Oncourse Manual

Website Administration Guide
Aristedes Maniatis
Rex Chan
Natalie Morton
Barry Wazzy
by Aristedes Maniatis, Rex Chan, Natalie Morton, and Barry Wazzy
Copyright © 2011 ish group pty ltd
Licence
This Work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Australia [http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-
sa/3.0/au/] License.
Disclaimer
No liability for the contents of this document can be accepted. Use the concepts, examples and information at your own risk. There may be errors and
inaccuracies that could be damaging to your system. Proceed with caution, and although it is highly unlikely that accidents will happen because of
following advice or procedures described in this document, the author(s) do not take any responsibility for any damage claimed to be caused by doing
so.
All copyrights are held by their by their respective owners, unless specifically noted otherwise. Use of a term in this document should not be regarded
as affecting the validity of any trademark or service mark. Naming of particular products or brands should not be seen as endorsements.
Table of Contents
I. Installation and setup ........................................................................................................................ 1
1. Downloading and installing onCourse ....................................................................................... 3
System Requirements ........................................................................................................... 3
Database considerations ........................................................................................................ 3
Installation ........................................................................................................................... 4
2. General Preferences ................................................................................................................ 11
General Preferences Terms and Definitions .......................................................................... 11
Setting your General Preferences ......................................................................................... 12
The Messaging Tab ............................................................................................................ 13
LDAP Authentication Tab ................................................................................................. 14
Message Templates Tab .................................................................................................... 14
Maintenance tab ................................................................................................................. 15
AVETMISS Tab ................................................................................................................. 16
Printing Tab ....................................................................................................................... 16
Export Tab ......................................................................................................................... 17
3. Advanced Setup and Configuration ......................................................................................... 19
Setting up Users ................................................................................................................. 19
Importing and Exporting data .............................................................................................. 19
Tag groups ......................................................................................................................... 21
Custom fields ..................................................................................................................... 21
Financial Setup ................................................................................................................... 22
Advanced onCourse Features .............................................................................................. 22
II. Entering data ................................................................................................................................. 33
4. Tags and Tag Groups ............................................................................................................. 35
Using Tags ......................................................................................................................... 35
A flexible way to add classification and structure to your data .............................................. 35
Creating a filter in advanced search to make tagging more powerful. ..................................... 37
Tagging and Untagging more than one record at once .......................................................... 37
5. Sites and Rooms .................................................................................................................... 39
onCourse Terms and Definitions ......................................................................................... 39
Working with Sites and Rooms ........................................................................................... 39
Creating Sites and Rooms ................................................................................................... 41
6. Contacts - Tutors, Students and Companies ............................................................................. 45
Working with Tutors .......................................................................................................... 45
Creating Tutors .................................................................................................................. 47
Contacting tutors by email or SMS ..................................................................................... 48
Payroll ............................................................................................................................... 49
iii
7. Creating Courses .................................................................................................................... 51

Working with Courses ........................................................................................................ 51
VET Courses ...................................................................................................................... 54
8. Creating Classes ..................................................................................................................... 57
Working with Classes ......................................................................................................... 57
Class Record Tabs .............................................................................................................. 59
Special Class Functions ...................................................................................................... 60
Creating Classes ................................................................................................................. 61
Publishing classes online .................................................................................................... 65
Creating class budgets ........................................................................................................ 66
Adding RTO and VET data to class records ........................................................................ 67
Working with classes that have enrolments .......................................................................... 68
Marking Student and Tutor attendance ................................................................................ 69
9. Concessions ........................................................................................................................... 71
Concessions ....................................................................................................................... 71
Creating a concession ....................................................................................................... 71
Promotions ......................................................................................................................... 72
Concession Types ............................................................................................................... 72
III. Processes ...................................................................................................................................... 75
10. Processing Enrolments .......................................................................................................... 77
Terms and Definitions ........................................................................................................ 77
Working with Quick Enrol .................................................................................................. 77
Creating an enrolment with Quick Enrol .............................................................................. 78
Payment ............................................................................................................................. 82
Concessions ....................................................................................................................... 83
3rd Party Payments ............................................................................................................ 84
Payments In ....................................................................................................................... 85
11. Cancellations and Transfers ................................................................................................... 89
Cancelling a single enrolment ............................................................................................. 89
Using the refunded amount as general credit ........................................................................ 90
Refunding a student ............................................................................................................ 90
Cancelling A Class ............................................................................................................. 91
How To Transfer A Student From One Class To Another ................................................... 92
Enrolling A Student With Credit ......................................................................................... 93
12. Creating and Modifying Contacts .......................................................................................... 95
What is a contact? ............................................................................................................. 95
Adding a new contact ......................................................................................................... 95
Adding a new contact in Quick Enrol .................................................................................. 96
iv
Modifying contact details .................................................................................................... 96

Adding Pictures To Contacts ............................................................................................... 97
Relationships ...................................................................................................................... 98
13. Private Bookings and Custom Class .................................................................................... 101
Creating and Enrolling Students in a Custom Class .......................................................... 101
14. Waiting Lists ...................................................................................................................... 103
Enabling waiting lists ....................................................................................................... 103
Student web subscription to waiting lists ........................................................................... 103
Managing waiting lists within onCourse ............................................................................ 104
Advising students on waiting lists that a class is available .................................................. 105
15. RTO Guide ......................................................................................................................... 107
Setting and modifying outcomes ........................................................................................ 107
CSWE courses, classes and outcomes ................................................................................ 109
VET delivery hours .......................................................................................................... 111
VET Certificates ............................................................................................................... 112
AVETMISS Exports ......................................................................................................... 114
Courses by Cluster ........................................................................................................... 115
16. Reporting ........................................................................................................................... 117
Reports within onCourse ................................................................................................... 117
Reports by Type ............................................................................................................... 118
17. Creating Custom Reports .................................................................................................... 181
'Modifying onCourse reports ............................................................................................ 181
Connecting onCourse to OpenOffice .................................................................................. 183
18. Exporting ........................................................................................................................... 187
General principles ............................................................................................................. 187
Export templates ............................................................................................................... 187
Exporting XML ................................................................................................................ 187
19. Frequently Asked Questions ................................................................................................ 191
20. Marketing ........................................................................................................................... 193
Marketing is the key to keep existing students and gaining new ones ................................... 193
Absolutely effortless integration ........................................................................................ 194
Mailing list subscription .................................................................................................... 195
Waiting lists ..................................................................................................................... 195
21. Communication Tools ......................................................................................................... 197
SMS, Email and snail mail ............................................................................................... 197
No spam please ................................................................................................................ 198
22. Sending messages ............................................................................................................... 199
Searching for students ....................................................................................................... 199
23. Mailing lists ....................................................................................................................... 201
Why use mailing lists ....................................................................................................... 201
v
Creating a mailing list ...................................................................................................... 201

Student self subscriptions .................................................................................................. 201
Manually adding or removing students from a mailing list .................................................. 202
Unsubscribing a contact from a mailing list ....................................................................... 202
24. Discounts and promotional codes ......................................................................................... 203
Be clever about how you attract students to your courses by controlling how discounts are
advertised and allocated .................................................................................................... 203
25. Concessions ........................................................................................................................ 207
Concessions, discounts and promotional codes are a powerful part of onCourse marketing. .... 207
26. Payroll ............................................................................................................................... 213
Setting Pay rates ............................................................................................................... 213
Assigning tutors to classes ................................................................................................ 214
Confirming Attendance and exceptions .............................................................................. 215
Generating Payslips .......................................................................................................... 215
vi
List of Figures
7.1. Course, class and timetable .......................................................................................................... 51
8.1. Course, class and timetable .......................................................................................................... 57
vii
viii
List of Examples
5.1. How to set up a new site ............................................................................................................. 41
5.2. How to set up a new Room ......................................................................................................... 42
6.1. How to create a new tutor ............................................................................................................ 47
7.1. Example course and classes ......................................................................................................... 51
7.2. How to create a new course ......................................................................................................... 53
7.3. Creating a VET Course ................................................................................................................ 55
8.1. Example course and classes ......................................................................................................... 57
8.2. How to create a new class ........................................................................................................... 62
8.3. How to create sessions ................................................................................................................. 64
8.4. How to create a class budget ........................................................................................................ 66
8.5. Setting the VET information for a class ........................................................................................ 67
10.1. A basic enrolment ...................................................................................................................... 79
10.2. Adding a second or subsequent enrolment ................................................................................... 80
10.3. Adding additional students ......................................................................................................... 80
10.4. Adding additional charges .......................................................................................................... 81
10.5. Adding a 3rd party payer ........................................................................................................... 81
10.6. Enrolling a student in credit or debt ............................................................................................ 82
10.7. Example enrolment .................................................................................................................... 84
10.8. How to process a payment in ..................................................................................................... 85
10.9. Example of a Payment In ........................................................................................................... 86
10.10. Example of paying off a previous and current enrolment together .............................................. 86
11.1. Example .................................................................................................................................... 91
26.1. How to create tutor pay rates .................................................................................................... 213
26.2. Assigning a tutor and payrate to a class ..................................................................................... 214
26.3. Setting tutor attendance for payroll ........................................................................................... 215
ix
x
Part I. Installation and setup
Chapter 1. Downloading and installing
onCourse
onCourse is free to download and use and is available for download at http://www.ish.com.au/download
[http://www.ish.com.au/onCourse/download].
You will need to download two applications: onCourse Client and onCourse Server. The Server application
manages your data and the Client application allows you to log in, edit and view your data. You will usual-
ly only need one onCourse Server application running, and onCourse Client installed on every workstation
which needs access.
Tip
There are no limits to the number of clients you connect to your server. There is no 'single-user' ver-
sion of onCourse, but you can run the server and client on the same machine.
You should normally only run one onCourse Server on your network to avoid problems that arise
from having multiple databases.
System Requirements
Windows XP through to Windows 7 with Java 1.6
Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) - 10.6 (Snow Leopard) with Java 1.5 or later
FreeBSD with Java 1.6 or later
Linux with Java 1.6 or later
Solaris 10 with Java 1.6 or later
Database considerations
onCourse Server can be used with its built-in database, or for larger installations with an external database.
You can choose between the following databases:
Built-in
MySql
Microsoft SQL Server
Most users should choose the built-in database option as it is by far the simplest and performs very well even
for databases of over 100,000 students and a dozen simultaneous users. The other database choices will re-
quire an Enterprise support plan from ish (explain ish), and could be more appropriate if you already have
existing database skills and infrastructure and have more advanced reporting and auditing requirements.
3
Installation
Installation
onCourse server is available for the following platforms:
Windows
Mac OS X
FreeBSD
Linux
Solaris
onCourse client is available for the following platforms:
Windows
Mac OS X
Download the server version for your operating system from the website: www.ish.com.au/oncourse/down-
load [http://www.ish.com.au/onCourse/download]. You can mix platforms within the one installation, so for
example the server could be running on Linux, some clients on Windows and others on Mac.
onCourse on Windows
Instructions for installing onCourse on Windows
Server
1. Download the server version for Windows - this will be a file called onCourseServer-installer.exe
2. Double click on the installer after it's finished downloading.
3. Follow the prompts to choose a location for where onCourseServer should be installed.
4. Run onCourseServer by going to the Start menu -> All Programs -> onCourse -> onCourseServer
Client
1. Download the client installer for Windows. It can be on the same computer as the server or a different
computer. The file will be called onCourse-installer.exe
2. Double click on the installer after it's finished downloading.
3. Follow the prompts to choose a location for where onCourse Client should be installed to.
4. Run onCourse by going to the Start menu -> All Programs -> onCourse -> onCourse, or by clicking on
onCourse on the desktop.
4
onCourse on Mac OS X
onCourse on Mac OS X
Instructions for installing onCourse on Mac OS X
Server
1. Download the server version for Mac OS X - this will be a file called onCourseServer.dmg
2. Double click on the onCourseServer.dmg after it's finished downloading. Copy onCourseServer from the
window that pops up into your "Applications" folder.
3. Run onCourseServer by double-clicking on Applications -> onCourseServer
Client
1. Download the client version for Mac OS X. It can be on the same computer as the server or a different
computer. This will be a file called onCourse.dmg
2. Double click on the onCourse.dmg after it's finished downloading. Copy onCourseServer from the win-
dow that pops up into your "Applications" folder.
3. Run onCourse by double-clicking on Applications -> onCourse.
Running onCourse
Running the Server

For new users:
5
Running onCourse
If this is the first time that you’ve run onCourse server, you will be prompted to choose one of the following:
"New File" - for new database which will let you start adding your own data for your College.
"Sample File" - pre-populated with a range of sample records to allow you to get a feel for the onCourse soft-
ware without needing to enter lots of data.
"Existing File" - used to locate a onCourse database you previously created.
"External Database" - not recommended for first time users. This allows you to use an external MySQL or
MicrosoftSQL database to store your data.
We recommend you select the "Sample File" until you get the hang of OnCourse. It’s easy to remove the
sample database when you are ready to start using your own data. Which ever option you choose, will be
asked to choose a location to store the database. The location can be anywhere on your computer where
you wish to keep the data and can be changed later. onCourse will create a folder called "onCourse.iocdata"
wherever you choose to store your data file.
For existing users:
If you already have created a data file during a previous installation of OnCourse, you will not be asked to
create a new data file. OnCourse will continue to use your previous data file unless you have moved or delet-
ed it. If OnCourse does not automatically find your data file it will ask you to select from the four options.
Choose "Existing File" and point it to the storage location of your data file.
6
Updating onCourse
Running the Client
The relationship option, click "select" to choose a type of relationship between contacts
1. Username is "admin". Password is "admin".
2. Click the on the "advanced" button to see the server details
3. Click on "Find Server" button that appears, then click "login"
If you have a workstation firewall installed, you may need to allow traffic through that port for OnCourse to
run.
If the login failed, you will need to manually find the host name or IP address of the computer where ish on-
Course Server is running. If they are running on the same computer, you can use "localhost". If the server is
on another computer, it might have an IP address which looks like "192.168.0.10". You can find the IP ad-
dress in "Control Panels > Network connections".
Tip
If you see a line on the Server that says "Application service running" with a twirling busy icon next
to it, this means the server is busy and will be unable to accept client connections. Wait until the icon
goes away before connecting a client. If you start the OnCourse client before the OnCourse serv-
er has finished loading, you will get an error message. If this is your first time starting the server, it
may take a few minutes as the data file populates. Check the the status of the server, wait a few min-
utes and try again.
Updating onCourse
As new versions of onCourse are released, you will need to download updates to both the server and client
from http://www.ish.com.au/download [http://www.ish.com.au/onCourse/download].
We recommend making a backup copy of your onCourse.iocdata datafile before upgrading onCourse.
7
Installing onCourse Serv-
er on other platforms
To update, this is the recommended process:
1. Stop your currently running onCourse Server
2. Backup data folder by default: onCourse.iocdata
3. Install the updated client and server
4. Start onCourse Server
Installing onCourse Server on other platforms

onCourseServer on FreeBSD
Installing
1. Download the FreeBSD server package (onCourseServer.tgz) onto your FreeBSD box.
2. Run as root:
pkg_add onCourseServer.tgz
echo 'onCourseServer_enable="YES"' >> /etc/rc.conf
Our package places onCourse Server into the FreeBSD default location and creates a startup script to run
when the machine reboots.
Uninstalling the server
1. Type the following command as root in a shell:
pkg_delete onCourseServer-<version>
then press enter to safely remove all components of onCourse Server except for your very valuable data.
Tip
You can figure out what packagename and version of onCourse Server is installed by running
pkg_info -v | grep -i oncourse
Starting and stopping the server

onCourse Server is not started immediately after the install, you will need to execute as root:
/usr/local/etc/rc.d/onCourseServer start
8
Installing onCourse Serv-
er on other platforms
And of course stopping the server is just:
/usr/local/etc/rc.d/onCourseServer stop
Upgrading
In order to upgrade to a newer version of onCourse Server, run as root:
/usr/local/etc/rc.d/onCourseServer stop
pkg_delete onCourseServer-<package version>
pkg_add onCourseServer.tgz
/usr/local/etc/rc.d/onCourseServer start
Other notes
• You will need Java installed. Consult the FreeBSD docs on how to best do that. You can set the amount of
memory that Java will allocate to onCourse Server by adding to /etc/rc.conf:
onCourseServer_mem="768M"
replacing 768 with however much memory you wish.
• Make sure you have the latest timezones installed via the ports system, which can be done by installing the
"zoneinfo" port.
• You will also need to add an argument to the startup parameters of onCourseServer in rc.conf along the
lines of
onCourseServer_flags="-Duser.timezone=Australia/Sydney"
replacing Australia/Sydney with the timezone that you wish the server to be in.
Linux, Solaris and any other Unix

1. You will need a recent JVM installed in order to run onCourse. Please review the requirements.
2. Download the unix package and transfer this file onto your server.
3. Extract the contents of the package using tar commandline utility. ie.
tar xvf onCourseServer.tgz
4. This should extract a directory onCourse with two files in it.
onCourseServer.sh
9
Troubleshooting con-
nection problems
onCourseServer.jar
5. Please read the onCourseServer.sh carefully as this will explain how to start succesfully start onOncourse.
Troubleshooting connection problems

When you run into problems with connecting a client to the server, the login window will often display some
messages in red text to inform you of difficulties. Here some common causes for each error message.
1. A connection to the server could not be established.
1. This is generally networking issue or onCourse server may not be running.
2. Your workstation or the server may not be connected to the network.
3. You have ticked Secure connection (SSL) in the advanced options, but the server is not running in
SSL mode.
4. You have not ticked Secure connection (SSL) in the advanced options, but the server is running in
SSL mode only.
2. The server and client versions are incompatible. The "client/server" is a more recent build.
1. You are attempting to connect an older client with a newer server.
2. You are attempting to connect a newer client with an older server.
Ensure the client and server are the same versions. Download them from http://www.ish.com.au/
download [http://www.ish.com.au/onCourse/download]
3. Authentication failed.
1. Either the password is incorrect or the username is incorrect or both.
2. If you have never logged in before, try "admin" as the username and "admin" as the password.
10
Chapter 2. General Preferences
When you begin onCourse with a new database the setup wizard set up will take you through the steps re-
quired to set up onCourse for the first time. You will be guided step by step and prompted to enter the rele-
vant information you need to set up onCourse to ensure it runs efficiently and effectively. You can also re-
turn to modify your general preferences at any time in the future.
Tip
You can save your changes as you work through the preferences tabs by clicking save This will also
close the window, but you can open it again from FilePreferencesGeneral
General Preferences Terms and Definitions

The General Preferences screen is where you set up the basic administration functions of onCourse. Starting
here provides the initial set up for onCourse. Areas covered are:
Services The college name, ABN, and website details
Messaging Covers the sending and receiving of emails
11
Setting your General Preferences
LDAP Stands for Light Directory Access Protocol and allows users to be authenticat-
ed by either LDAP or AD (Active Directory). For most organisations this setting
can be safely ignored. Contact us if you need help on setting this up
Message Templates Provides you with a choice of templates for tax invoices, enrolment confirmation
and several other documents you wish to send
Maintenance This covers the service backup
AVETMISS Stands for the Australian Vocational Education and Training Management In-
formation Statistical Standard which is the national reporting standard for Aus-
tralian Registered Training Organisations
Printing Provides templates for the printing of all reports from profit and loss, class rolls,
units of competency and so much more.
Export a list of data in onCourse that can be exported in XML or CSV format including
invoices, contact details, courses and classes
Setting your General Preferences

In onCourse go to filepreferencesgeneral This is the main page of General Preferences. You will notice that
the services tab is highlighted which is where we will begin.
Tip
You will notice that each window requiring data is coloured pink. Boxes coloured pink are the on-
ly fields that need information entered in order to activate onCourse. Boxes that are coloured white
do not require any data to be entered, they are optional and the onCourse system will run smoothly if
they are not filled in. The pink coloured box will change to white once you have entered your infor-
mation correctly and pressed enter. If the box does not change to white then you will need to review
your information and try entering again.
1. On the Services tab, Enter the College Name e.g. Rosewood Community College This is a required field
and you will not be able to proceed with the set up process without first entering a college name.
2. On the other side of the screen enter the ABN e.g 18 123 456 789
3. Now enter the College Website URL e.g. rosewoodcollege.com.au
4. Below you will see Features not enabled. You need to purchase an onCourse support contract to enable
these additional features. onCourse is still fully functional as an enrolment system without these services.
If you have purchased an onCourse support plan we will supply you with a password to access the ser-
vices. Enter your supplied password in the Services Key
12
The Messaging Tab
If you have SSL client server connections enabled, then you can choose whether the onCourse Server will
only allow secure connections. If you leave that checkbox unticked then users will be able to connect on both
insecure (port 8181 by default) and secure (port 8182). If you tick that checkbox, then users will be required
to connect on the secure port only. If you change this setting, you will need to restart the onCourse server for
the change to have effect.
The Messaging Tab

