Managing Field Sets

1. Field Set Basics

A FIELD is a place holder for a certain type of data that can been assigned for each student. For example "Name" and "Homeroom" are FIELDS in Aspen. A FIELD SET is a collection of fields that we display on the screen. Field names appear as headers in the table. There are 100's of fields available in Aspen. Knowing and creating some commonly used FIELD SETS will improve your efficiency and help you to find the data you need quickly. Watch the video on the right to learn more. (0:48).

2. Ordering and Hiding Field Sets

The available field sets are created at the Board, School and User level. You will have access to many Field Sets that you do not need. You can customize the order of your field sets and you can hide the ones you don't need. Watch this video to learn how to set the order of and to hide your field sets. (1:10)

3. Creating a Basic Field Set

Everyone who uses Aspen has data that is used more often. Creating your own field sets will ensure that you have the easiest access to the data you need.

For Example: Every student has an OEN, however only some users need to use this data. A secretary may need to use it to ensure that the student is registered properly. A data analyst might need the OEN to connect the student to other data such as EQAO. The prinicpal and teachers will not use the OEN very often. The OEN could be taken out of the field set and replaced with something more relevant to the role of the principal and teacher. Watch the video (1:23) to the right to learn the basics of customizing your field set. More details about creating a field set can be found in this video (2:32).

4. Creating an Advanced Field Set

You have already noticed that there are A LOT of fields! It is important to also know that FIELDS are organized by TABLES and there are MANY tables. This means that there are WAY more fields than you thought! One of the biggest challenges when learning Aspen is that the Table / Field structures are very different and use different names than we've seen before. You can access the other tables when you are creating field set by clicking the drop down when you are creating your field set. Watch this video to learn how to create field sets with data from more than one table. (2:10).

5. Modifying an Existing Field Set

It will sometimes be faster for you to modify an existing field set, rather than to create your own from scratch. Watch this video to learn how to modify an existing Field Set. (2:30)