above example, this is what the student would see if they clicked on, or hovered over the information button for the particular selection:

This should be the numbers in the cost, if applicable. Do not use any currency signs (this is automatically done for you by SSO). You can include up to two decimal places. So if a course cost was $50, you could either put 50 or 50.00.

This should be text to accompany the amount entered in CourseCost, such as 'Approx. course cost' or 'textbook fees' etc.

This is the mathematical representation of how SSO should interpret which students are eligible to choose a selection. If you leave it blank, it will be open to everyone.

This is the text that students will see if they try to choose a selection that they don't have the necessary prerequisites for. If you entered the text, 'Min B grade Year 10 English', this is what a student would see if they hovered over the where they would normally select it:

If the course has a staff member assigned to it (and particularly if there are prerequisites for the course), enter the code that you put in the Staff area. If you've followed the recommendations in this help documentation, this will be the staff member's email address.

The staff member's code that is entered here will be able to allow/disallow a student being able to choose the course or selection, and will also receive the email notifications when a student requests an override to be able to choose a selection. 

You can leave this field blank if any student is able to choose the course or selection. You can also leave it blank if there is a prerequisite or if the selection is only available to specific students, but you will need to manually monitor it yourself. If a valid StaffCode is not entered, there will be no email notification sent when students request an override for this course/selection.

This field is to indicate if certain selections are weighted differently to others. Outside of NSW and ACT, this field should generally not be used. If it is a field you're using, it should just be populated with a whole, positive number, like 1, 2, or 3.

Go to: Checklist > (Year Level) > Selection Matrix

Use the upload box to save your spreadsheet data.

Follow the instructions as prompted. If the file has the required fields, you will briefly see a watermarked tick, which will disappear. The data will be sitting in an untitled table until you choose what you want to do with the data.

There will be two options you can select from:

• Add new and update existing codes
  This option is best if you are uploading for selections for the first time, or you are updating the course codes you have in the system. SSO will use the course code as the static value, and update all of the fields in SSO with what is in the spreadsheet. If a code doesn't already exist in SSO, it will create a new entry for it.  
  
  

• Purge existing and replace with data in spreadsheet
  This option is best if all of the course codes have changed, and you want to dump what you already have.
  Remember with this option that anything in SSO that you have associated with the existing codes will be purged, (including their occurrence in the Selection Process, recommendations for students, and anything to do with overrides), so only choose the Purge option if you want to delete all related data and clear your system before students are put into SSO.
  
  

Select Save to complete the process.