You can now move onto the next tab, Messaging. onCourse makes it easy to send emails and SMS to the stu-
dents and teachers that are listed on your contacts list. In order to do this you first need to configure the email
settings.
1. Outgoing emails: Enter the host name or IP (internet provider) address of the mail server in Outgoing
Mail Server Address SMTP
2. In the Email from address enter the address from which you want contacts to see that emails are sent
from. ie. info@rosewoodcollege.com.au
3. The System Administrator Email Address is the address that undeliverable mail and bounces will go to.
You will need a valid email account that will be accepted by that mail server. You should contact your
mail administrator to verify that these details are correct.
4. Underneath is the emails queued notification. This field will notify you of how many emails are in the
queue waiting to be sent. Say you are sending out a bulk email to prospective students to remind them of
the start date of the new term, the number in this feild will tell you how many emails have yet to be sent,
ie. how many remain in the queue. You can not enter any data into this field.
Detect and process bounced emails (VERP - Variable Envelope return Paths): With this function you can de-
tect and follow up on bounced emails within onCourse. These will be emails that have been returned to you
because of an outdated or faulty address, or because the recipients inbox is full. By tracking these bounced
emails you can keep your records updated and find any address and contact details that may have been en-
tered incorrectly. This is an optional function so only tick the box if you wish to have it operating and you
know you have the appropriate account set up.
1. If you do wish to activate this function then tick the option, detect and process bounced emails.
2. Enter the incoming mail server address (POP3) then enter the email address to where the bounced emails
are sent eg. bounce@rosewoodcollege.com.au.
3. Enter the account name followed by the account password
The SMS box enables you to send texts. You may want to text students a reminder for the new term start
date or for a change of venue or contact tutors about their hours or pay. You can send bulk texts direct from
13
LDAP Authentication Tab
the onCourse program. What you enter into the SMS from field is what the receivers of your SMS messages
will see as the sender details. Put in a mobile number for people to reply to or, if you do not have an inbound
SMS number, you can put the name of your organisation. (eg. 'Rosewood')
Caution
Only use a mobile number in this field if you have an inbound mobile account intended for this
purpose. If you use the name of your business it will be clear to the receiver of your SMS who the
message came from, but they will be unable to press 'reply' on their mobile phone to send you a re-
sponse.
LDAP Authentication Tab

LDAP - stands for Light Directory Access Protocol and allows users to be authenticated by either LDAP or
AD (Active Directory), tying your onCourse user accounts and log ins to the account and logins you staff
use to access other IT resources on your network. This is a feature that is enabled as part of a purchased on-
Course support plan. Contact us if you need help on setting this up.
Message Templates Tab

Here you will find the templates for automated tax invoices, enrolment confirmation, payment succeeded,
payment failed, and SMS tutor reminders. These are mostly messages that students with email addresses re-
ceive after enrolling online or through your office. onCourse makes it easy to access and update your tem-
plate information by keeping them in the one place. You can use the templates as they are or you can person-
alise them to your specific needs and requirements.
1. In the email template drop down box you will see the choices available to you. Click on the template you
wish to use and it will appear in the screen below.
2. Check the default text of each template. In some instances you will want to make changes, in others you
can leave them as is. Where onCourse draws on information from the data base into the message you will
see a message tag in brackets <like this>. You should not remove tags in messages unless you are sure
you don't want that information going to the student.
3. Formating and editing these templates is very easy. Simply click in the window and you’re ready to go,
deleting or adding any extra information you need. You can change the current layout by typing direct-
ly in the main body of text or you can use the onCourse tags to insert additional information from the
database directly into the text.
4. To add additional tags, click in the body of the letter where you would like the extra information to be
placed then go to the available tags drop down menu on the right of the screen. Select and click which tag
you would like to use and the information is entered into the body of the letter.
14
Maintenance tab
Tip
Please note to check the text of the templates before using them. While most of the text can be used
as is, some letters like the enrolment confirmation template needs an emergency contact number in-
serted into the main body of text to replace the current text of xxxxxxxx.
Maintenance tab
The maintenance tab controls how often and where your data is backed up. With the amount of information
you will eventually have stored on your onCourse program, the backing up of this data is essential. onCourse
is designed to enable you to schedule when and where the back ups take place. You can also set onCourse to
have an automatic logout. This means that if onCourse is left open on the computer but no one is using it, af-
ter a specified amount of time it will automatically logout and save any recently entered data.
Caution
Running an onCourse back up to a location on your server is not the only step you need to take to
secure your data. You should also make sure that the backup file is saved to an offsite location on a
regular basis in case of hardwear of other physical failure of your computer.
For Mac and Windows users, follow these instructions to set up onCourse to backup your important data:
1. Navigate to File > Preferences > General > Maintenance tab
2. Automatic Logout: If you select this option, it will give you a field on the right hand side. Place an
amount of minutes e.g; 15 to set the amount of time onCourse can be left idle before it shuts itself down
and saves all recently made changes and additions.
3. Server backup directory: [type the windows path to the folder you wish to backup to]. Example z:/on-
Course/backup, ensure that you input the correct directory otherwise it will be saving to nowhere
4. Days of week: [choose how often you want to backup. We recommend work days]
5. Backup time: [choose time you want to run backup. We recommend time when least network traffic but
enough time to complete backup before the next work day starts] Example 1am
6. Maximum backups kept: [choose how many backups you want to keep] Example 7
7. Next backup number: 1 [this will make the folder name housing the first ever backup
onCourseBackup_00001.zip
8. Click "Save"
15
AVETMISS Tab
AVETMISS Tab
The AVETMISS tab is where you record your organisations details that will be used for all AVETMISS re-
port lodgments. If you are not an RTO you can uncheck Show RTO related screens and menus to hide win-
dows in onCourse that aren't relevant to your organisation. You should still enter your organisation address
and contact details in this window, even if you aren't an RTO as onCourse uses them to populate data in tem-
plated email messages.
1. Enter your leagal training organisation name and rom the drop down menu typeselect by the type of train-
ing organisation your company is.
2. In the Identifier field enter your NTIS RTO id in the field.
3. Enter your organisations Address, Suburb, State and postcode in the appropriate fields.
4. Optional contact details: Here you have the option to enter a contact name, a fax number, email address
and telephone number.
Tip
You can also choose to limit your staff to creating courses only from pre-approved units and qualifi-
cations that you mark within onCourse as ‘offered’. This assists you in ensuring your AQTF require-
ments of only delivering current approved courses on your scope. To use this feature, first flag those
you are approved to deliver in the qualifications and module/units table, then come back to this win-
dow and check Show only 'offered' qualifications and modules. We do not recommend checking this
option as part of your initial setup as it will lock you out of all the NTIS units.
Printing Tab
onCourse provides you with a list of various reports that you can print. These cover everything from certifi-
cates, banking reports, profit and loss statements, training packages and class rolls. The reports are listed in
alphabetical order and there is also a listing of sub-reports that are used to form components of the full print-
ed reports. You can add additional custom reports here you have created, or commissioned ish to create on
your behalf, by clicking the + and locating the jxml files on your computer.
1. You can also create a custom header for all onCourse reports, with your contact details and logo. In the
field Header text (address) which comes below the college printed name on all printed reports you can en-
ter six lines of text. It is usual to put your contact details (address, email URL) in this area
2. To add a logo to your header, click Set print header logo. You will then need to select the logo image file
from it's location on your hard disk.
16
Export Tab
Export Tab
This tab lists all the available export documents. Both XML and CSV exports are available for most tables
within onCourse. This allows you to export your onCourse data for use with other types of software, like
spreadsheets, other databases and desktop publishing tools. If you create your own custom exports, or comis-
sion ish to create some on your behalf, you can add them to onCourse by clicking the + and locating the ex-
port file on your computer.
When you have completed filling in all the preferences for your college, select save which will save your
changes and close the window.
17
18
Chapter 3. Advanced Setup and
Configuration
Setting up Users
Go to File -> Preferences and select Users Add the names, user names and passwords for each onCourse us-
er. There are no limits to the number of users in onCourse. Users can be deactivated if they leave your organ-
isation.
Importing and Exporting data

onCourse provides you with a range of methods in getting your data into and out of the database.
Exporting
The options for exporting data out of onCourse are:
Direct access to the SQL database:
Although we largely recommend that you produce reports within onCourse itself, it is also possible to con-
nect to the backend database directly. If you are using a third party database like mySQL or MS-SQL you
will already know how to do this. If you are using the built in database which comes with onCourse server,
use the following connection properties, with a tool such as Squirrel SQL Client:
JDBC Driver: org.apache.derby.jdbc.ClientDriver

JDBC URL: jdbc:derby://<server hostname>/onCourse
username: report
password: 948ty
XML export of courses,classes,sessions,tutors,sites and rooms:
onCourse enables you to export your data in XML format, which can be easily be imported into a publish-
ing product such as Adobe InDesign and customised however you wish. The resulting file can then be sent to
the printing company of your choice. There are advanced instructions for importing and working with XML
here. ish (explain who ish is)is also able to work with you to assist you in the production of printed course
catalogues if do not have existing design or printing capabilities, or access to desktop publishing software.
AVETMISS export:
19
Importing
To export your AVETMISS go to the file menu, select import/export and choose Export AVETMISS. Select
the date range you wish to export and where you wish to export the files to, e.g. your desktop, and select pro-
ceed. The 10 txt files will then be created ready to be submitted to the government reporting agency of your
choice. Easy as!
Reports in csv, Excel or PDF format:
onCourse has a large number of reports that can be obtained in pdf, Excel or csv. See the Chapter 16, Report-
ing for more information.
Importing
The options for importing data:
AVETMISS 80/85:
1. Export AVETMISS 80 and 85 files from your legacy enrolment system
2. Run onCourse client and choose “File” -> “Import/Export”. Select the two files you exported in step 1.
3. This process can take a while if you have large numbers of students since each record is validated as it is
imported.
XML import
Using a published XML format you will be able to migrate your data easily to onCourse, so long as you are
able to export to this format from your existing system. This will bring across students, sites, rooms, courses,
classes, tutors, enrolments and outcomes to onCourse.
20
Tag groups
In order to perform this import, connect onCourse client to the server. After logging in, choose “File” ->
“Import/Export” -> “Import XML”. Choose your XML data file and let the process run to completion (this
will take some time for large datasets). It is usual to begin this process with a clean, empty data file, however
that is not necessary.
Note that the import process validates every record as it is imported. If validation errors occur (eg. a student
birth date in the future) that record will be rejected and logged in an error file called "import.log"
An example import xml file can be downloaded from here. [http://www.ish.com.au/s/oncourse-schema/

dataImportSample0.xml]
We also have the formal XML schema [http://www.ish.com.au/s/oncourse-schema/dataImport.xsd] and user

friendly documentation [http://www.ish.com.au/s/oncourse-schema/dataImport.xsd.html] available from our
website.
Other legacy systems
Please contact ish for tools which can help you export data from your legacy databases and import into on-
Course. In the past we have created export helpers for systems such as GLEP.
Tag groups
Tags can be created and added by navigating to “File” -> “Preferences” -> “Tags”. This will bring up a list
of Tag groups. Tags are flexible ways for you to categorise your data and organise the navigation of your
website.
You can create a Tag group which may contain any number of arbitrary tags, choose to which pieces of in-
formation such as Courses, Classes, Students etc, that you wish to apply it to, whether it’s mandatory for all
records to have a tag, and if you want to limit each record to only one tag from within this tag group.
The predefined Subjects tag group is a special tag group that is used to drive your website and in the export
of courses and classes for print production You can create the subjects that are appropriate for your college,
and any sub categories needed. You can decide if tagging is mandatory or optional, and if courses can have
more than one tag. Giving courses multiple tags mean they can be listed in multiple places on your website.
For example, an MYOB course could be tagged with both ‘Accounting’ and ‘Computers’.
Custom fields
You can create custom fields for contacts which are searchable. This allows you to create fields for, and
record information that is particular to your business. Some examples of how this field may be used are pay-
roll numbers, licence numbers, student numbers that stay with the student between training organisations and
date of initial contact. These fields can be made mandatory. You can add as many additional fields as you
need to, that apply to contacts. These fields will appear on the bottom of the ‘general’ tab in each contacts
record.
21
Financial Setup
Financial Setup
Finances and Accounting
Account set up
onCourse has full general ledger capabilities, ensuring you are always aware of your profit and loss, liabili-
ties and cash position.
To edit or add general ledger accounts, go to ‘Financial’ -> ‘Accounts’
You can create your own accounts as needed, by selecting the ‘+’ option.
Accounts no longer needed can be disabled.
A range of reports are available to keep you on top of your financial position.
Financial Preferences
Navigate here by clicking on “File” -> “Preferences” -> “Financial” from the top menu.
Select the currency you wish to use and any local tax (e.g.GST) which may apply.
Default accounts have been selected. Make any changes necessary or edit the accounts to add or disable op-
tions.
Advanced onCourse Features

Activating Advanced onCourse features
Extend capabilities of onCourse by contacting us and enabling:
• An automatically updated website that is capable of web enrolments
• Credit card processing (via website and onCourse client)
• Delivery of SMS messages to students, tutors, classes or any contact with a mobile number within on-
Course.
• Budgeting
• Access Control
• External database choices
22
Internet Merchant number guide
To do this you’ll need to contact ish for a user name and password to activate those features. You will be
able to enter those details in your preferences within onCourse and your website will be automatically updat-
ed.
Internet Merchant number guide

As part of setting your institution up as an Internet Merchant with our payment Gateway SecurePay, you will
need to speak to ask your bank to provide you with a Merchant ID &/or a Terminal ID. To make this as easy
as possible for you, please see below for the requirements regarding your particular bank.
ANZ:
Merchant must advise ANZ that they will be using ANZ bureau – SecurePay. SecurePay requires:
* An ePOS Terminal ID (11 digits starting with “0250” and ending with “01”)
* No Merchant ID required
* Note: 0250 is the SecurePay bureau id
* Note: 0269 is the Camtech bureau id
Contact number: 1300 366 988
BWA Merchant Services:
Merchant must advice they will be using 3rd party gateway SecurePay. Merchant must supply:
* Terminal ID (8 digits)
* No Merchant ID required
Commonwealth Bank:
Merchant must apply for a Commlink facility to work with SecurePay. Merchant must supply:
* Caic Number (15 digits starting with “3110…”)

* Catid Terminal ID (8 digits ending with “01”)
* Note that you only need to provide the first CATID of the four supplied by the CBA.
Contact number: 13 1998
National Australia Bank:
Merchant must apply for an Interpay facility to work with SecurePay. Merchant must supply:
* An 8 digit Merchant ID, referred to as the Electronic Banking Number by NAB.

* A 6 character Terminal ID (of the form “YxT…” or “Xabcde” where x is usually the same as "first digit
of"
* Merchant ID and a – e can be any number).
23
Access rights
St George:
Merchant must apply for an OCA (Online Credit Authority) facility and advice they will be using solution
partner SecurePay. SecurePay requires:
* Merchant ID (15 digits starting with 05799820)

* Terminal ID (8 digits generally starts with 00)
Contact number: 133 800
Westpac:
Merchant MUST advise Westpac they will be using 3rd party gateway SecurePay. Also, it’s advisable for the
merchant to inform Westpac Merchant Services “I will be using SecurePay as the payment gateway. I want
Westpac to setup ONLY the Internet Merchant Facility. I don’t want WebAdvantage.” SecurePay requires:
* 8 digit Merchant Number (starting with 2)

* No Terminal ID required
Amex:
Merchants must already have their Internet Merchant Facility from their bank. Merchants MUST notify
Amex that they will be accepting online Amex payments through SecurePay Payment Gateway. Amex will
request merchants to prove the card details are entered in a secure (SSL protected) page. Merchant must sup-
ply SecurePay:
* 10 digit Merchant ID (starting with 979)

Contact number: 1300 363 614 Option 4
Diners:
Merchants must already have their Internet Merchant Facility from their bank. Merchants MUST notify Din-
ers they will be accepting online Diners payments through SecurePay Payment Gateway. Diners will request
merchants to prove the card details are entered in a secure (SSL protected) page. Merchant must supply Se-
curePay:
* 10 digit Merchant ID
Access rights
Access rights restrict what parts of onCourse users can modify, print, view or delete. This is an advanced
feature that's available for onCourse Enterprise customers. Four pre-defined user roles are available within
the system, Enrolment Officer, Administration Manager, Course Manager and Financial Manager. You can
modify these and create new access rights groups as needed. Each user within your organisation can be given
Admin access rights (full access) or be added to any of your access groups. Select the access rights when cre-
ating or editing user profiles, as above.
24
Using an external database
Using an external database

In order to connect to external databases such as MySQL and MS SQL, onCourse Server needs to know
where the external database lives. This can be done by using a server configuration file, see the section called
“Server configuration file” below. Starting the server with special arguments (in the cases of headless config-
urations commonly found on Unix-derivative systems such as FreeBSD, Linux and Solaris), or choosing the
external database option through GUI when first starting onCourse Server.
Note
connecting to an external database is a paid for feature, you must contact us to enable it.
Skipping the actual configuration of the database for the moment, we have some different URIs that connect
to various different database types:
1. no file protocol specified (uses Derby DB internal to onCourse) :
-Ddburi=/Users/matthias/Desktop/onCourseServer/onCourse.iocdata
-Ddburi=“C:\Documents and settings\onCourse\onCourse.iocdata”
-Ddburi=“onCourse\onCourse.iocdata”
2. file protocol specified (uses Derby DB internal to onCourse):
-Ddburi=file:///Users/matthias/Desktop/onCourseServer/onCourse.iocdata
-Ddburi=“file:///C:/Documents and settings/onCourse/onCourse.iocdata”
Note
use 3 slashes after the protocol name “file” in both cases

use /, not \ also under Windows
onCourse will replace all white spaces with “%20”, If you use windows or there are white spaces
in the URI path you must surround the URI with “.
3. network databases: an URI contains the following information:
host, e.g. 203.29.62.146 or delish.ish.com.au

port, e.g. 1376, 3306 or 1521
database name, e.g. onCourse
user name, e.g. oncourse
password, e.g. oncourse
25
Server configuration file
every vendor has its own URI (URL) format which has to be used (remind quotations)
MS SQL Server:
-Ddburi=jdbc:sqlserver://<host>:<port>;property=value[;property=value]]
-Ddburi=‘jdbc:sqlserver://203.29.62.146:1376;database=onCourse;user=oncourse
MySQL:
-Ddburi=jdbc:mysql://<host>:<port>/<dbname>?user=username&password=password
-Ddburi=‘jdbc:mysql://delish.ish.com.au:3306/onCourse?user=oncourse&password
It is not necessary to specify a port, if the default port is used.
More information about URIs at http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2006/12/06/file-uris-in-windows.aspx
Server configuration file

