What's new with PT Conference Maker v9

What's new with PT Conference Maker v9?

Note from John Kirn, lead developer at Graphtech for PT Conference Maker...

This is PT Conference Maker's eighth year in development- Happy birthday PTCM!

Every year I implement many new PTCM features, making it more intuitive and easier to use. In most cases these new features were requests from the schools already using PTCM. We welcome this feedback, as it has helped grow PTCM into the robust solution that it is today.

As usual, I have made numerous major changes and feature enhancements to PTCM this year. Below are my notes on what's new with PT Conference Maker v9, with those that I feel are more significant listed first.

-John Kirn
-Graphtech Systems

Even more options for registration start and stop times

PTCM v9 adds a new feature where schools can set the parent registration period to begin and end on the 5 minute mark. With PTCM v8 this could only be set on the 15 minute mark, and with PTCM v7 and older this could only be et on the 30 minute mark. This means the registration period can begin at a time like 8:10am.

Data verification for too many enrollment records per student

PTCM v9 adds a data validation routine to verify the Enrollment data file contains a maximum number of 12 enrollment records per Student ID. This will prevent uploading enrollment.csv files that were exported improperly, likely including enrollment records for too many semesters.

Single date/time range filtering when managing teacher breaks and unavailable times

In the Admin Module, when you are managing teacher breaks or teacher unavailable times, PTCM v9 adds an option to filter the display to only a specific day/time range, instead of always having to view all the day/time ranges on the same page. This will make certain things easier to do, like setting aside an entire day/time range as unavailable, and avoid possible human error with all the clicking required (the Check All/Uncheck All button can be used for just one day/time range).

This feature has also been added to the teacher limited Admin Module, if your school has elected to give teacher's access to it.

Recycling basic school information

If your school used PTCM in the past, PTCM v9 adds a feature were most of the questions regarding non-date related basic school information page will be automatically populated in the Implementation Module based on the answers you previously provided.

Teacher last name lookup bug fixed

PTCM v9 fixes a bug where looking up a teacher's last name in the Admin Module would fail, if the last name contained an apostrophe (example: O'Brien).

Word .docx support for Parent Letter sample files

If Graphtech is providing your helpdesk support, you are prompted to upload a sample of your Parent Letter during the Implementation process. PTCM v9 now supports uploading this sample in Word .docx format, in addition to the other previously supported formats.