Sometimes the onCourse server defaults aren’t that great for your office. Ports may be blocked, another serv-
er might already be set up. We’ve added the ability to specify useful parameters in a configuration file that
onCourse Server will check on startup.
Create a text file called with the name “onCourse.cfg” and place in the same folder as the
onCourseServer.exe or onCourseService.exe, or onCourseServer.app
The directives allowed in this file are:
ip – specify which IP addresses to listen on

port – specify which port to listen on for non-SSL client connections
ssl_port – specify which port to listen on for SSL client connection. If you do
db – tell onCourse where your database is.
An sample onCourse.cfg might contain:
#Specify the port as 0 to disable non-SSL client connections

port=8181
#Specify the port as 0 to disable SSL client connections
ssl_port=8182
26
Access Rights
#Specify the location for the database: see http://www.ish.com.au/oncourse/d

db=jdbc:mssql//hostname/onCourse
#Specify as many ip lines as you require. If you don’t specify any at all, t
ip=192.168.0.1
ip=192.168.0.2
Access Rights
Access rights restrict what parts of onCourse users can modify, print, view or delete. This is an advanced fea-
ture, available for onCourse "Professional and Enterprise" customers. Four pre-defined user roles are avail-
able within the system, Enrolment Officer, Administration Manager, Course Manager and Financial Manag-
er. You can modify these and create new access rights groups as needed. Each user within your organisation
can be given Admin access rights (full access) or be added to any of your access groups. Select the access
rights when creating or editing user profiles, as above.
Setting up Active Directory (AD) authentication and authorisa-

tion.
The below example has been completed with Windows Server 2003 R2 SP2 and onCourse 1.7.13. onCourse
has the ability to use an external LDAP/AD server for authentication and authorisation, what we mean by
this is that you do not need to use the onCourse user and group database but you can use your already set-
27
Access Rights
up AD database. Firstly on your Windows Server 2003 Machine go to "My Computer" right click and select
"Properties" and you will find the following screen.
Please take careful note of the "Full Computer Name" and the "Domain" as with this information you now
have the building blocks for our configuration.
Now the next thing we need to get the LDAP/AD authentication working is either the Administrator pass-
word or, a user account which is a member of the Administrators group. This is because when a query hap-
pens on the AD server it is required to login first before it can do any searches on users. If your administra-
28
Access Rights
tors want to lock it down further they are welcome to do so, we only need read access to all user and group
objects in the AD as well as the passwords for all of those users. So now we enter "Active Directory Users
and Computers" and create our user:
and add it to the administrators group and remember your password!
29
Access Rights
Now we have everything we need! Complete the setup screen as follows:
Once you have substituted all of the settings as necessary press the "Test Connection" button to ensure that
onCourse can bind to the LDAP server. Once that works, you can then go to the "Users" section of this con-
figuration page and place "sAMAccountName" and (objectClass=user) for the search filter. Now test a us-
er in your domain and see if it authenticates. If it works, congratulations you are now authenticating against
your AD server!
AD Authorisation
Authorisation is the process of giving your users the correct rights when they are logged in, this has a direct
relationship with the different roles you can setup or create within onCourse. If you wish to use your AD
server to allocate roles to your users, complete the following:
At the top of your "Active Directory Users and Computers" create an "Organizational Unit" (OU) and call it
"onCourse".
In that OU create security groups which reflect the names of the roles in onCourse. Say for example the roles
which are build into onCourse (you can find this in "File" --> "Preferences" --> "Access" in onCourse):
• Administration Manager
• Course Manager
• Enrolment Officer
• Financial Manager
You can add or delete roles here as you wish but a corresponding group must exist in AD for the authorisa-
tion/access rights to be allocated.
When you have created those groups in AD add the necessary users who belong to each group.
We can then turn it on the onCourse preferences under LDAP/Authorisation and Roles and set it up the same
as the following picture:
30
Access Rights
That is all for Windows Server AD/LDAP authentication and authorisation! good luck!
31
32
Part II. Entering data
Chapter 4. Tags and Tag Groups
Using Tags
Tags can be created and added by navigating to "File" -> "Preferences" -> "Tags". This will bring up a list of
Tag groups. Tags are flexible ways for you to categorise your data and organise the navigation of your web-
site.
You can create a Tag group which may contain any number of arbitrary tags, choose to which pieces of in-
formation such as Courses, Classes, Students ect, that you wish to apply it to, whether it's mandatory for all
records to have a tag, and if youwant to limit each record to only one tag from within this tag group.
The main tag group, used to drive your website and in the export of courses and classes for print production,
is the "Subjects" tag group. You can create the subjects that are appropriate for your college, and any sub cat-
egories needed. You can decide if tagging is mandatory or optional, and if courses can have more than one
tag. Giving courses multiple tags mean theycan be listed in multiple place on your website. For example, an
MYOB course could be tagged with both 'Accounting' and 'Computers'.
You can add any number of tags by clicking on the "+" icon. To add a subcategory tage, first click on a tag to
select it and then click once again on the "+" icon
A flexible way to add classification and

structure to your data
A flexible way to add classification and structure to your data:
Did you ever want to a program to classify information in a way that was specific to your business, but
found that it involved expensive modifications to the software? Not so with onCourse – you can structure
your courses and classes in a way that suits your college. Like to organise and work with classes by term or
semester? No problem. Want to classify classes by region or subject area? Easy. Need to separate tutors into
those currently working for your college, those proposing new programs that haven’t run yet and those held
in reserve in case a regular staff member is absent? Can do. We call it tagging. You call it running your col-
lege and interacting with your business critical data in the most efficient way possible.
The “tagging” concept for courses, classes, web pages and other content allows you to build rich ways to
navigate through your data. You may wish to group all courses as part of a specific promotion and have that
grouping display as a list on your web site. Or you may wish to have a purely internal classification of areas
of responsibility for classes. Think of this like categories and subcategories which extend as many levels as
you want and with much more flexibility, not just for the web site but for your internal use as well.
Some Possibilities:
35
A flexible way to add classifica-
tion and structure to your data
• The scenario - Your college produces a quarterly publication that contains all scheduled programs for that
term. When your staff are working with classes and enrolments, they are usually working within the cur-
rent term open for enrolment
• The solution - Tag classes by year and term
• How? - Tag classes by year and term
1. In onCourse, select file, preferences, tags
2. Add a new tag group
3. Create a name such as “Year and Term”
4. Decide what your tag will be applied to. In this case, we will select Classes and because we want every
class to be assigned a year and term (but only one), select both mandatory and limit to one tag
5. Click on the plus sign to add a tag. The first tag we create will be the current year. Name the tag 2007 (the
name and short name can be the same)
6. Click on the 2007 that has now appeared in the list and click the plus sign again. This will allow you to
add sub tags to 2007 – the terms.
7. Create each of the Terms you wish to refer to. e.g. Term 1, Term 2, Term 3, Term 4. Ensure each time
you wish to add a sub tag you select the parent tag (2007) before selecting to add the new tag. If you make
a mistake, you can select the minus sign to remove the tag.
8. Save your tags. You are now ready to assign them to classes.
• The scenario - You manage a lot of casual, sessional and contract staff that provide a range of classes for
your college. Keeping them organised in to types of staff would make it easier to contact them at appropri-
ate times
• The solution - Create a range of tutor tags that you can use to run searches on, then sms or email them as
needed.
• How? - Tag classes by year and term
1. In onCourse, select file, preferences, tags
2. Add a new tag group
3. Create a name such as “Tutor Type”
4. These tags will apply to tutors. Not every tutor will fit in to one of these tag groups, and some may fit in
to more than one, so we will keep the remaining options (mandatory and limit to one tag) empty
36
Creating a filter in advanced search
to make tagging more powerful.
5. Click on the plus sign to add a tag. Some tag types may be VET Tutor, ELLN Tutor, Contract Tutor, Gen-
eral Program Tutor, Pending Tutor
6. You can add descriptions to each tag type so your fellow staff members know what the tag means.
7. You may wish to create sub categories within some tutor types
8. Save your tags. You are now ready to assign them to tutors.
Creating a filter in advanced search to make

tagging more powerful.
You can create a filter that will list classes for a Term. You can create Tag Groups and sub-tags to achieve
this, however you can also achieve the same result with less work:
How to create a Filter using Advanced Search:
1. Click on the magnify glass in the top left-hand corner
2. In the Advanced Find window; - choose to Find records matching ALL of the following - Start date/time :
after : [The day before the first day of term 1] - then click "Add Search Line" and set Start date/time : be-
fore : [The day after the last day of term 1]
3. Click on the Cog Wheel, then choose Save Find, name the Find to "Term 1", you can choose to make this
filter visible to yourself or, to all staff using onCourse, then click Save.
If you recieve the following message: "There are X records linked to this tag. Making this tag mandatory can
cause those records XX_XX to become invalid, are you sure you want to proceed?", you should select no.
It's best to avoid making any classes invalid.
In this case, we would recommend not making the tag mandatory initially, then going to all classes and tag-
ging them with the relevant term. Once all classes have been tagged with a term, then you can go back to
your tag settings and make it mandatory.
Tagging and Untagging more than one

record at once
Tagging and Untagging more than one record at once - One of the features that was requested was a means
to manage tags in bulk, we've included this feature now in version 1.0.
Assuming that you've already created some tags, highlight the records that you'd like to tag and right click
the tag on the left. This should give you the option to either add the tag to the highlighted records or remove
the tag from the highlighted records.
37
Tagging and Untagging
more than one record at once
More information about the bulk email and SMS functionality in onCourse.
38
Chapter 5. Sites and Rooms
onCourse Terms and Definitions
Sites Sites are the physical venues where you offer classes like Newtown Arts Club, or Parramat-
ta High School. A site will have one or more rooms. Sites can also be Administration centres
where you take enrolments and payments.
Rooms Rooms are the place that the lessons will be conducted ie. room 14, studio 6, the library.
Rooms can have a seated capacity.
Timetable When you create classes, you will be able to book a room. There are timetables for both
rooms and sites. You can also make a site or room unavailable for class bookings.
Working with Sites and Rooms

Navigating the list and record windows
All records in onCourse can be viewed in either a list view or record view. You need to open the list view to
access individual records.
To access the site records go to either the splash screen and click on Sites or the onCourse menu resources →
sites . This will open the Sites list view window.
The onCourse list view
• Parts of the window - On the right hand part of the window are the site records listed in a summary view.
The title bar shows you how many records you have. The top section of the window contains the search
function and the add and delete records button. In the left hand side of the list window are quick search-
es to enable you to work with groups of data. There are default quick searches for site, but you can create
your own. This part of the window may be collapsed if their are no related tags or saved searches.
• Record summaries - The list of records in this window allows you to enter a record by double clicking,
or select the record to perform special functions by single clicking. A selected record will be highlighted.
You can select one or more records in the list by using shift-click to select a range, or control-click to se-
lect a group of individual records.
• Columns and sorting - Column headings can be used to sort records in the list. Click on the header to sort
in alphabetical order. Click it again to sort by reverse alphabetical order. You can also drag the columns
around and modify their width to set your preferred layout.
• Quick search - By typing the first few letters of the site name into the quick search field, you can reduce
the list of records to those that match.
39
Working with Sites and Rooms
• Advanced Search - Advanced search can be accessed by clicking on the Magnifying glass image in the
quick search field. This will open the query editor to allow you to choose which fields and which data you
want to search on. You can add multiple criteria to your searches.
• Saved Searches - After performing an advanced search, you can choose to save the search parameters to
allow you to quickly run the search again. To save a search, click on the cogwheel within the query editor
and select 'save find'. The saved search will appear in the left hand part of the window.
• Tag groups - Any tag groups you have created that relate to sites, like Region, will appear here. By check-
ing any of these check boxes you will see the list of records on the right hand side reduced to records that
match that criteria. You can tag records in bulk by selecting a group of records on the right and right click-
ing on a tag name on the left.
Tip
Filters and searches work together in onCourse. If you run an search and do not see the result you
expect, this may be because a filter that is checked is preventing the record you are searching for
from being displayed.
You can enter a site record by double clicking on it in the window.
Navigating the Site Record by Tabs
• General - This is where you can set the site name and address details. You can also add the latitude and
longitude of you site so you can use the google maps function on your ish website. The general tab also
displays a list of the rooms at this site.
• Directions - These are directions you want to display to your students so they can get to your venue. This
information will display on your ish website.
• Note - This tab is for internal notes about the site. It is not published.
• Timetable - You can view the site timetable here, to see all sessions using this site. You can also set site
wide unavailabilities. You can not add new sessions or classes from here - you need to do this in the class
window.
Navigating the Room Record by tab
• General - Here you can set the Room name, capacity, room specific directions for once the student is at the
site and add details about the facilities available in that room.
• Notes - This tab is for internal notes about the room. It is not published.
• Timetable - You can view the room timetable here, to see all sessions using this room. You can also set
room unavailabilities. You can not add new sessions or classes from here - you need to do this in the class
window.
40
Creating Sites and Rooms

The next step in setting up your onCourse program is entering sites and rooms. You can give each room a
name, specific directions on how to get there, and describe the facilities that are available. It also allows you
to make it possible for students to view detailed maps and instructions from your website about where their
class will be held, saving your staff time with phone calls giving directions and saving students frustration
when they can’t accurately locate the venue.
Creating sites and rooms is a valuable part of your training resource management. Every time you book a
session in a room, the timetable is updated and the room becomes scheduled. This means that if you try to
book another session in this room at the same time, you will be notified that it is already booked. onCourse
will not prevent you from double booking a room.
If you have a room or site that you hire on a casual basis you can also set the availability for it. For example,
you may hire a public hall on Wednesday evenings. When you set up this room, you can specify it is only
available for you to book between 5pm and 9pm. Course coordinators scheduling classes will an error mes-
sage if they try to book a class in this room on another night, or to start before 5pm.
Tip
It is a good idea to enter the sites and rooms first so later when you add the courses you can easily
assign them to a location.
Example 5.1. How to set up a new site
1. From the Sites list view, click on the + button in the top right hand corner of the screen. A new site screen
will open on the general tab.
2. In the Name field enter the name of the site Waverley Campus. Remember the site is where the rooms are
located and is not the rooms themselves, that comes later.
3. Enter the street address of the site. If you report AVETMISS your sites must have accurate address sub-
urbs and postcodes.
4. You can enter the exact location of the site in the latitude and longitude fields. You don’t need to know
the latitude and longitude off the top of your head! By clicking the hyperlink ‘Find this location’ you are
taken to the ish page www.ish.com.au/oncourse/coordinates. Type in the street address of the site, click
view and Google Maps will find the exact location. Copy and paste the coordinates in to your ‘new site’
window. This now means the google map of this venue will be available to your students over the web.
They can even type in their own address to get step by step directions to the venue.
5. Move to the Directions tab. If you have specific driving directions, public transport directions or special
instructions like parking, you can add them here. This information is published to your ish website. Be-
41
cause these description fields are Rich Text enabled (the blue A indicates this) you can add hyperlinks to
local bus timetables or other useful pages for your students, like transport infoline or your local equiva-
lent.
6. If you have any internal notes about the site, you can add them on the notes tab. These are not published
to your ish website.
7. To set an unavailability for the site, go to the Timetable tab and click on the option on the bottom of the
screen List.
8. Create a new availability rule by clicking the +and define the Start and End date and time. You can also
select 'all day' instead of selecting a time period.
9. Choose if you wish to repeat the unavailability and the end date of the repeats. You also need to add a de-
scription of why the resource is unavailable.
10.Click save. Once you have saved your site, you will be returned to the list view.
Example 5.2. How to set up a new Room
1. From the site list, double click on the site you want to add rooms to. Alternatively, you can open the
Rooms list from the splash screen and click on the + button in the top right hand corner of the screen
2. Enter the name of the room eg. Studio 1. If your venue only has one room, such as a community hall, you
still need to create at least one room so you can link a class to the room.
3. Enter the seated capacity. This is how many people the room can hold. If you try to book a class into this
room that has a maximum student number greater than the seated capacity, you will get a warning.
4. On the Direction tab you can enter the directions to the room eg. ground floor, level 3 and the the room
facilities eg. tables and chairs, screen projector.
5. If you have any internal notes about the room, you can add them on the notes tab. These are not published
to your ish website.
6. To set an unavailability for the room, go to the Timetable tab and click on the option on the bottom of the
screen List.
7. Create a new availability rule by clicking the +and define the Start and End date and time. You can also
select 'all day' instead of selecting a time period.
8. Choose if you wish to repeat the unavailability and the end date of the repeats. You also need to add a de-
scription of why the resource is unavailable.
9. Click save to save and close the record.
42
10.To edit any of the information you have entered simply click on the room or site that you wish to update.
This will bring up the edit screen for that record. Make your changes and click save.
43
44
Chapter 6. Contacts - Tutors, Students
and Companies
Contact A person or company in onCourse is called a contact. Contact can be set as a Student,
Tutor or Company, none of these or a combination of these.
Tutor A tutor is a type of contact. A tutor is anyone who teaches a class for, or on behalf of,
your college. They may be an employee or a contractor, and could also be a student of
your college who is enrolled in classes.
Student A student enrols in classes. A contact or tutor who enrols in a class will automatically be
set as a student (in addition to being a tutor).
Company A company contact is a business, not an individual. Companies may also be set as tutors,
for example, you may contract to have ACME Tennis Coaching teach classes for your
business. You can assign the company as the tutor of the class.
Relationship Contacts can be related to each other. For example, a company that delivers courses for
your college, may also have individual contact records set up for their staff that teach or
assist with the sessions. These contacts would be set as employees of the company. By
doing this you could advertise the class as being taught by the company, which would be
the information that displays on your ish website, while also internally managing the in-
dividuals that would be booked to deliver each class session.
Working with Tutors

To access the tutors records go to either the splash screen and click on Tutors or the onCourse menu People
→ Tutors . This will open the Tutors list view window.
• Parts of the window - On the right hand part of the window are the course records listed in a summary
view. The title bar shows you how many records you have. The top section of the window contains the
45
Working with Tutors
search function and the add and delete records button. You will also find a cog wheel button that allows
for special functions for one or more records in the list. In the left hand side of the list window are quick
searches to enable you to work with groups of data.
• Quick search - By typing the first few letters of the Tutor's surname into the quick search field, you can re-
duce the list of records to those that match.
• Tag groups - Any tag groups you have created that relate to Tutors, like Subject, will appear here. By
checking any of these check boxes you will see the list of records on the right hand side reduced to records
that match that criteria. You can tag records in bulk by selecting a group of records on the right and right
clicking on a tag name on the left.
• Core filters - Core filters reduce the list of records to those that match the filter criteria. By default, most
onCourse windows open with filters applied so you are only working with your current records. You can
switch core filters on and off by ticking the checkboxes.
Tip
You can enter a tutor record by double clicking on it in the window.
Navigating the Tutor Record by Tabs
• General - This tab contains the contact information for the tutor
46
Creating Tutors
• Financial - This tab is a view only screen and shows you the financial transactions your company has with
the selected tutor. Here you will see invoices issued or received and payments made to the tutor listing all
the relevant information and providing links these records.
• Messages - This tab lists all messages sent to the tutor from onCourse via email, SMS and post
• Notes - This tab keeps a list of all notes you have relating to the tutor and any web visible or private docu-
ments like resume, certificates and references
• Resume - This is where you store the bio information about the tutor you wish to publish to your ish web-
site
• Tutor - This tab shows a list of the classes the tutor is scheduled to teach
• Timetable - This tab shows the teaching timetable for all the sessions for the tutor in a calendar or list lay-
out and tutor's availability can be set here.
Creating Tutors
You will need to keep your tutor’s contact details on file and what classes and sessions they are scheduled to
teach each term. If you are an RTO you will also need to keep copies of their resume and qualifications on
file. onCourse allows you to do this. Each tutor has their own personal file in onCourse which is easy to ac-
cess and update.
If you have a large number of casual staff who work at a variety of different venues, it can be difficult to
manage communication with them as you might not see them in person very often. Tutors listed in onCourse
can be emailed or SMS’d easily and all messages sent out of the system are tracked in the tutors record help-
ing you to keep all communications listed and organised. onCourse is designed to help you manage your
staff records with ease.
Example 6.1. How to create a new tutor
1. With either the Tutor or Contact window list view open, click on the + button in the top right hand corner
of the screen. A new contact screen will open.
2. Set the contact as a Tutor. You will see that additional tutor only tabs are added to the record.
3. Enter the First Name and Last Name of the tutor.
4. Enter the Address and other contact detail for the tutor. If you add an Email address, your tutors can log
into your ish website to check their class schedules and you can email them directly from onCourse. If
you enter a Mobile phone number, you can send SMS to your tutor from onCourse.
5. For each contact method (mail, email and SMS) you have the option to opt the contact out of marketing
communication. The default setting is to “accept marketing material,” so when you click on the cog wheel
47
Contacting tutors by email or SMS
above these fields, you will see this option is highlighted with a tick. This means that when you have mar-
keting mail outs, this address will be on the mailing list. To change this setting simply click on the cog
wheel and select the option “opt out from postal marketing material” if the person dosen't want to receive
marketing communication from you .The other option is “undeliverable”, meaning that no mail is to be
delivered to this address because it is incorrect, or in the case of an email address, has received an unde-
liverable response from the mail server.
6. The field message (alert for operator) is for any special notes that are important or relevant to this contact
for eg. they might allow their phone number to be given to students.
7. You can manually enter a Web password or onCourse will create a random password for you. The tutor
uses this to log into their web portal on your ish website.
8. Move the resume tab to create a publicly listed biography for the tutor. This screen shows that information
which is displayed on your website. Be aware that this is an automatic function. For example, you might
post a brief description for this particular tutor, their background and experience and how it relates to the
courses they are teaching. As this information will be visible to students and general public on the web-
site, it is recommended that you obtain permission from the tutor to publish this information. You can en-
ter the text directly into the screen or cut and paste from another source. The text in the field can be for-
matted using Rich text.
9. Move to the Notes tab to add attachments or other notes to the tutor record. The text in the notes field is
private. Attachments can be public (on the website) or private (only available in onCourse).
10.To attach documents in the Notes tab, click on the + sign on the right hand side of the screen. This will
open up a drop down screen “attachment (new)”. Click on import to open up your files. Select the file you
wish to attach and enter You can then select the “available on web” box if you wish to publish the docu-
ment on your website. Click ok. This will close the attachment screen and return you to the notes screen.
Here you will see a list of the attached files. You can delete any files by clicking the - sign.
Contacting tutors by email or SMS

You may wish to notify individual tutors if their course is running or cancelled, or groups of tutors with in-
formation about activities and event at the College. If you create and send the message from onCourse, the
history of the message is stored within the tutor's record on the messaged tab.
You must have set up an SMS and email gateway with ish to use this feature. For information on how to do
this, read the General Preferences documentation.
1. Open the tutor window and use the ‘find’ to search for the tutors you want to contact
2. Highlight the tutors you wish to contact in the list. To do this select the first contact name, hold down
shift then select the last contact name and click on the cog wheel icon on the top right hand side of the
window.
48
Payroll
3. Choose “send message to xx contacts” and the email/SMS window will open.
4. You will see in your list of contacts how many people can be emailed, that is have supplied an email ad-
dress, and how many can be SMS’d having supplied a mobile phone number or neither of these things.
5. Select the ‘send email’ and/or ‘send SMS’ box. If you choose to send both, you can also select the option
under SMS ‘including people who are emailed’. If people have supplied both mobile number and email
address, it is a cheaper option (and the default option) to just email them, and only SMS those who don’t
have email. However, sometimes you may wish to send both, just to make sure. While most of the time it
only takes a few seconds to deliver an SMS, it is not an instantaneous technology, even if it often seems
this way. It can take up to 3 days for an SMS to be delivered. This has to do with the phone carrier, some-
thing that ish has no control over, or because the user has their phone switched off.
6. Enter the email subject in the subject field. This field is mandatory and the email cannot be sent unless
you enter a subject. The same applies for sending SMS. You need to enter a description of the call ie. staff
meeting, invoice reminder etc before the message can be sent.
7. Type your email and/or your SMS and press send.
Payroll
You will see a tag icon just above the address field. Click on this and a drop down menu offers you “payroll
wage intervals” and “tutors.”
Payroll wage intervals - put your curser here and you have the choice of weekly, fortnightly and monthly
payment schedules. Select one.
Tutors - offers you the choice of : contract tutors - those tutors who will invoice your business pending tutors
- those tutors who are not yet working for you vet tutors - vocational education and training tutors
Make your selection and a tag icon will appear showing the chosen tags.
49
50
Chapter 7. Creating Courses
Course: A course is the training product delivered by your organisation. For example: Dancing for
Beginners, Advanced Jewellery Making or MYOB for Professionals. A course can be given
any course code to identify that course uniquely.
Class: A class is the instance of a course run at a particular time and date, led by one or more tu-
tors and with a group of students enrolled. Classes may meet for one or more sessions de-
pending on the subject outline and timetable. Classes are the things which you sell (or give
away for free) and into which students enrol.
Timetable: Each class has a timetable which represents each meeting between the students and the
tutor(s). The timetable can link to rooms and sites and each session in the timetable has the
flexibility to be allocated to a different tutor or a different room.
Students: A student is a person enrolled in a class.
Figure 7.1. Course, class and timetable
Example 7.1. Example course and classes
Let's consider a course "Dancing for Beginners". It is assigned course code "DFB". The class with code
"DFB-1" starts 1/4/2010 from 10am to 2pm with tutor Joanne Smith and costs $800. Another class "DFB-2"
starts 6/5/2010 from 7pm to 9pm with tutor George Jones and costs $825.
Working with Courses

51
To access the course records go to either the splash screen and click on Course or the onCourse menu Cours-
es → Courses . This will open the Course list view window.

• Parts of the window - On the right hand part of the window are the course records listed in a summary
• Quick Search - By typing the first few letters of the course name into the quick search field, you can re-
duce the list of records to those that match.
• Advanced Search - can be accessed by clicking on the Magnifying glass image in the quick search field.
This will open the query editor to allow you to choose which fields and which data you want to search on.
You can add multiple criteria to your searches.
• Tag Grups - Any tag groups you have created that relate to courses, like Subject, will appear here. By
checking any of these check boxes you will see the list of records on the right hand side reduced to records
that match that criteria. You can tag records in bulk by selecting a group of records on the right and right
clicking on a tag name on the left.
• Core filters - reduce the list of records to those that match the filter criteria. By default, most onCourse
windows open with filters applied so you are only working with your current records. You can switch core
filters on and off by ticking the checkboxes.
52
Creating Courses
Tip
You can enter a course record by double clicking on it in the window.
Creating Courses
How to set up your college’s product – courses
A course is the subject being delivered. Courses are your college’s product. They are what your business
sells. They may be accredited or non-accredited, part time, full time or just one time.
For example, a course might be Jewellery Making for Beginners, Advanced Belly Dancing or MYOB for
Professionals. A course can have many classes and each class can run for one or more sessions.
By setting up courses, you have something to advertise. You will need to name and describe your courses in
order to entice your students to enrol.
Tip
You need only enter the course name and course code to create your courses in onCourse, you can
return to the record later more information, like a description for your website or print marketing.
Example 7.2. How to create a new course
1. Click on the the + button in the top right hand corner of the screen. A new course screen will open on the
general tab.
2. Enter a name for your course and a course code in the relevant fields. Your course code must be unique,
that is a code not used by any other course already created. Please note that the course code must not have
any spaces between characters. So the course code for “Dancing for Beginners 1”, written using the first
letter of each word, must be entered as DFB1 and not DFB 1.
3. If you want students to be able to go on the waiting list for this course check the allows waiting lists box.
The currently offered box will be checked by default. This allows you to create classes later on. If you de-
cide to retire this course from your list of offerings you can uncheck this later. Courses that aren’t current-
ly offered can not have new classes created for them.
4. Below is the print brochure description box. There are two options for entering descriptions: print
brochure description on the general tab, and web description on the web tab. Usually, print materials are
limited to descriptions of two or three lines, whereas on the web, your space is unlimited. If you do not
intend to use onCourse to create a print based brochure, you do not need to enter any information in the
print brochure description field. Text entered here can later be exported in an XML format ready for im-
port into a print design product like Adobe InDesign.
53
VET Courses
5. Move to the web tab. Text entered in the web description field can be written in rich text format. A guide
to using rich text can be found here. (link) You can preview the text by hovering over the blue A at the
bottom of the text field. You can also attach images, files or documents to the web page. To advertise this
course online, check Show this course on the website.
6. When you have entered your information, click save and you will be returned to the course list page. No-
tice that the course you have entered is now listed. You can return to edit this course at any time by dou-
ble clicking on it.
Field Validation
You will notice that before entering text, the course and code box is coloured pink. Once you have
entered valid text the colouring disappears. Should the box remain pink, it means that you have not
entered the text correctly and need to review your entry. You will not be able to save the record as
the save button will be disabled. There will be a warning icon that will provide you with information
as to why the data you have entered is not accepted if you hover over it.
VET Courses
If you are an RTO who offers short accredited programs, or full qualifications, you will appreciate the ease
in which you can set up your courses with the right unit and qualification details. This then flows through to
recording outcomes, creating transcripts and certifications, and generating AVETMISS compliant data.
In the VET tab of the course record you can select the Qualification and the Units from the built in NTIS da-
ta for your chosen course. If your course is VET, but not from a training package or accredited course, you
can also flag it VET here and allocate its Field of Education ID. This is something you may need to do as
part of your government funding requirements for non accredited courses.
Tip
Do you deliver state accredited courses? You will find the course listed in onCourse but not the mod-
ules that make up the course. This is because they are not publicly available on NTIS. You can send
us the modules names and codes and we manually add them to onCourse for you.
onCourse does not contain the qualification packaging rules, so it is up to you as the RTO to ensure that you
are compliant with your own scope of registration and the requirements of the training packages you are au-
thorised to deliver. You should refer to these requirements when creating your courses and only select those
units which are allowed to contribute towards that particular qualification.
There are a few different ways you can structure VET Courses within onCourse:
1. A full Qualification where you know all the units the students will complete in advance i.e. all students
will complete the same core and elective units. Students will graduate with a complete Qualification.
54
VET Courses
2. A full Qualification where all students will undertake the core units, but may all select different elective
units. Students will graduate with a complete Qualification.
3. A short course which has one or more units of competency embedded within it. The units may or may not
all contribute to the same Qualification. Students will graduate with a Statement of Attainment.
4. A short course where you know which qualification a student will be working towards in advance, but the
students in the class will complete a variable number and selection of units. Some may achieve a State-
ment of Attainment, some may be working towards a full Qualification, and some may simply receive a
non-vet Statement of Attendance.
5. A course which is not linked to any national or state accredited training packages or accredited courses,
but has a vocational learning outcome. Depending on your reporting requirements, these courses may also
contribute towards your annual VET delivery.
In onCourse outcomes (records of undertaking and achieving a unit of competency) flow down from the
course to the student via an enrolment in a class. If a course has 15 units attached to it, when a student is en-
rolled in a class for that course, the student will have 15 outcomes created for them - one for each unit. You
can always modify the units for the student in their own enrolment, for example if they change to a different
elective. What this means is that you can save yourself a lot of data entry work if you set your course up with
all the units to begin with.
Changing units in a course

Once a course has a class with an enrolment in it you CAN NOT change the units of competency as-
signed to the course. This is because onCourse has created an immutable relationship with this data -
if you changed it at the course level, every student ever enrolled in a class for this course would have
their outcomes changed. You can always retire the old course and create a new course to use in the
future. The new course can have the same name but will have to have a different course code.
Example 7.3. Creating a VET Course
1. Follow the instructions to create a new course. Open the course record to the VET tab.
2. Enter the National Code. The fields are clairvoyant, so as you type in them, onCourse will search for and
list the qualifications in the built in NTIS database. Select the qualification by clicking on it. You can al-
so search for qualification by name in Qualification. Omit the words Certificate in or Diploma of in your
search. For example, search for the Certificate IV in Aged Care by typing 'Aged Care'.
3. The qualification information is broken into different fields so the Certificate IV Training and Assessment
would read National code - TAA40104 Qualification - Training and Assessment Level - Certificate IV
4. You can then add modules and the units by clicking the +icon on the right hand side of the screen. This
will open a drop down screen.
55
VET Courses
5. Enter the National Code or Title These fields are also clairvoyant so make your selection and press ok.
You will then be returned to the course screen where you will see the modules and units listed. To add
more units simply click on the +sign and repeat the process. To delete any units, click the - sign. When
you are done, click save. You can also set the nominal hours for the units as you attach them to the course.
56
Chapter 8. Creating Classes
Course A course is the training product delivered by your organisation. For example: Computers for
Beginners, Advanced Jewellery Making or MYOB for Professionals. A course can be given
any course code to identify that course uniquely.
Class A class is the instance of a course run at a particular time and date, led by one or more tutors
and with a group of students enrolled. Classes may meet for one or more sessions depending
on the subject outline and timetable.
Timetable Each class has a timetable which represents each meeting between the students and the
tutor(s). The timetable can link to rooms and sites and each session in the timetable has the
flexibility to be allocated to a different tutor or a different room.
Students A student is a person enrolled in a class.
Figure 8.1. Course, class and timetable
Example 8.1. Example course and classes

Let's consider a course "Computers for Beginners". It is assigned course code "CFB". The class with code
"CFB-1" starts 1/4/2010 from 10am to 2pm with tutor Joanne Smith and costs $800. Another class "CFB-2"
starts 6/5/2010 from 7pm to 9pm with tutor and costs $825.
Working with Classes

57
Working with Classes
To access the class records go to either the splash screen and click on Class or the onCourse menu Courses
→ Classes . This will open the Class list view window.
• Parts of the window -On the right hand part of the window are the class records listed in a summary
• Record Summaries - The list of records in this window allows you to enter a record by double clicking,
around and modify their width to set your preferred layout. 9
• Quick Search - By typing the first few letters of the course name or code into the quick search field, you
can reduce the list of records to those that match.
• Tag Groups - Any tag groups you have created that relate to classes or their parent record, courses, like
Subject, will appear here. By checking any of these check boxes you will see the list of records on the
right hand side reduced to records that match that criteria. You can tag records in bulk by selecting a group
of records on the right and right clicking on a tag name on the left.
• Core Filters - Core filters reduce the list of records to those that match the filter criteria. By default, most
onCourse windows open with filters applied so you are only working with your current records. You can
switch core filters on and off by ticking the checkboxes. By default, each time the class window opens the
core filters of current classes and future classes are selected. You can check the other core filters as need-
ed.
58
Class Record Tabs
Tip
Filters and searches work together in onCourse. If you run a search and do not see the result you ex-
pect, this may be because a filter that is checked is preventing the record you are searching for from
being displayed.
You can enter a class record by double clicking on it in the window.
Class Record Tabs

General
This is a summary tab for the class showing information like the timetable summary, fee and applicable dis-
counts, students enrolled and important notes. You can also set the class maximum and minimum here.
Tutor
This tab allows you to add one or more tutors to the class. Tutors type can be defined, tutors can be con-
firmed and tutor payrates set. You can also choose if the tutor is to be published as part of the class promo-
tional material, either online or in a printed format.
Budget
In the expenses tab , additional income and wages for a class can be recorded so the profitability of a class
can be accurately calculated for your actual and predicted enrolments. The class fee is set in the budget.
Timetable
The timetable tab is used to create sessions for your class, booking a room and a tutor for the time(s) you
specify. Scheduling conflicts can be viewed and allowed for.
VET
This tab relates to RTOs. AVETMISS funding source information can be set here for the whole class group,
and modified on a student by student basis via their enrolment records as needed. Please note some of these
fields are state specific.
Web
You can add class specific web information to this tab, plus class specific attachments. Most advertising in-
formation will come from the course record.
59
Notes
Notes
This tab allows you to make your own internal notes regarding the class. These are not published to the web-
site.
Enrolments
You can see a list of the students enrolled on this tab. Next to the student name is the open record icon,
which allows you to navigate directly to the student's full contact record.
Attendance
For each session created, and each student enrolled or tutor attached to the class, an attendance record will be
created. Both students and tutors can be marked as attended, absent or partial and you can add notes to the at-
tendance record. The percentage attendance will be calculated. Tutor attendance is used for payroll calcula-
tions.
Outcomes
This is a tab relevant to RTOs. For each enrolled student, all the applicable outcomes for the class are shown
here. For each unit of competency set in the parent course, the students enrolled will have an outcome record.
Outcomes can be set and modified here.
Special Class Functions
The cog wheel - used to perform special actions to selected classes
On the classes view screen you will see a cog wheel icon on the right hand side of the window. If you high-
light one or more classes and then click on the cog wheel, a drop down menu will appear offering a range of
different options. Some of these functions are only available through the cog wheel, while others are options
that you can set in an individual class, but though the cog wheel can set for a group of classes.
• Send message to students from x class - This option allows you to send email and/or sms, or postal mes-
sages to students enrolled in the selected class or classes. You might use this option to let all the students
enrolled in classes with a particular tutor know that their tutor is sick and classes this week are cancelled.
• Send message to tutors from x class - You can contact the tutor from one or more classes using this op-
tions. You might use it to notify all tutors who are teaching this term of a staff meeting.
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Creating Classes
• Duplicate x class - To create another instance of an existing class, the duplicate function will save you the
effort of setting all the information again. Need to offer another class in a fortnight? Duplicate the class
and move it forward by 14 days. You can also move a whole term of classes forward to the next term in
one action.
• Cancel class - If a class is not viable, you can use this cogwheel function to cancel it and create credit
notes for all the enrolled students. Students can't enrol in cancelled classes.
• AVETMISS export - Exporting AVETMISS from the classes window allows you to export the data for
one or more classes for a funding submission. A whole term or year's worth of data can be exported from
the Export window.
• Create certificates - For VET classes, this will create Statements of Attainment or Qualifications for all
eligible students. For all other classes, this option will create a Certificate of Attendance for all enrolled
students.
• Generate payslips for x class - Use this option to create payslips for a selected group of classes.
• Show class on website - You can add classes in bulk to your onCourse website with this option, instead of
doing it one at a time in the individual class window.
• Remove class from website - Use this option to remove classes in bulk from your onCourse website.
Creating Classes
Creating an instance of a course
It is very important that before you try to create a class you have already created a course.
Through the classes screen you can:
• Create classes and make them ready for enrolment
• Allocate rooms
• Assign Tutors
• Set the price of classes and applicable discounts
• Create sessions and timetables
• Keep check of enrolments
• Update budgeting information
• Enter and update your VET funding information
61
Creating Classes
• Enter student outcomes
• Publish your classes on your website ready to take online enrolments
When you create a class, you bring together all the different elements of data that you have already entered
into onCourse. Information relating to tutors, courses, sites and rooms etc. gets linked through the classes
screen to create the event that is your class. That means once you have entered the relevant information on
the different tabs in the classes screen, then the students, the class, the course, the tutor and the sessions all
become connected through out your onCourse program. The relationship between these different pieces of
information becomes linked in onCourse and allows you to access your required information through a vari-
ety of different screens.
For example when you assign a tutor to a class through the class screen, this information is also duplicated
on the tutor’s contact screen. So when you look at that tutor’s screen you will see what class, which location
and when the tutor is scheduled to teach.
Once you have created a class, if you wish to offer the same program again, but starting on a different date, it
is a simple process to duplicate the class. This allows all the information you have already set up to be copied
into a new class, but moves the sessions forward to your new start date. You can also manage class duplica-
tions in bulk, copying all your classes from one semester to the next.
Tip
Many colleges develop special codes to assist in identifying classes in groups like categories or re-
gions to make them easier to remember and search on. A simple method is to number or alphabetise
the classes. For example if your course is Dancing For Beginners and the course code is DFB, you
may wish to create the class code for the first class of this course as “01” or “A”. This will then al-
low future classes in this same course to be listed in order ie. 01, 02 or A, B, C etc. When you dupli-
cate the class the number or letter will automatically increment.
Example 8.2. How to create a new class
1. Go to Course Setup from the class list window, click on the the + button in the top right hand corner of
the screen. A new class screen will open to the general tab.
2. All classes must be linked to a course you have already created. Begin setting up your class by typing the
course name and select it from the drop down list. Once you have entered the course name you will see
that the course code is automatically entered in the “course code” field.
3. You will need to create a class code. Your class code must be unique, that is a code not used by any oth-
er class already created for that course. Please note that the class code must not have any spaces or hy-
phens between characters. The pink coloured field will change from invalid (pink) to valid (white) once
you have entered your information correctly.
62
Creating Classes
4. Create minimum and maximum enrolments for your class. The minimum amount of enrolments is usual-
ly determined by the college as the least number of students needed to make the class financially or edu-
cationally viable. The maximum is often the capacity of the venue. This is the minimum amount of data
needed to create a class. Projected enrolments are optional, but can be used to calculate your projected in-
come for the class. Projected enrolments are usually a number between the minimum and maximum - how
many students you expect to enrol.
5. Message Alert for Operator: You are able to write a message here for the people who are creating class-
es and sessions or enrolling students. It may be for a change of venue or time or that a certain discount is
being offered. You can enter the text directly by typing in this window and it will appear as red text in the
Quick Enrol window when this class is selected.
6. Now go to the tutor tab. This is where you can assign tutors to classes. Click on the + sign on the right
hand side of the screen. A drop down sheet will appear. Type the tutor’s name in the tutor field, surname
first. This is an autcomplete field so once you start typing, a selection of tutor’s names you have previous-
ly entered will be listed. Select the tutor you want from the list.
7. You can optionally select the "In Publicity" checkbox. If this option is checked, the tutor will appear on
your onCourse website linked to the class and in any exports or reports you run.
8. Optionally select the role the tutor will have eg. as tutor, supervisor, co-ordinator etc. You can also enter
the date on which they were confirmed to teach this class. This may come at a later date, and if you have
an onCourse website they may also self confirm through their onCourse web portal.
9. You have the choice to “add the selected tutor to class sessions” by ticking this box. This means that the
selected tutor will be attached to any sessions you have already created in the timetable. Click Ok.
10.You can add a tutor wage at this step, or later when setting up the budget. Enter the rate and how it is cal-
culated e.g. per hour.
11.Repeat these steps to enter an additional tutor or course supervisor.
12.Go to the Budget tab to set the class fee and any applicable discounts. You can also add additional income
and expenses to the class budget here.
13.To set a student fee for the class firstly, select whether or not to charge GST for the class (see the DEST
website regarding the application of GST to education). Next to the “tax” window are arrows offering you
the options “GST”, that is to include GST in the class price or “N” to have no tax charged. Make your se-
lection and either enter your student fee in the field “fee ex tax” which is the class fee excluding tax or en-
ter in the total fee including tax in the “total fee” field. Either field in which you enter the fee will then
calculate the alternate fee so you can see the class fee inclusive and exclusive of GST fees.
14.Income Account is a drop down menu that gives you the option of assigning the income generated from
this particular class to a certain account. The default setting is Student Enrolments. Choose your preferred
account if it is not the default option.
63
Creating Classes
15.If you wish to apply a concession or promotional code to this class, you need to add them from already
created promotions and concessions. To add an already created discount to your selected class, click on
the + sign on the right hand side of the screen. A drop down menu will appear asking for promotional
code or a discount name. Enter either of these things and then click ok. The details of the discount will ap-
pear in the discounts box.
Example 8.3. How to create sessions
The following is a detailed example of how you would add sessions for a class on different days of the week.
This example will use the scenario of a user wanting to add sessions on Monday, Wednesday and Saturday.
1. On the timetable tab enter the start date and time for the first Monday session. In onCourse, the date and
time share a field, so you need to type something like 3/4/2010 3pm. You can also click on the calendar
icon to use the date selector tool to find the start date of your choice.
Field showing the session start time
2. Enter a duration for the session in hours and minutes e.g. 6 hrs. You can also choose to repeat the ses-
sions. By default, there is one session, but by changing the number in the session field you can make as
many repeating sessions as you like. (if you are making 5 Monday sessions, enter 5)
3. If the tutor will not be paid for the full duration for the session (e.g. an upaid lunch break) change the val-
ue in the payable time option.
You can have an amount of hours for the session time and an amount for payable hours
4. By default, session repetition will be set to weekly. By clicking on More options you can change the re-
peat to hourly, daily, weekly, monthly or yearly, and make the repeat every 2 weeks or 3 months, for ex-
ample. If you choose a daily repeat you can choose to skip weekends. (For this example, to create the 5
sessions on Mondays, choose weekly)
64
Publishing classes online
The class session as it appears in the calendar month view
5. Press the button 'create sessions'.
6. Now you need to do all of this again (from step 1 to 4) for the Wednesday sessions. Go the the tab on the
timetable labelled 'New' to add these new sessions to your existing Monday sessions.
7. Do it all again with a single session on the Saturday and save and close the record.
Publishing classes online

If you have published the course online, you can then publish the classes online for students to enrol in. All
classes published are considered open for enrolment. You can not prevent students from enrolling in a class
once it has been published online, so it is advisable to ensure all the advertising details are correct prior to
publishing.
The marketing information for most of your programs will be located in the course web tab. Only where
there is information particular to this instance of the class would you need to add information to the class
web tab. For example, if each instance of the class required students to bring different materials because they
worked on new projects each term, would you publish this information in the class tab.
Classes can be published online by checking the option on the web tab 'show this class on the website'. You
can also add or remove classes to the website in bulk using the cogwheel function in the classes list view.
Only current and future classes will show online. Classes with no start or end date set will not be published,
and classes that are complete i.e. the end date has passed, will be automatically removed from your onCourse
website. onCourse does not prevent students from enrolling once the class is commenced, but commenced
classes are clearly marked on the website.
65
Creating class budgets
The minimum and maximum places you set in the class are also used on your onCourse website to show stu-
dents if there are places still available. The website will not show students the maximum number of places,
or how many students have already enrolled. This is what the website will display:
• if the class is full: it will read ‘class full’
• If the class has been cancelled it will read 'Cancelled'. If you have published class information in a hard
copy brochure, we recommend leaving cancelled classes on the website so perspective students can see
that the class they are looking for is not available.
• if there are six or more places available, it will read ‘places available’
• if there are between one and five places available, it will give a count of the places available, for example
it may read ‘3 places available’.
Providing an enrolment count when their are less than five places available creates a sense of urgency: The
student knows there are only a few places available, so they will hopefully be motivated to enrol as soon as
possible, so they don’t miss out on joining the class.
Creating class budgets

The budget feature is enabled with some paid onCourse support contracts. Check your college's support
agreement to see if this feature has been enabled for your organisation.
Class budgets allow users to add additional income, expense and wages lines to assit your program coordi-
nators to determine the profitability of a class. In addition to the income collected from your current enrol-
ments, you can predit the income and expenses you will incur for any projected number of enrolments.
This function can be particularly useful for long term income planning. For example, if you are in a position
to schedule your classes a year in advance, you can predict the income for each class based on the class bud-
get. Throughout the year you can compare your actuals to your predicted income and see how you are track-
ing against the budget.
Example 8.4. How to create a class budget
1. Go to the Budget tab in the class window. Here you can see a list of income and expenses for the class,
plus a summary of the Actual and Budgeted income and expenses.
2. If you have already added a tutor and added a payroll amount, you may already have a cost assigned for
the tutor wage.
3. To add a tutor wage, you need to have already assigned the tutor to the class. You can then define the rate
and any associated oncosts.
66
Adding RTO and VET
data to class records
4. Additional income (other than the student fee you charge on enrolment) can be added to the budget. This
may be for government funding income, or a co-payment that is made to you by a 3rd party to support the
student's enrolment. For each income line, you can choose for it to be fixed, per enrolment, per hour, per
session or per student contact hour.
5. Expenses can also be added. These may include items like room hire, student textbooks and advertising
charges. Some expenses may be considered 'sunk', that is, they are incurred even if the class is cancelled.
6. The Actual summary will show the income and expense given the current students enrolled in the class.
To set an estimate, or budget, type the number of expected students in the Budgeted field. The income and
expenses will then be calculated accordingly.
7. From the class list window, a range of budget reports are available to assist you with evaluating your pro-
gram profitability. The Budget Details report shows line by line detail of the budget you have created. The
Budgets report will show a summary of the actual and budgeted income and expense for a selection of
classes.
Adding RTO and VET data to class records

To assit you in reporting accurate AVETMISS data, some information can be set and collected at the class
level. You can always modify information at the individual student or outcome level later if needed. The in-
formation you set at the class level is the usual case scenario e.g. the main funding source for this particular
group of students.
The VET information can all be found on the VET Tab - most of these fields are only relevant to RTOs and
businesses who report AVETMISS statistics as part of a government funding arrangement. If this doesn't ap-
ply to you, you can safely ignore these fields.
Example 8.5. Setting the VET information for a class
1. In the “delivery mode” field choose the delivery mode of the selected class from the drop down menu. Do
the same for the “funding source national” field. The options in the list are set by the AVETMISS stan-
dard. Note that this information can be updated per student once you have enrolments.
2. Enter your “funding source state” (this field is only used by some states, check with your reporting body
for the appropriate codes for your state)
3. There are two NSW only fields here, DET booking identifier (NSW only field) and Course site identifi-
er (NSW only field). If you are in NSW and submitting data to the Training Market, they will supply you
with the data required for these fields for each of your contracts.
4. Purchasing contract identifier and Purchasing contract scheduler are fields is used by some states. You
should check with your reporting body for the appropriate codes for your state and the circumstances
where you are required to supply them.
67
Working with class-
es that have enrolments
5. Both your nominal hours and classroom hours will be calculated. Nominal hours are calculated based on
the hours you set at the unit of competency level. Classroom hours are based on the timetabled hours for
the class. The nominal or classroom hours multipled by the number of students enrolled is used to calcu-
late your student contact hours. Where you have provided them, your reportable hours will default to the
nominal hours, or classroom hours if nominal hours haven't been set up. If you wish to report different
hours, override the data in the reportable hours field with the numbers of your choice.
6. There are additional AVETMISS funding fields in the student enrolment record that you can set for each
individual you report. These include Study reason, Fee exemption/concession type, Client identifier: Ap-
prenticeships, Training contract: Apprenticeships and Full time flag (QLD only).
Working with classes that have enrolments

After you have set up your classes and taken enrolments, there is a range of additional information available
to you from the class record.
Visit the enrolment tab to see the list of students enrolled in the class. The list will be automatically updated
each time a new enrolment is processed in onCourse. Where you can see the student’s names listed, you will
see a small icon to the right of their names. When you click on this icon the selected student’s contact screen
will be opened so you can access their contact details and other history with your college.
Only student's marked as Active are currently enrolled in the class and are counted towards the class num-
bers. Students marked as credited or cancelled have been removed from the class list, but their name still ap-
pears here for historical record keeping purposes.
Double clicking on a student's on student name on the class Enrolment tab will cause a drop down screen to
appear. This is their Enrolment record. You can also access the Enrolment record from the Enrolment win-
dow. This screen will open on the General tab and will show the student’s name and their enrolment details.
The top half of this screen are display only fields and will show information which has already been entered
during the enrolment process. Here you will see the course-class code, the course name, the status of the stu-
dent and the source, whether or not a discount has been applied and the price of the class before the discount.
There is also an invoice hyperlink. Click on this and the invoice for the student and this class will open. This
is also accessible through the invoice screen.
Keep in mind that the invoice for a particular student may not be in the enrolled student's name. For exam-
ple, if a company pays for a team of their staff to attend a class, the invoice will be to the company.
The bottom half of the enrolment screen contains fields particular to RTOs who submit AVETMISS data.
These include Study reason, Fee exemption/concession type, Client identifier: Apprenticeships, Training
contract: Apprenticeships and Full time flag (QLD only). You can set this information for each student as it
applies to them.
In addition to the enrolment records, the class window now contains a list of outcomes for each student en-
rolled. See the RTO Guide for more information about setting and modifying outcomes.
68
Marking Student
and Tutor attendance
You can also see and mark student and tutor attendance in the class window.
Marking Student and Tutor attendance

Attendance tracking is both useful for calculating tutor wages and also to determine the overall attendance
percentage for a student. This is particularly relevant if you are required to meet CRICOS overseas student
attendance requirements.
For every session you create for a class, a corresponding attendance record will be created. Each session can
be marked as Unmarked, Attended or Absent without reason by simply clicking on the icon for the student
for the session.
Alternatively, you can mark all students for a session or all sessions for a student by clicking on triangle next
to the date or student's name and choosing one of the options.
As you begin to mark attendance for a student, a percentage attended will be calculated and displayed. When
attendance reaches 80% or less a yellow notice icon will be displayed. When attendance reaches 70% or less
a red warning icon will be displayed. These will assist you in monitoring if students are meeting the course
attendance requirements.
You can also mark attendance as Absent with reason and Partial attendance by right clicking on the atten-
dance icon. For both of these attendance types you also need to record a note against the student's record as
to why they are absent, and for partial attendance you need to record the time that was attended so the per-
centage attendance calculation can be recorded. Absent with reason will still be taken into account as an ab-
sence for the purposes of determining percentage attendance.
When you run a tutor's payslip, you will have the option to count all scheduled sessions towards their pay-
ment, or only those you have marked as attended or partially attended.
69
70
Chapter 9. Concessions
Concessions
Concessions, discounts and promotional codes are a powerful part of onCourse marketing. Find out more
about the difference between promotions and concessions and why you might choose to use them at your
college.
Creating a concession
In this example we will set up a concession for seniors card holders.
1. Select “Concessions” or from the splash screen or Courses menu.
2. Select + from the bottom left of the window.
3. In the new window, enter a name for this concession e.g. Seniors Card Concession (you can define con-
cession types here)
4. There are two different types of discounts you can create. You can discount the course or purchase by a
percentage of it’s total or by a pre determined dollar value. To set a 10% discount, select the ‘Discount
Percent’ option and type 10 into the discount value field.
5. You can also set a minimum and maximum amount for the concession e.g. min $1 and max $10.
6. Setting a valid from and valid to date is optional. If you want to make the discount apply at all times,
leave this field blank.
7. Choose if this concession can be given with other concessions. For example a student could receive this
concession and a further fee discount by using a special promotional code if you check this box.
8. The next options allow you to select who and how this concession will apply.
• Enrolled within # Days (the student has enrolled at the college in the past # days)
• Age over/under # ages in years
• With xx concession (student has supplied xx concession card type and reference number on enrolment)
• Postcode or Area (where the student lives)
In this example, you might select the third option ‘With Aged Pensioner concession’ or ‘with Seniors card
concession’ or you could set it to ‘Age over 55’.
71
Promotions
9. The last field allows you to assign this concession to certain available classes. You can add or remove
classes by using the + and – signs to the right, including allowing this concession in all current and future
classes.
Promotions
In this example we will create a last minute discount for our previously enrolled students.
1. Create a code for your promotion. This will be what students enter on your website to access the promo-
tional discount (or can be entered by your enrolment staff with phone, mail or in person enrolments).
2. Name and describe your promotion.
3. Set the amount and valid to and from dates as per concession instructions above. In this example we have
limited the date to a one week range.
4. This promotion is for re-enrolling students, so we have set it to students who have “enrolled within 60
days”.
5. Select your eligible classes. Generally promotions are limited to a few select programs, such as those
which already are over the minimum required, or dance classes or those which are starting in the next two
weeks.
Don’t forget, promotional codes only work if you market them. You can always email or sms special promo-
tions to your students to get them out there quickly. With most promotions you would not want to set a qual-
ifier, like enrolled within x days, as you want as many people as possible to ‘use’ the special code to enrol in
your classes, and hope the students you market the promotion to assist you in your marketing efforts by pass-
ing the deal on to their friends.
Concession Types
In many organisations and businesses, discounts are offered to customers based on a arbitrary grouping or
criteria such as students, special card holders etc.
In onCourse, we can use Concession Types to define which groups of people have access to discounts by:
• Associating the concession type by editing contacts/students; and
• Associate the concession type to a concession (see documentation on creating concessions)
Creating a concession type
1. Go to File -> Preferences -> Concession Types
2. Click the add button ( + )
72
Concession Types
3. Name your concession type and choose if you want it to be available on the web, if it requires a number or
has an expiry date.
Once you have created the concession type, go to concessions to define who can use it and how it can be
used.
73
74
Part III. Processes
Chapter 10. Processing Enrolments
Terms and Definitions
Quick Enrol: Quick enrol is a tool available to you in onCourse, it allows you to easily enrol a student
into a class in just a few steps.
Enrolment: An enrolment is an instance in which a person has elected to partake in a class for dif-
ferent reasons, they will supply their details and this will be stored in the onCourse
database.
Invoice: An invoice is a record/document that represents income of some sort. This can be an en-
rolment into a class or other goods and services provided. An invoice is basically a bill.
Payment: A payment is an instance in which money owing has been successfully taken from one
party and transferred to another.
Student: A student in onCourse is a type of contact, one who is currently or has previously been
enrolled into a class and is being taught by another person/resource.
Payer: A payer is someone who has personally paid an invoice for an enrolment in a class. It is
important to note that a payer does not necessarily need to be the person taking the class,
or even an individual for that matter. They can be a relative, friend, manager or compa-
ny.
Working with Quick Enrol

Quick enrol can be accessed through a number of methods:
• Clicking on the Quick Enrol option from the onCourse home or "splash" screen.
• Selecting People from the top menu and then selecting Quick Enrol from the drop down menu.
• You can also bring up the Quick Enrol page if you hold down the command button on your keyboard and
press the E button once, this is called a Keyboard Shortcut.Please note you can only issue this command
if you are in an active window of onCourse, not any other program.
Quick Enrol is a tool in which you can enrol students into classes. Most of the fields have autocomplete
functionality which means when you start typing, onCourse starts finding students that start with that name,
and will display the results in a small drop down box under the field you are completing, for your selection.
Navigating through Quick Enrol
77
Creating an enrol-
ment with Quick Enrol
The following will identify the different elements of the Quick Enrol window, and what their purpose is, the
left side of the windows houses the buttons to select, where the right side houses the fields and functions.
• The + Add... button (left side of the window): This button houses several options in regards to creating an
enrolment, by clicking on it, this button will reveal functions like: Adding an additional contact, enrol-
ment, charge, membership, product,gift certificate or private booking. Think of it as a way to add on
extra information onto the enrolment.
• The Enter contact button (left side of the window): This button allows you to attach a paying person to
the enrolment, they can be a student, a tutor or a company, remember, you don't have to be the actual stu-
dent to be the payer.
• The Payment button (left side of the window): This button allows you to input payment type like credit
card or cash and the payment amount, among other useful things like a customer reference number for in-
ternal use.
• The Enter Enrolment button (left side of the window): This button allows you to search for a course, and
select a class from that class to enrol in, you can search with a course code or just a course name, these
fields have autocomplete functionalility so this means that you don't need to guess the exact title of the
course.
Creating an enrolment with Quick Enrol

This section will provide you with clear and concise instructions on how to achieve certain things within on-
Course Quick Enrol, like enroling a student.
A few things to consider first:
• A contact can be a student or a payer, a company can be listed as a payer but can not be a student.
• Student names can be entered in this fashion: "Smith, John". When you type a comma, the autcomplete
looks up all students with "Smith" as a surname. As you continue to type letters of the first name, the list is
reduced.
• You can also type student names like this: "John Smith". When you do this, the autocomplete feature will
not start showing you choices until you have typed a few letters of the student's surname.
• At any time you can press the up and down arrows on your keyboard to select a student, and press 'return'
to choose the student currently selected.
• If the student you are enrolling has a contact record at your college, you can select them from the list.
• When the student name is highlighted in the list, you will see their suburb and date of birth, to assist you in
selecting the right record.
78
Creating an enrol-
• If the student you wish to enrol is new to your college, you can select the option "New…" from the list to
begin creating a new student record.
• Once you have selected your student, you will see their information in the Quick Enrol window, this is the
same information you see in their contact record, you can then make changes to any of the contact details,
notes or AVETMISS information as needed.
• A third party payer is a person or organisation who is not the student enrolling. This can include other stu-
dents, friends, relatives, managers, organisations.
• When you complete the enrolment, the changes will be saved. If you cancel the enrolment, your changes
will not be saved.
Tip
Please note that once you open Quick Enrol, you will be defaulted to the enter enrolment page, you
do not have to start the enrolment process from this page, you may start from anywhere in Quick En-
rol, although it is recommended to start at "enter contact", as this will make things simpler.
Example 10.1. A basic enrolment
The following will take you through the enrolment process step by step, keeping it simple throughout.
1. Open "Quick Enrol", see above for instructions.
2. You are defaulted to the "Enter Enrolment" page, from the left select "Enter contact".
3. In the "name" field, type in a name and click on it to select that person and populate the fields with their
detais (autofill), if the person you need is not in the system, you can create their profile from here, by fill-
ing out the fields and selecting either "Student", "Tutor" or "Company", depending on who they are (pay-
er or student etc).
4. After the contact is selected, click on "Enter Enrolment" from the left hand side.
5. From here input either a course code or course name, again these fields are autocomplete so if you were to
type e.g "Comp", the rest of the word "Computer" will come up showing courses that contain that word in
the title.
6. Once the course is located in the system, the classes will be presented to you in the "Choose a class" list
view, highlight the class you want, remembering that the "Show finished classes" checkbox can be select-
ed to include classes that are now past their end date, e.g "Computers - For Beginners" is scheduled to end
on 24/11/11, and the date is 25/11/11, selecting "Show finished classes" ensures that "Computers- For Be-
ginners" is shown in the class list view.
7. Input a discount amount and select a concession if applicable (not compulsory).
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Creating an enrol-
8. Select a study reason (not compulsory).
9. Next, select "Payment" from the left hand side, you will notice there is now an amount next to the word
"Payment" and in the "Payment amount" field.
10.Input a customer reference if applicable (not compulsory).
11.Input a promotional code if applicable (not compulsory).
12.Select a payer from the payer field, this does not have to be the student, it can be any other contact in the
system, including an organisation (more on that after these instructions).
13.From the "Payment type" drop down box, select your payment method.
14.Finally, select save from the bottom of the window, a confirmation box will appear, form here select your
methods of recieving the invoice and enrolment confirmation. That's it!
An example of the autocomplete functionality in onCourse
Example 10.2. Adding a second or subsequent enrolment
To add an additional enrolment, you must click on the "+Add..." button and select "Enrolment". This will
create another enrolment page on the left side menu, from here, as per the previous instructions, you may
add another class to your students enrolment. If you have added an additonal class but changed your mind,
you can just click on the "X" button to the right of the "Enrolment" option in the left side menu. It is grey in
colour.
The "add" button, selecting an additional enrolment
Example 10.3. Adding additional students
To add an additional student, you must click the plus "+Add..." button in the top left corner and select "Con-
tact" to add another student to Quick Enrol. You can add as many students as necessary, provided they are all
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Creating an enrol-
being paid for by the same person or company. To change the payer at any stage, click on the "Payment" but-
ton in the left side menu and edit the "Payer" drop down box to switch to the other contact you want to be the
payer.
The "add" button, selecting an additional contact

If you add extra contacts after the enrolments have been added to the first student, each of the contacts will
be created with a copy of the first contact's enrolments. For example, if three friends are all enrolling in the
same two dance classes, add the enrolments to the first person, then add your other two contacts and they
will be populated with the same classes. If you have students enrolling together that are doing different class-
es, e.g. a husband enrolling in painting and a wife enrolling in Tai Chi, add both contacts first, then add the
enrolments to each contact. There are small crosses on the right hand side of the screen that allow you to re-
move contacts or enrolments you don’t need.
Example 10.4. Adding additional charges
Click the plus + button in the top left corner and choose Add charge to add another charge to your selected
student. You can use this to add a charge or create a manual discount, making sure to give your discount a
relevant name. From this same button you can also add a membership or product.
Example 10.5. Adding a 3rd party payer
This part of the 3rd party payer topic only covers the steps to follow to add a 3rd party payer. For more, read
on to the section "3rd Party Payments".
1. Add the student to the enrolment as per the usual process.
2. Next, add the payer to the enrolment, by clicking the plus sign and add a contact. You do not need to enrol
them in any classes, however, if they are a friend or family member they may be both enrolling and pay-
ing.
3. You can create a relationship between contacts at this point, e.g. contact 2 is the employer of
contact 1, or you can use existing relationships to easily find and add contacts via the quick enrol add con-
tact option.
The relationship option, click "select" to choose a type of relationship between contacts
4. Set the classes for the student(s) as per the usual process.
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Payment
5. In the payment section, ensure you select the correct payer. The payment line will move to the payers
record. Enter the payment details (zero payments are allowed – an invoice with an unpaid, partial or fully
paid balance will be sent).
6. Select ‘Email’ and/or ‘Print enrolment confirmation and tax invoice’ as appropriate. The invoice will only
go to the payer. The enrolment confirmation will go to the student(s) enrolling.
Example 10.6. Enrolling a student in credit or debt

To enrol a student in credit or debt bascically means that the student you are about to enrol owes your organ-
isation money through unpaid or partially paid fees, or your organisation owes this student money through
the student leaving a course early and thus being able to retrieve some funds. To achieve one of these you
would need to make sure the following:
1. The student must have been previously enrolled in a class.
2. The student must have accrued either credit or debit depending on their actions during enrolment.
3. Once trying to enrol the student, you will notice the amount either in "Previous Owing" or "Balance Out-
standing". If the student has credit to their name, then the balance outstanding will be less then that of the
amount the class actually costs.
Payment
By default the first contact is nominated as the payer. If you wish to switch this to another contact, click on
the payment button on the left and change the name of the payer with the field provided. This can be either
by using a customer reference or just selecting the payer name from the payer field. As always, you can also
choose the payment option from here.
The payment window
If a third party, such as an employer or agency are paying the fee, add them as a contact to the enrolment
window as per the instructions above and set them as a payer. Select your payment method and payment
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Tax invoices and en-
rolment confirmations
amount. If the payer has any amount outstanding, that information will be added to the total fee. You can
choose to pay the full amount owing, zero, or a portion of the amount owing.
If the students are using a promotional code in their enrolment, enter it in this window. This discount
will automatically be applied to all the eligible enrolments in this Quick Enrol window.
If you select credit card, the details will be validated as you enter the information. The enrolment save pro-
cess will not complete until the bank validates the card number.
Tax invoices and enrolment confirmations

If the student(s) have provided email addresses, you can choose to send this information now. Otherwise,
it can be printed at a later date. Select for each student if you would like this information emailed and/or
mailed.
The enrolment confirmation goes to each student who has enrolled in a class. The tax invoice only goes to
the payer. For example, if two friends were attending a class together, paid for by one of them as a gift to the
other, only the payer would receive information about the fees charged. The person receiving the enrolment
as a gift would simply receive an enrolment confirmation with no information regarding the cost.
Press save to process, and save the enrolment. The completed enrolment will be visible as ‘Active’ in the En-
rolment window. If the save button is greyed out, it means you have not entered all the required information.
Look for the yellow Attention signs and pink fields to know where the error is coming from, also you can
hover over the yellow attention signs for a brief explanation as to what may be causing the error.
Concessions
When processing an enrolment through Quick Enrol, you can discount course fees by using a:
• Concession – a standard discount automatically offered to a group of people, e.g. seniors, on a range of
courses.
• Promotion – a special offer accessed through a one-time code, used as a marketing tool.
• Manual discount or surcharge – can be used to provide bulk discounts or to pay for additional services,
such as phone enrolment booking fee.
More about concessions and promotions and how they can be set up here .
If a concession type has been set, and a student meets the requirements of the concession, such as holding a
particular type of card, living in a certain area,or being a certain age, and the class they are enrolling in has
been set to accept that concession type as a discount, then the discount will automatically be applied when
they enrol.
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Promotional codes
Enrolment with a concession applied for one class
Promotional codes
Promotional codes can be used by students enrolling over the web and by administration staff through on-
Course Quick Enrol. In both instances, the code word must be supplied for the student to gain access to the
discount.
When processing an enrolment, enter the code in the field Promotional code in Quick Enrol. This will then
discount the eligible classes as appropriate.
The Quick Enrol promotional code field (located to the right of the screen)
3rd Party Payments

3rd Party Payments Enrolments can be paid for by the person enrolling, by other students, by the student’s
parent or spouse, by their employer or another agency, or anyone else you can think of.
If someone other than the student enrolling is paying for the enrolment, it is called a third party payment.
Any person paying for an enrolment on behalf of another person need to have a contact record set up within
your onCourse database. This is because the invoice is linked to, and sent to, the payer.
You can set up the payer contact record prior to enrolling the student, or at the time of enrolment, the same
way you would set up any other contact within onCourse.
Example 10.7. Example enrolment

In the example below, the student’s employer is paying for the enrolment.
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Payments In
1. Both the student, Peter Jones, and the payer, NSW Department of Commerce are added to the enrolment.
2. Mark is enrolled in the class, MYOB (V16) Accounting Essentials.
3. NSW Department of Commerce is selected as the payer.
4. No payment is made at this time. An invoice will the full balance outstanding is emailed to NSW Depart-
ment of Commerce. Peter is emailed his enrolment confirmation.
Payments In
Payment In, is defined as recieving money into your company, a type of income. In regards to onCourse, it
is a tool used to take money owing from a student. Payment Out, as you may expect means the opposite, to
give money to someone that is owed money.
Creating a payment in
Processing a Payment In
Example 10.8. How to process a payment in
Payments In can be accessed from the splash screen or from the Financial menu tab the top of your screen.
To process a Payment In, follow these steps (assuming student has debt with you):
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Students who al-
ready owe you money
1. Go the Payment In page either through the onCourse home screen Accounts>>Payment In, or by selecting
"Financial" from the top menu, then "Payment In"
2. From here click on the + (Add) symbol in the top right hand side of the window.
3. Type in the payer name in the "Payment from" feld, remembering the field has autocomplete functionali-
ty.
4. Select payment method and make sure all other details are in order before clicking the "save" button.
5. After you complete this a email will be sent to the payer with the payment details and the payer record
will appear in the list view of "Payment In".
Example 10.9. Example of a Payment In

A student owes $169.40. Payment of $80 is made in this payment, $89.40 still owing. Paying an amount out-
standing through Quick Enrol.
Students who already owe you money

As soon as a student with a balance outstanding is selected as part of thenormal enrolment process
, the amount owing will be displayed in fee summary under "Previous owing" for this payer. Any new en-
rolments you process at the time will add to their total amount owing. If the student has credit with your col-
lege, their credit will be automatically deducted from the total owing.
You can choose, when you process the enrolment, to pay the full amount owing, or just a portion of it.
Example 10.10. Example of paying off a previous and current enrolment together
The student enrolling in a class costing $143, owes $169.40 from a previous enrolment. They pay the full
balance during the Quick Enrol process.
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Students who al-
ready owe you money
Student enrolling who has fees outstanding
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88
Chapter 11. Cancellations and Transfers
Cancelling a single enrolment
Cancelling a single enrolment
The first step is to cancel and refund the existing enrolment.
1. Find the enrolment from the Enrolments window
2. Highlight the enrolment by clicking on it
3. Click on the action window (looks like a cog) and choosing “Cancel 1 enrolment”. This will bring up a di-
alog with a checkbox offering to also refund the enrolment. Click on the box to check mark it.
4. Hit “Proceed”.
This will cancel the enrolment, and create a credit note in the system for the value of the existing enrolment.
Tip
Please note that a payment back to the student will not be automatically created after cancelling an
enrolment. That student might want use the credit to enrol into another class. Or you may wish to
contact the student and arrange a cash refund. The next sections explain these options in detail.
You can also elect to charge a cancellation fee (with or without tax) as per your college policies. The differ-
ence between the fee paid, and the cancellation fee charged will be available as credit to the student, or can
be refunded to them.
Cancelling an enrolment and charging a cancellation fee
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Using the refunded
amount as general credit
Using the refunded amount as general cred-

it
Students with credit will appear in the invoices window as ‘unbalanced’ invoices. The next time the student
enrols, or pays for another student’s enrolment, they will automatically be offered their credit to use towards
their fees in the Quick Enrol process.
Refunding a student
Refunding a student:
To refund a student, provide a refund as per your usual methods e.g. cash, cheque, eft or credit card reversal
and record a payment out in onCourse to clear the student’s credit record
Use the clairvoyant window to find the student, and you will be shown the amount owing. Enter the amount
you refunded and the date paid and save the record.
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Cancelling A Class
Payment out to refund a student
Cancelling A Class
If your class is not financially viable, or needs to be cancelled for other reasons, onCourse has the tools to al-
low you to cancel the enrolments, notify the students, refund the students or provide them with credit notes,
and use their credit to book them in to another, or the next available class.
First, select the class you wish to cancel in the classes window and from the cogwheel option at the top right,
select “cancel class”. This action will credit the students with any amount their paid (or the payer of the en-
rolment, if someone other than the student paid) allowing you to refund them, or use the credit towards an-
other enrolment. You may also choose to apply a administrative fee if you wish.
Cancelling a class
You can use the onCourse communication tools to contact the students and notify them that their
course has been cancelled, as per the example below:
Example 11.1. Example
We apologise that the class 'Cooking for Pleasure' is unable to run as scheduled. Please call our office on
9550 5123 during business hours to select a transfer to next term, a different class, or to request a refund.
From the classes menu, select the cancelled class and choose from the cog wheel option ‘Send message to
students from 1 class”. You can also choose to send a message to the tutor from this window.
If students require a refund, follow this process
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How To Transfer A Student
From One Class To Another
To transfer or enrol students in another class, follow this process
How To Transfer A Student From One Class

To Another
The first step is to cancel and refund the existing enrolment:
1. Find the enrolment from the Enrolments window
2. Highlight the enrolment by clicking on it
3. Click on the action window (looks like a cog) and choosing “Cancel 1 enrolment”. This will bring up a di-
alog with a checkbox offering to also refund the enrolment. Click on the box to check mark it.
4. Hit “Ok”.
Cancelling Enrolment
This will cancel the enrolment, and create a credit note in the system for the value of the existing enrolment.
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Enrolling A Student With Credit
Now open a quick enrol screen and enrol the student into the new class that they wish to pursue.
• What if the value of the new enrolment is more expensive than the old class or less expensive?
As onCourse tracks the amount owing for the student, no money is lost by the system by cancelling and re-
funding (be careful: as just canceling the enrolment will not do anything to the amount owing – if you al-
so want to do a refund you need to tick the checkbox ‘create a credit note to refund student for the amount
charged’)
At the quick enrol stage, you may choose to charge them a transfer fee (click on the “+” symbol) next to
“Other Charges”, or give them a discount or concession if you wish.
• Why can’t I just edit the existing enrolment?
onCourse tracks enrolments and other data in a way which leaves a complete audit trail. So at any time you
will be able to see all the enrolment history for every student. This is very important for financial auditing
and system security reasons which are very important especially when several staff might be making changes
or looking at the history in the system.
Furthmore the refund/quick enrol process makes the workflow clearer when the new class has a different
cost to the old. The operator is explicitly prompted to apply transfer fees (as applicable) or inform the student
about the different cost. By then applying a fee or discount, general ledger adjustments are kept accurate and
clear.

How do I enrol a student who is in credit?
If a student has previously been given credit, for example, a refund where a class didn’t run as scheduled,
they can use that amount towards their next enrolment.
When you enrol a student in Quick Enrol who has credit, you will see that the Previous Owing amount on the
bottom of the screen is a negative number (if students owe money from past enrolments, this will also appear
here)
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Using one student’s credit to pay
for another student’s enrolment
In this example, the student has $345 credit, and uses $189 towards this enrolment. The student still has $156
in credit.
Using one student’s credit to pay for another

student’s enrolment
If the student in credit wishes to use their credit towards another persons enrolment, follow the steps for 3rd
Party Payments, ensuring that you select the student in credit as the payer.
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Chapter 12. Creating and Modifying
Contacts
What is a contact?
A contact is any person or organisation your business works with in relation to running classes. There are
three categories of contact in onCourse:
Contact Buttons to select Student, Tutor or Company
• Student – a person who has or intends on enrolling in your programs. You may need to collect AVET-
MISS data and will need to keep track of their enrolments, outcomes and payments.
• Tutor – these are the people that facilitate your classes, supervise assessments or assist your instructors.
You may want to enter their resume or bio details to display on your website. You want to know what
classes they have been scheduled to deliver and what payments you have made to them. A tutor can also
be a student.
• Company – a business that you may need to invoice, who may book their staff into your classes, or you
may work with in partnership to deliver classes. Tutors can also be companies.
Contacts can be related to each other, e.g. employer and employee, friends, siblings, spouse, child or parent.
Adding a new contact

1. Open the contact window and select the plus (+) button. This will create a new record.
2. Select the contact type from the options as described above
3. Enter the contact’s name and contact details e.g. address, phone numbers and email.
4. Add any relevant notes or attachments to the ‘notes’ tab
5. For students, where needed, collect and enter the AVETMISS data, date of birth and concession card in-
formation
6. For tutors, where needed, add the resume information
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Adding a new con-
tact in Quick Enrol
A Student’s Contact Details
Adding a new contact in Quick Enrol

During the Quick Enrol process, you can also create a new contact by selecting ‘New’.
Modifying contact details

In the contact record, or when you are processing an enrolment, you can make changes to any of the details
you have previously collected. Just type the new information into the field.
Students and Tutors can also update their personal contact details via the Web Portal This saves them having
to contact you if they move or change their phone numbers.
If an existing contact changes their relationship with your college, for example, a past student becomes a tu-
tor, there is no need to create a separate record – simply modify their current record and add in the additional
information.
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Adding Pictures To Contacts
Adding Pictures To Contacts

Each contact (student, tutor or company) can have an identifying image attached to their record that is visible
as part of their general information.
1. To add an image, open a contact record and click on the image place holder.
Image placeholder: Click on the head and shoulders image to add a photo
2. Select the image from your computer that you would like to use and press ok.
Adding a photo to a contact
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Relationships
Relationships
Relationships between contacts Contacts can have relationships with other contacts to assist you with billing,
contacts and marketing activities.
For example, a corporate customer may enrol and pay for their staff members to complete training at your
college, employer and student details can be connected for traineeship management, parents contact details
can be collected for minors, for billing and emergency contact details, and spouse and friend relationships
can be captured for use in marketing campaigns e.g. 20% discount when you refer a friend.
Adding a relationship
In the contact window, you can add a relationship with the plus symbol. This opens a new sheet where you
can type in the name of the contact you wish to add and define the relationship type.
Adding a relationship to a contact
You can also define relationships through theQuick Enrol process, so that if the enrolment process
connects two existing, but unrelated contacts, you can add the new information. When you add a second or
subsequent contact to an enrolment, it will ask you how they are related to the first contact, or payer.
Suggesting contact relationship in Quick Enrol
All contacts can have multiple types of relationships with many other contacts. Relationships can also be
deleted as needed, using the minus button in the contact window.
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Using relationships in Quick Enrol
Using relationships in Quick Enrol

When relationships have been defined within contacts, they can be used to build enrolments quickly.
When a contact is added to quick enrol, the people they have relationships are shown in the Add… list, so
they can chosen to add to the enrolment.
Contact with relationships showing in quick enrol
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Chapter 13. Private Bookings and
Custom Class
Creating and Enrolling Students in a Cus-
tom Class
The Private Booking feature can be used when you are creating a once-off custom class booking for an indi-
vidual or group enrolment. This feature allows you to create the class, set the fee and take the enrolment all
in one window.
You might use this feature to create one-on-one booking for extra tuition, a private dancing lesson for a cou-
ple, or a custom corporate class booking for a small group of staff.
To begin, open the quick enrol window. From the add symbol in the top left corner, select private booking.
Adding A Private Booking
1. Type in a course name. This needs to be an existing course – even if the class content is not the same you
can select one that is similar Salsa eg. Latin and American for a private salsa booking. If you regularly
take private bookings you may prefer to set up a course specifically for that purpose.
2. Set a class code, a site and room and create a fee. Like all classes, the fee is per person, so if you are en-
rolling a couple, you can either set the fee to half the booking cost and charge them both, or set the fee to
the full cost, and manually discount the second person to $0.
3. Select a tutor to deliver the class.
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Creating and Enrolling Stu-
dents in a Custom Class
4. Create one or more sessions for this class. The process is the same as for creating sessions in other class-
es. If you double book a room or tutor, you will see a warning icon in the calendar view.
Creating A Session For A Private Booking
5. Add the contact details for the first student, and enrol them in the class, as per a normal enrolment.
6. Add each of the other contacts attending this class. They will be pre-populated with an enrolment in this
class.
7. Enter the payer and payment details and save the enrolment.
The class and enrolments will be created. The class will be set to a maximum of the number of students who
enrolled. If you need to add an additional student to the enrolment at a later date, you can find and edit the
class maximum numbers and add the additional student(s) as per the normal enrolment process.
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Chapter 14. Waiting Lists
Enabling waiting lists
Enabling waiting lists:
In the onCourse client, each course can be individually enabled to allow waiting lists.
On the general tab, tick the box “Allows waiting lists” and your students will see on your website, listed be-
low all of the available classes, the text “If there isn’t a class to suit you, you could join the waiting list.”
Student web subscription to waiting lists

Student web subscription to waiting lists:
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Managing waiting
lists within onCourse
When students click on the link in a course to the waiting list, they will be prompted to enter their contact de-
tails and any particulars about when and where they would prefer to attend a class for this course.
If students are new to your college, by adding themselves to the waiting list, a contact record for them will be
created within onCourse. If they are existing students, the information they provide will be added to their ex-
isting student record.
When a student is logged in to your website, they are able to manage their waiting list subscriptions, remov-
ing them from any courses they are no longer interested in.
Managing waiting lists within onCourse

Managing waiting lists within onCourse:
Staff within your college can also add and remove students to waiting lists.
Go to the menu People and select Waiting lists. This window will show you all the students currently on
waiting lists for various courses. You can add a student to the waiting list by clicking the plus + symbol.
Student’s need to be set up as contacts before you can add them to a waiting list. In the general tab you can
record the details about the student and the course, and select any venues they may particularly prefer. On
the notes page you can enter other details such as time of day, day or week or any other preferences.
From the waiting list window you can also remove students by clicking the minus – symbol.
In the contact record you can see if a student is on any waiting lists, and in the course record, you can see
how many students are on the waiting list.
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Advising students on waiting
lists that a class is available
Advising students on waiting lists that a

class is available
Advising students on waiting lists that a class is available:
You can also search from the waiting list for all students waiting for a particular course, and use the cog-
wheel function to send a message to the students selected. More about using messaginghere
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106
Chapter 15. RTO Guide
Documentation for features that relate to delivering Australian Vocational Education
Setting and modifying outcomes

How to set and customise outcomes to meet your reporting needs
When you set up a VET course and class and enrol students, outcomes will automatically be created for
each of the units of competency you assigned to the course, with the properties start and end date, reportable
hours, delivery mode and funding type you set in the class.
There are multiple places you can access the outcomes and set them, plus modify the details mentioned
above for individual students – in the class outcome tab, in the student enrolments tab, in the enrolment out-
comes tab, and in the certificate window when you are creating a new certificate.
What are outcomes?

A students outcome is the record of their engagement with a Unit of Competency or Module from a training
package or accredited course. Outcomes are often reported to government through processes such as AVET-
MISS and must meet certain validation rules. Primarily, an outcome records if a student has passed or failed
their course. The outcomes available for selection are as follows:
20 – Competency achieved/pass
30 – Competency not achieved/fail
40 – Withdrawn
51 – Recognition of prior learning granted
52 – Recognition of prior learning not granted
53 – Recognition of current competency granted
54 – Recognition of current competency not granted
60 – Credit transfer
70 – Continuing enrolment
81 – Non-assessed enrolment – Satisfactorily completed
82 – Non-assessed enrolment – Withdrawn or not satisfactorily completed
Refer to the NCVER publications, VET Provider Collection Specifications and AVETMISS Data Element
Definitions for more information regarding the definitions and use of these outcomes.
Setting individual outcomes outcomes

To set the outcome, modify the start or end date, or delivery mode, simply click in the list view field you
wish to change and enter the data. To modify the unit/module the outcome is linked to, to change the funding
source or change the reportable hours, click the expansion option to open the full outcome edit window.
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What are outcomes?
If you wish to add additional outcomes to a students enrolment, open the enrolment record to the outcome
tab, and click the plus sign to add an outcome. You may need to do this if a student completes an additional
unit by RPL, or if the entire class complete an additional unit to what was originally planned in the course.
Setting outcomes in bulk

In the class window, the outcome of one, some or all students can be selected and set as a single action.
Select the outcomes you wish to set by clicking the first outcome, holding down shift (to select all in the
range) or control / command (to select only those you click on). Then right click on any of the selected
records and set the outcomes to successful. This will then set all the records to 20 in a VET class, or to 81 in
a non-VET class.
If you set an outcome to successful’ in error, can always select it again individually and set it to a different
outcome. This means you can set a whole class group to successful very quickly, then go back and change
the outcomes for the 1 or 2 students who did not pass to 30 – Competency not achieved/fail.
Note
Only the 'successful' outcome can be set in bulk
Outcomes FAQ
1. Why would I want to change the start and end date of an outcome?
If a class falls over a collection period (usually a calendar year) and some students have been as-
sessed and passed already, they can be reported with an end date in the current year. The students
who have not yet been assessed, and have end dates in the following year will be automatically ex-
ported with outcomes of 70. You do not need to set the outcome to 70, then come back and change it
when the results are received.
2. What is the funding source field for?
In some types of classes, overseas fee paying students may be attending, as well as Australian fee-
paying students, and Australian government funded students. By setting the appropriate funding
source at the outcome level, you report the correct student contact hours to your funding body, with-
out having to move student enrolments into different class groups. If you deliver CSWE programs,
where this often an issue, there is more information available here about how to set up your courses
and outcomes.
3. I report my statistics to BACE and also need to report my non-accredited course outcomes. How do I
do this?
‘outcomes’ are also created for general enrolments and VET flagged non-accredited courses. On ex-
port, they will automatically be set as type 81 – Non-assessed enrolment – Satisfactorily completed.
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CSWE courses, class-
es and outcomes
You still need to manually set the outcomes for students who do not complete or attend the class as
82 – Non-assessed enrolment – Withdrawn or not satisfactorily completed
4. What are reportable hours?
There is some disagreement between different state funding bodies on what number should appear in
this field. Generally, it is understood to be the nominal hours, as defined by NCVER tables. The nom-
inal hours set for each module will be the default reportable hours reported in your NAT00120 file.
Non-accredited courses report the classroom hours in this field. If you prefer to report the classroom
hours in this field, you can set this in the class VET tab, however you will need to do this BEFORE
enrolling students, otherwise you will need to change the hours outcome by outcome. In some cases,
you may need to modify the nominal hours reported for students being funded under particular pro-
grams, and you should do this in their outcome record.
5. A student who enrolled in one of our VET classes has completed and passed the assessment without
attending the class. How do I report them?
You can report them as 53 – Recognition of current competency granted and should change their out-
comes delivery type to N/A(eg. RPL, credit transfer)
6. A student has completed units towards the qualification they are studying at our college elsewhere.
How do I add them to their record?
Find an enrolment record for the student and open the outcomes tab. Here you can add additional out-
comes as needed. Units completed at another training organisation should be marked as 60 – Cred-
it transfer and their nominal hours are not counted towards your colleges annual delivery. On the
‘Notes’ tab of the students record, you can also add attachments, and it would be appropriate to scan
and attach copies of their original certification and any other supporting documents they have provid-
ed here, for your own records.
CSWE courses, classes and outcomes

Making government reporting less of a hassle for student focused literacy program
Setting up Certificate in Spoken and Written English

(CSWE) courses
Some colleges who deliver CSWE courses run open English language programs at different levels, aligned to
the levels available in the CSWE program. Students enrol in course that is of an appropriate level and when
a class group is formed, the tutor then assess the students and selects appropriate units from the CSWE cur-
riculum for them to work towards. Some students in a class group may be working towards a single unit,
109
Setting up Certificate in Spoken and
Written English (CSWE) courses
while others may be working towards multiple units. Some students may be fee paying, some may be fund-
ed under various government programs. Some students may enrol in a class two or three times before at-
tempting assessment against a CSWE unit and some students may not wish to be assessed at all. All of these
circumstances combined can make headaches for the English classes coordinator who both wants to make
sure the students and tutors needs are met, as well as reporting accurate statistics for funding purposes. Don’t
worry – onCourse has you covered!
Setting up the course

onCourse includes all the available NTIS data relating to accredited courses and classes. Unfortunately,
NTIS isn’t able to provide details of accredited course modules, but for both the current and recently expired
CSWE, we have built in all the modules to onCourse so you can select those you deliver.
If you college chooses different modules for each class, when you create a CSWE course, simply add the ac-
credited course code to the VET page but leave the module list empty. If you always use the same modules,
you can set up your CSWE course like any other VET course, with accredited course detail and modules.
If you do not set any modules in the course, student enrolling in CSWE linked classes will be given a VET-
flagged but non accredited outcome, named whatever your course is named. You will override these out-
comes later when you have the correct module information for each student.
Enrolling students in CSWE classes.

You can enrol students in CSWE classes like you would in any other program. It doesn’t matter if you
mix AMEP, BACE and fee paying students together – the outcomes you set later on will separate them for
AVETMISS purposes.
We realise many students attending CSWE classes may have enrolled in English classes at your college pre-
viously. Knowing the student language background, what classes they have attended, and what units they
have completed will assist your tutors in selecting the best units for their current enrolment.
Once your students are enrolled and classes are ready to start you can print the Student Details Report from
the class window, which will provide the tutors with the information listed above.
Setting CSWE outcomes.

Once your tutor has reported back to the college each of the outcomes attempted and/or achieved by each
student in the class, you can enter the data into onCourse, ready for your AVETMISS exports.
Go to the enrolment window and search for all the students in the class group you wish to work with by con-
ducting and advanced search on the course code and class code.
The outcome tab of each student’s enrolment will show a non-VET outcome. Open it and change it to the
first CSWE outcome you wish to record. You can also set the funding source information in this window.
110
VET delivery hours
You can also add additional outcomes to the enrolment if a student has attempted more than one module dur-
ing this class by clicking the plus sign.
If a student chooses not to be assessed against any outcomes, you either leave them with the VET flagged
non-accredited outcome or choose a VET outcome and set it to 30 – Competency not achieved/fail or if you
have documented evidence that they have refused assessment, yet successfully attended the class, you can set
a suitable module outcome to 81 – Non-assessed enrolment – Satisfactorily completed
VET delivery hours

How and where onCourse records and calculates student contact hours
VET data in the class window

On the class window, there is a tab called VET, which contains fields that are useful for RTOs and relate to
AVETMISS and other delivery statistics. There are also three AVETMISS specific fields ‘Delivery mode’,
‘Funding source’ and ‘DET booking ID’.
• Delivery Mode - This refers to how the class is conducted. Most programs are classroom based, and this is
the default value. You can also change this at the outcome level if necessary, e.g. if one student completes
the program by distance.
• Funding Source - This refers to how the class is funded. These are set selection of national codes. You can
also change the funding source at the outcome level, e.g. for AMEP funded students. For more informa-
tion, visit the NCVER site
• DET Booking ID - This field is specific to the NSW APL report. Visit Training Market NSW for more in-
formation on reporting and lodging your data
Information about the qualification and unit/s of competency delivered in your class are set at the course lev-
el.
Nominal hours, classroom hours and Student Contact Hours

The following fields in the class relate to your delivery hours and AVETMISS reporting:
• Qualification Hours - These are the nominal hours set by NCVER for the qualification. Often, this field is
left blank, which is acceptable for AVETMISS. You can also add the nominal hours to the qualification
yourself in the Qualification table.
• Student Contact Hours - This field multiplies the number of students enrolled by the number of reportable
hours. SCHs are often used by funding bodies to measure delivery.
111
VET Certificates
• Classroom Hours - The total hours you have defined as scheduled activity by setting sessions or by defin-
ing the minutes per sessions and number of sessions on the General tab. This is not reported as part of
AVETMISS – it is for your information only.
• Nominal Hours - The total nominal hours of the units of competency assigned to the course. While the
nominal hours are usually set by NCVER, you can override them or add them where they are missing in
Module/Unit of Competency record.
• Reportable Hours - These are the hours that will be reported against each enrolment in the NAT00120 file.
They default to the nominal hours of the course. If there are no nominal hours as set by the module, i.e. in
a non-VET course, the nominal and reportable hours will default to the classroom hours. You can override
the reportable hours field to the classroom hours or any other number that you wish to export in it’s place.
You can also override the reportable hours in each outcome, if they differ from the class reportable hours.
The report Class funding will provide you with summary information, per qualification, per funding code
of how many student contact hours you have delivered over the classes selected for the report. This can be
used to check at various points during the year, the number of hours you have delivered that compare to your
funding targets.
VET Certificates
onCourse includes the AQF recomended templates for full Qualification Certificates, Statements of Attain-
ment and transcripts. Certificates can only be generated from units that students have undertaken at your col-
lege. If you wish to include Credit Transfer units, you will need to add these outcomes to the students record
before you create the certificate.
Creating individual student’s Certificates

1. Open the Certificate window and click on the plus sign to begin creating certificates.
2. Type the student name into the first field. This field is clairvoyant. They student must be in the database
and the name entered correctly to proceed. The students suburb and date of birth will be displayed when
their record is found.
3. Enter the National Code for the Qualification or Accredited Course you wish to use for the certificate.
This is not limited to qualifications the student has attempted at your college, as many units are valid to-
wards a number of qualifications.
4. If you wish to issue a full qualification, tick the box ‘Satisfies requirement for complete qualification’. If
you do not tick this box, you will be creating a Statement of Attainment.
5. Select the plus sign to begin adding modules/units from the students record to the certificate. You can add
as many as you need – and you must ensure that you only add units that meet the qualification packaging
112
Creating Statements of At-
tainment for a class group
rules of the qualification you selected above. Modules/units selected can be added to this certificate only
once, however they can be used again to create other certificates in the future.
6. When the information is correct, select save.
7. Created certificates appear in the summary window. From this window, you can print the certificates. Se-
lect file, print and choose which certificates you wish to print. If you have your own certificate paper, se-
lect the checkbox ‘use pre-printed paper’. You can also print to PDF to check the certificates manually
first, then print the PDF file if it is correct. Each certificate generated is given a unique tracking number.
Transcripts are automatically created as a second page to each certificate.
8. If a certificate is created in error, or has incorrect units included, it can be modified or even deleted before
it is printed. Once a certificate has been printed, it can not be modified (this includes printing to PDF). If
you open the certificate record you will see the date that the certificate was printed. If there was some er-
ror in the certificate creation, or if a student requests a reprint, you can revoke the original certificate and
it’s certificate number certificate in this window. This security feature helps ensure that revoked certifi-
cates are not still considered valid should an employer or other organisation ever need to verify a students
certificate with you in the future.
Creating Statements of Attainment for a class group

1. Open the class window and select the class(es) you wish to create certificates for.
2. Select the cog wheel option ‘Create certificates’. This will automatically create Statements of Attainment
and transcripts for each student enrolled in the class. You can create the certificates, but not print them,
until each of the outcomes are set. This option is only recomended if most of the students have success-
fully completed the course, otherwise, as some of the certificates you create will need to be deleted. Units
can be added or removed from individual certificates as needed, but only prior to printing.
3. Open the certificate window and print the certificates as needed. Once they are printed they can not be
modified.
Creating Certificates of Attendance for non-VET

courses
Sometimes colleges run non-VET courses that are not eligible to receive official Qualifications or State-
ments of Attainment, however the students would still like to receive some recognition that they completed
the course. In this case, you may wish to supply the student with a Certificate of Attendance. Please refer to
the latest AQF Certification Guidelines regarding the issuing of non-VET certifications, available from your
State Training Authority (i.e. VETAB).
1. Open the class window and select the class(es) you wish to create certificates for.
113
AVETMISS Exports
2. Select the cog wheel option ‘Create certificates’.
3. Select proceed and the certificates will be created on in a PDF file to the location you specify. You can
then print these certificates as needed. The whole classes certificates are created in the one PDF file – if
you only want to print a certificate for one student, locate it in the PDF and use your print functions to
print the specific page.
4. You can re-create these certificates at any time – there are no records created in the certificate window as
they are not VET certifications.
AVETMISS Exports
Getting data out to submit to the government funding body of your choice
Exporting your AVETMISS data couldn't be easier.
Select AVETMISS export from the menu
1. Go to the file menu, select import/export and choose Export AVETMISS...
2. Select the state you are exporting to. AVETMISS standard is only accepted by NT. Every other state has
its own variations. The AQTF Competency Completion report is also available to select from this menu.
3. You can optionally select to export all blank outcomes with the value 81. This is useful only for testing
purposes where you are trying to identify lodgement errors other than blank outcomes.
4. Select the date range you wish to export and where you wish to export the files to, e.g. your desktop, and
select proceed. The 10 text files will then be created ready to be submitted to the government reporting
agency of your choice.
114
Courses by Cluster
Ensure you select the right 'AVETMISS flavour' for the State where you report
Sometimes you may wish to export one or a select group of classes only. You can do this from the class win-
dow.
1. Open the class window and run the query or filter to return the classes you wish to export
2. Highlight from this list the classes you want to export
3. In the cog wheel, select AVETMISS export
4. Select the State or requirement you are exporting for. Your files will be saved in a folder in the location
you have chosen.
Courses by Cluster
How to set up qualifications that are delivered by internal clusters where units of competency overlap
Clusters, in this case, refers to an internal grouping of units of competency that a college delivers to break
up a qualification into teaching-focused groups of units. Sometimes one unit from a qualification may be de-
livered across multiple clusters, and a student must successfully complete the assessments in each cluster to
acheive competency in the unit. For example the Qualification Certificate IV in Training and Assessment has
12 units in total, but the four Environment units are assessed in each cluster. The course is delivered in three
clusters and each cluster has a fee that applies to it.
115
Creating the Qualification
Creating the Qualification

Create a new course and attach all the units that you deliver as part of the qualification. This is the formal en-
rolment where you will record the student’s completion of outcomes once assessment has been sufficiently
completed across your various clusters.
This is the course that you will advertise on your website, so make sure you include the full course descrip-
tion and information about how you deliver the program.
Next, create a class for this course, entering the dates, student fees and venue information. Details on how to
create a class is available here. Web enable this class so students can enrol.
You may choose to set up this class as an ‘application fee enrolment’ and advise the students of the full fee
within this class description. Do this by setting the class fee as the amount you wish them to pay to apply,
and ensure your information explains what the approval process involves. You will need to contact students
who apply and inform them of their success or otherwise, and organise payment of the full course fees.
Creating the clusters

The cluster courses that you create are for your scheduling and management purposes only. They will not be
advertised online, as you will enrol students in these classes as appropriate.
The clusters that you create are not VET courses – do not attach the qualification or units of competency to
these records. You can put details of the units and content covered in the description if you wish.
Set up each course and class with the assigned rooms, tutors and sessions
Enrolments and Payment

As onCourse will invoice students class fees, you can allow students to make full payments or part payments
at the time of enrolment.
For example, you could set the full fee on the first class and track students as they make payments towards
this total amount. Alternatively, you could set up multiple classes with fees attached, so students are only in-
voiced for a portion of the course fee each time they are enrolled in a new cluster.
In the example below, the full qualification has an application fee of $100, paid online. Once the student’s
enrolment has been accepted, they are invoiced $900 for the first cluster, and $500 for each of the subsequent
clusters, until a total of $2000 has been paid.
116
Chapter 16. Reporting
Reports. Numbers. Charts. It’s important to be able see your data to
make business decisions, and even more importantly, seeing it in a
way that makes sense to you.
Reports within onCourse

Our reporting engine: powered by JasperReports:
In onCourse, we’ve chosen a powerful, flexible reporting engine called JasperReports to create our reports.
We and our customers can create report templates are used to generate print quality output PDF, HTML,
XLS, CSV and XML that fits their needs.
There exist a number of tools that can be used to create and custom reports which we’ll go through in a step
by step fashion in the following sections of this document. Our tool of choice is called iReport, but it’s stil-
ll possible to create reports such as OpenOffice or MS Office but these solutions will not be able to generate
reports that can be imported as a report within onCourse itself.
Reports included in onCourse:
You’ll find that a number of reports have already been included in onCourse. For the most part these will
provide information about one thing, ie. from the Students window, you’ll be able to print a list of students,
or if you wished student details. Similarly from the Courses, you can print course details, profit and loss
statements, the schedules and timetables of a list of Courses or a particular Course.
However, often people want to find out more information than the basics. Often all the bits of information
that you want can’t simply found within the one item. Say for example: if you wanted to find all students
who had enrolled in Course called “Human Philosophy” over the past 5 years, you simply can’t do this with-
in the standard reports.
This is why we’ve included a mechanism for people to create custom reports, and import the reports that
they’ve created into onCourse, allowing reports to be printed when required. Thus we hope that people will
be able to generate reports that meets their needs and requirements.
You can view the full list of reports grouped by type and function here.
Importing a custom report:
It’s simple to add a report that’s already been created. Simply navigate to General Preferences. Click on the
Printing Tab and then click on “+”.
You should then be able to select your report (.jrxml or .jasper extensions). Hit the “Select” button after
highlighting the file you want.
117
Reports by Type
If after your import that you find that you have problems with printing of that report, you may need to go to
Resource->Reports to compile the report if it does not work
Creating Reports with OpenOffice:
Guide to accessing reports/data from OpenOffice here
Reports by Type
Getting the information you need
Some reports are listed more than once as they may apply to multiple areas of the colleges operation
Financial Reports:
Budget Details Line by line details of class per page budgets
Budgets Summary reports of class budgets, grouped by subject
Banking Report Used to deposit banking for cash, cheque and credit card
Class Tutor List Report Scheduled tutor hours for each class, useful for pay claim verification
118
Reports by Type
Debtors and Creditors Aged debtors and creditors
Invoice Report Invoices supplied to debtors
PaymentIn Line report of all payments in
Transaction Detail Detailed report displaying transactions made to and from each general ledger account
over a specified period of time.
Transaction Summary a more general overview of transactions made over a specified period of time.
Reconcile For reconciliation with banking deposits
Statement Summary of all debits and credits for a contact
Course and class management reports:
Class by Subject An overview of all the classes, grouped by subject, including enrolment numbers and enrol-
ment targets
Class Funding This AVETMISS based report is useful for keeping track of the hours of funded delivery you
have provided against each qualification
Classes Report A summary list of classes, similar to the classes list window, showing dates and enrolment
numbers
Class Tutor List Report A useful report for payroll purposes, this shows, grouped by tutor the hours of sched-
uled delivery they have for each class
Courses A printed list of the courses window
Room Details Report A list showing all the scheduled sessions for a room
Room Schedule Report A visual calendar report showing the scheduled sessions for a room
Site Details: The details of a particular site as it has been set up, including directions, room listings and ca-
pacity.
Sites: A list of all the sites and their addresses
Tutor Details The contact details and scheduled sessions for a tutor
Tutors Report A list of tutor names and addresses
Marketing reports:
Mailing List Report Contact details of all people on a mailing list
Information for students:
119
Budget Details
Class Details The information for each session of the class is listed on this report
Course Details This report provides all the detail of a course, including it’s description and scheduled classes
Enrolment Confirmation Details about course content, time dates and locations for sessions of the class a stu-
dent has enrolled in
Invoice Report Invoice showing GST and non-GST fee components, plus balance outstanding.
Statement A list of all transactions made by a contact
Information for tutors:
Class Roll Session by session grid created for marking student attendance
Class Contact List Contact details for students in a particular class
Student Contact List Contact details for all students across a range of class groups
Student Details A useful educational report showing an overview of all units a student has undertaken at the
training organisation and their outcomes
VET/AVETMISS reports:
Qualifications A list of the NTIS qualifications available within onCourse
Training Packages
Class Funding For keeping track of delivery hours for different funding groups
Class hours: A summary of the classroom, nominal and reportable hours for each class
Create your own reports:
onCourse uses Jasper, an open source tool to create reports. You can add your own custom reports to on-
Course at any time by creating them with iReport [http://jasperforge.org/projects/ire-
port]. You can also Export to XML [chapter3.xml] from onCourse or connect onCourse
to OpenOffice [chapter2.xml] to perform functions like mail merge.
Budget Details
onCourse Budget Details Report
Use:
To obtain a detailed print out of the budgeted and actual income and expense lines, one page per class.
Report Location:
120
Budgets
From the Class menu, select Print and choose Budget Details. You can print all available records, listed
records (based on a query you have run) or the highlighted records.
Budget Details
Budgets
onCourse Budget Report
Use:
To obtain a detailed or summary print out of the budgeted and actual
Report Location:
From the Class Menu, Select Print and Choose Budgets. You can print all available records, listed records
(based on a query you have run) or the highlighted records. You can suppress the class lines, to provide a
summary for each subject only, or show each class.
In the example below, the classes are listed with the actual figures displayed. As detail has not been entered
for the budget fields, the budget amounts are all listed as $0.
121
onCourse Banking Report
Budgets By Subject

Use:
To obtain a report of all cheque, cash and credit card payments processed since the last bank, to assign the
money to the appropriate general ledger income accounts, and to generate a printed report, where necessary
to provide to your bank with the cash and cheque deposits.
Report Location:
From the Financial Menu, select Deposit Banking. In the window that opens, you can see a summary of the
cheques, cash and credit card payments collected since the last processed bank. You can check the option,
Print Report, for a hard copy, as displayed below.
122
123
Class Tutor List Report
Banking Report

onCourse Class Tutor List report
Use:
To obtain an overview of classes scheduled for each tutor. This report also provides the total hours the tutor
is scheduled to teach for each class, which can be used for payroll purposes.
Report Location:
From the Class window, find the classes you wish to include in the report, such as a particular date range. Se-
lect File, Print and Choose Report Class Tutor List
124
125
Debtors and Creditors Report
Debtors and Creditors Report

onCourse Debtors and Creditors Report
Use:
To obtain an aged debtors and creditors report for all unbalanced invoices
Report Location:
From the Invoice window, select Print and Choose Debtors and Creditors Report.
A Debtors And Creditors Report
Invoice Report
onCourse Invoice Report
Use:
To supply hard copy Tax Invoices to students and other debtors.
Report Location:
126
Invoice Report
From the Invoice window, find the invoices you wish to include in the report, such as a particular date range.
Select File, Print and Choose Report Invoice
Report Notes:
When a student is enrolled, and provides an email address, a tax invoice will be emailed to the payer, along
with an enrolment confirmation, sent to the student enrolled. Often this will be the same person.
Other invoices, not relating to enrolments, can be manually created and printed via the invoices window.
127
Invoice Report
128
PaymentIn Report
A Tax Invoice Report
PaymentIn Report
onCourse PaymentIn Report
Use:
To obtain an overview of payments processed, declined or rejected, processed through either your office or
over the website.
Report Location:
From the Payment In window, find the payments you wish to include in the report, such as a particular date
range. Select File, Print and Choose Report Payment In
Report Notes:
All payments made, or attempted, as part of the enrolment process will created a Payment In record. You can
also manually create payments in from this window, against any outstanding invoice.
129
PaymentIn Report
130
Transaction Detail
A 'Payment In' Report
Transaction Detail
onCourse Transaction Detail
Use:
To provide a detailed report displaying transactions made to and from each general ledger account over a
specified period of time.
Report Location:
To access this report you must first be in the "Accounts" section of onCourse, you can access this through
a number of ways. From the splash screen or from the top menu Financial>>Accounts. Once in "Accounts"
click on "Account", there's a subtle difference. Once in "Account" (under "Accounts") you may select (from
the top menu) File>>Print and print to pdf or paper. You can also set the date far back so that you may in-
clude more records that have occured over time.
131
Transaction Detail
132
Transaction Summary
A Transaction Detail Report
Transaction Summary
onCourse Transaction Summary
Use:
To provide a more general overview of transactions made over a specified period of time. This report will
provide you with for example; Student Enrolments overall rather than each individual student
Report Location:
To access this report you must first be in the "Accounts" section of onCourse, you can access this through
a number of ways. From the splash screen or from the top menu Financial>>Accounts. Once in "Accounts"
click on "Account", there's a subtle difference. Once in "Account" (under "Accounts") you may select (from
the top menu) File>>Print and print to pdf or paper, but making sure you first change the drop down menu in
the top right hand corner of the print window to "Print Transaction Summary". Be sure to adjust the date to
suit your requirements.
133
Reconcile Report
A Transaction Summary Report
Reconcile Report
onCourse Reconciliation Report
Use:
To reconcile payments in and out with banking deposits.
134
Reconcile Report
Report Location:
From the Financial menu, Select Reconcile Statement. Check the payments you wish to reconcile, and select
Print. A summary of the reconciled and unreconciled payments are displayed in this window
135
Reconcile Report
136
Statement Report
Reconciliation Report
Statement Report
onCourse Statement report
Use:
To print a list of all transactions (both debits and credits) for a particular contact
Report Location:
From the Contact menu, Select Print and Choose Statement. You can select to print the entire transaction his-
tory, or define a date range.
137
Statement Report
138
Class by Subject Report
A Statement Report
Class by Subject Report

onCourse Class by Subject Report
Use:
To obtain an overview of all classes status within a given time period, such as a term. Classes are grouped by
their Category/Sub Category tag. Useful for holistic planning processes and work flow activities such as con-
firming course go ahead or managing cancellations.
Report Location:
From the Class window, find the classes you wish to include in the report, such as a particular date range. Se-
lect File, Print and Choose report Class by Subject.
Report Notes:
M/F column: If a student’s gender is not set within their details, they will not counted for either M or F; thus
M + F does not necesarily equal to the total number of enrolments. Target column: This is the number of en-
rolments to reach the target for this class, ie: -3 means 3 more enrolments are required to meet the target, 3
would means that there are 3 enrolments more than the target.
139
Funding Hours Report
A Class by Subject Report
Funding Hours Report

Keeping Track of Funded Delivery
Use:
To keep track of delivery of funded program Student Contact Hours over a particular time period. This report
shows a summary of each qualification and the hours delivered against each of the national funding types.
Report Location:
From the Class window, find the classes you wish to include in the report, such as the current years English
classes. Select File, Print and choose report Class Funding
Report Notes:
This report may be of particular interest to colleges who deliver programs with a range of funding sources
and who are required to report the delivery of these hours. By regularly running this report, the year to date
delivery can be checked and be used to assist with program planning. More information about how student
contact hours are calculated is available here
140
Classes Report
Class Funding Report
Classes Report
onCourse Classes Report
Use:
To obtain an overview of all classes status within a given time period, such as a term. Useful for holistic
planning processes and work flow activities such as confirming course go ahead or managing cancellations.
Classes are reported in the list order you have sorted the window data e.g. class name alphabetical order, start
date order or code order.
Report Location:
From the Class window, find the courses you wish to include in the report, such as a particular date range.
Select File, Print and choose report Classes
Report Notes:
The information available in this report is also available grouped by subjects in the Classes by Sub-
ject Report.
141
Classes Report
142
Courses Report
Classes Report
Courses Report
onCourse Courses Report
Use:
To create a print out of the list of courses
Report Location:
From the Course window, find the courses you wish to include in the report, such as all courses tagged as
‘business’. Select File, Print and choose report Courses.
143
Courses Report
144
Room Details Report
Courses Report
Room Details Report

onCourse Room Details Report
Use:
Report Location:
145
Room Details Report
146
Room Schedule Report
Room Details Report

onCourse Room Schedule Report
Use:
Report Location:
147
148
Room Schedule 1
149
150
Room Schedule 2
151
152
Room Schedule 3
153
154
Tutor Details Report
Room Schedule 4

on Course Tutor Details Report
Use:
Report Location:
155
156
Tutors Report
Tutors Report
onCourse Tutors Report
Use:
Report Location:
157
Tutors Report
158
Mailing List Report
Tutors
Mailing List Report

onCourse Mailing List Report Report
Use:
Report Location:
159
Mailing List Report
160
Class Details Report
Mailing List Report

onCourse Class Details Report
Use:
To obtain full list of one or more classes scheduled sessions. This is a list view of the timetabled sessions.
Useful information to provide to venue coordinators, tutors and students.
Report Location:
From the Class window, find the classes you wish to include in the report, such as all current classes at a par-
ticular venue. Select File, Print and Choose Report Class Details
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162
Course Details Report

onCourse Course Details Report
Use:
To create a print out of the full course information including scheduled classes. Can be used to create print
copies of all the web information to mail to students without web access.
Report Location:
From the Course window, find the course(s) you wish to include in the report, such as all courses tagged as
‘sport and fitness’. Select File, Print and Choose Report Course Details.
163
164
Course Details Report 1
165
166
Enrolment Confirmation Report
Course Details Report 2

onCourse Enrolment Confirmation report
Use:
To provide students with details of their class once they have enrolled.
Report Location:
From the Enrolment window, select the enrolments you wish to print enrolment confirmations for, Choose
Print and Select the Report Enrolment Confirmation.
Report Notes:
During the enrolment process, if the student provides an email address, an email confirmation of enrolment
can be selected. It is not necessary to provide hard copy enrolment confirmations for these students.
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168
Class Roll
Class Roll
Attendance record keeping
Use:
To create a list of students enrolled and columns for each of the scheduled sessions, used to mark attendance.
The report will automatically re-size to fit the number of students and session conditions. Hard copy rolls are
often distributed to tutors before classes commence, or PDF copies emailed to tutors or coordinators.
Report Location:
From the Class window, find the classes you wish to include in the report, such as all current class taught by
a particular tutor. Select File, Print and Choose Report Class Roll
Report Notes:
Given that tutors may pass rolls around the room for students to initial their attendance, to comply with pri-
vacy legislation, there are no student contact details on the class roll. If the tutor requires the student’s con-
tact details, a student contact list can be printed.
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Class Contact List
Class Roll Report
Class Contact List

Student Contact Details
Use:
To create a list of students enrolled and the phone numbers and email addresses for those students. Hard
copy lists can be distributed to tutors before classes commence if you wish them to have this information.
Tutors can also access this information via their web portal if you organisation has enabled it.
Report Location:
a particular tutor. Select File, Print and Choose Report Class Contact List
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Class Contact List
Report Notes:
Given that tutors may pass rolls around the room for students to initial their attendance, to comply with pri-
vacy legislation, there are no student contact details on the class roll. If the tutor requires the student’s con-
tact details, a student contact list can be printed.
171
Class Contact List
172
Student Contact List
Class Contact List Report
Student Contact List

Name, Address, Phone and email
Use:
To export the contact details provided for students enrolled in a class.
Report Location:
a particular tutor. Select File, Print and Choose Report Student Contact List.
Report Notes:
This report may be used to accompany the Class Roll
Student Contact List Report
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Student Details Report

Useful information for tutors
Use:
To provide tutors or program managers with an overview of a class of students’ history at the college, in-
cluding the classes they have attended and VET outcomes attempted/achieved. Could also be called a student
transcript.
Report Location:
From the Class window, find the classes you wish to include in the report, such as the current term English
classes. Select File, Print and Choose Report Student Details. You can also print this report for an individual
student, rather than a whole class, by opening the Contact or Student List view, locating the student and then
printing the report Student Details.
Report Notes:
This report may be of particular interest to English Language co-ordinators and tutors who may need to
know what outcomes a student has already attempted/achieved at each level. See the documentation for
CSWE courses, classes and outcomes for more information
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175
Qualifications Report
onCourse Qualifications Report
Use:
Report Location:
176
177
Training Packages Report

onCourse Training Packages Report
Use:
Report Location:
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179
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Chapter 17. Creating Custom Reports
'Modifying onCourse reports
Beside other techniques onCourse offers JasperReports engine to print data.
The Basics
Jasper report is a specially formatted text file. For ease of use the file can be edited with a visual editor called
iReport. For onCourse 1.7.x you have to use iReport version 3.0.0, check the documentation for newer re-
leases. The report file format is called XML, this is a snippet from an example report file:
This Is A Snippet From Example Report File
Please see http://www.ish.com.au/node/1120
The Essentials (Custom Report Properties)

Each report has to be identified in the system, therefore it is given an unique parameter called 'keyCode'. to
avoid confusion all reports created by ish group start with 'ish.' prefix. We strongly recommend that for any
reports you customise, that you use a different prefix, like a name of the college. the keyCode can be edited
in iReport using by choosing from the menu Edit->Custom properties
Other parameters which are compulsory are:
181
The Design Using iReport
• versionNumber - an integer number, has to be increased eveyrtime a report is upgraded
• entity - identifies which is the starting point for the report, ie. report with value 'Certficate' will be avail-
able in print menu for list of certificates.
• isVisible - can only take value of 'true' or 'false', indicates whether the report is visible in the print dialog
• isSubreport - some reports are just injected inside others, this allows to specify this fact
ish.oncourse.title, ish.oncourse.filePrefix and ish.onCourse.pdfFileName are currently not used, but should
be set to prevent future problems.
The Design Using iReport

This section cannot be summarised in few words, there are many online resources which will help you
learn using iReport. Good starting point is http://jasperforge.org/plugins/project/
project_home.php?projectname=ireport
There is one important thing to mention. onCourse utilises javaBean data source. This has its downsides, the
report cannot be tested without importing it to onCourse. The database schema cannot be imported or read
from iReport. But this is essential to assure security of the database and the data and prevent unauthorised ac-
cess.
For effective report writing a developer needs onCourse database schema. This document is available free of
charge for all onCourse customers with support plan.
The basic workflow for a report developer is:
1. Create the report file
2. Edit the report using iReport
3. Compile it using iReport
4. Import the report to onCourse
5. Test it
6. Repeat steps 2-5 until the report works as intended.
Future releases of onCourse will allow starting onCourse in a report developer mode, which will allow sim-
ple text editing of the report file without any need to exit onCourse. This feature is going to require installa-
tion of current JDK on the computer used for report compilation.
We discourage starting with iReport from creating brand new reports. It is much easier to start with tweak-
ing the existing reports. (Remember though, that if you edit an existing report or template you need to give it
182
Connecting on-
Course to OpenOffice
a new keyCode property, otherwise the next time onCourse server is restarted it is going to be lost in the sys-
tem)
Connecting onCourse to OpenOffice

Using OpenOffice 2.2 with onCourse to create a mail
merge
There are many reasons why you might want to access data in onCourse through a tool such as OpenOffice.
You might need to generate a custom report and its important to have full access to your data for that reason.
Here, we’ll show you one of the simpler features in OpenOffice, but it can be quite an important thing to be
able to do – create a mail merge to all your students in onCourse.
Before you begin, you will need to have OpenOffice installed on your machine which can be obtained from
the OpenOffice website.
Setting OpenOffice with the right JDBC to talk to on-

Course
• Download our onCourse OpenOffice package which contains two files to help you get started with setting
up OpenOffice to talk with onCourse. The first file is “derbyclient.jar” and is needed by OpenOffice to ac-
tually talk to the onCourse Server. The second file is “oncourse.db” and is an OpenOffice Base file which
will require mininal modification before it can be used to pull data out of onCourse.
• From the downloaded archive extract the file named “derbyclient.jar” and place it somewhere on the hard
disk. Remember where you put it.
• Run OpenOffice (Any of the applications should do – ie Writer or Calc). Open Tools → Options. Go to
http://openOffice.org/Java [http://www.openoffice.org]. Click on Class Path but-
ton. Click on Add archive. Find and select the derbyclient.jar file and press Open.
Add “Derbyclient.jar” to OpenOffice
Press OK in Class Path window. Press OK in options window. OpenOffice will ask you to restart before
changes will take effect, and you will be ready to progress with using “oncourse.odb” to generate reports
and perform mail merges in the following steps. If it prompts for a username and password, use “report” and
“948ty”
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OpenOffice MailMerge
First steps after downloading oncourse.odb
• The first thing to do is to make sure that the oncourse.odb file knows to where to find your onCourse Serv-
er on the network. Open oncourse.odb and click on the Edit → Database → Properties and change “local-
host” part of the “Datasource URL” to the IP of the machine that is running your onCourse Server
• Verify that it connects successfully by hitting the Test Connection button. It should prompt you to enter a
password.
• Save the settings by going to File → Save
• Next we move on to registering the “oncourse.odb” as database for OpenOffice. This step is necessary for
OpenOffice to recognise that it exists as source for other types of documents (spreadsheets, labels, letters
etc). Go to Tools → Options. Choose “OpenOffice.org Base” Databases on the left. Click New. Add the
database file (should have extension odb) by clicking on browse, locating the “oncourse.odb” then click-
ing on Open.
• Click OK” and OK again to finish.
• Start OpenOffice Writer.
Performing the Mail Merge Using the Wizard

Change Datasource URL Resgister database
• Create a letter – easiest way is to use the File → Wizards → Letter option. For our sample one, it’s fairly
simple to just hit “Finish” on this wizard.
• Go to Tools → Mail Merge Wizard to create a mail merge where the data is pulled from the database.
• For our example, we’ll use our current document, so for Step 1, just click on the Next button.
• Step 2 – The “Letter” option is fine. Click on the Next button.
• Step 3 – “Insert address block” is the heart of the mail merge operation. To do this click on the Select Ad-
dress List button. Click on “oncourse” and choose the table called “ONCOURSE.STUDENT”.
• Step 4 – Adding a Salutation – to determine an addressee is a female, the “Field name” should be set to
“ISMALE” and the “Field value” should be set to “0” (zero)
• Click OK and OK again.
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• Add the fields you want to appear in the address block. You can customize what appears in the address
block by clicking on the “More…” button.
• Next click the Match Fields button to match the fields in the address block to fields in the database. IE.
You will want to match <First Name> to “FIRSTNAME”, <Last Name> to “SURNAME”, <Gender> to
ISMALE at the least. Note the wizard will not let you click Next until you’ve matched all fields that will
appear in the address block.
• After this step most of the options should be self-explanatory and at the end of the wizard you will be
asked if you wise to save, send or print the mail merge.
Choose Letter Wizard Use the Mail Merge Wizard Select the Student table Match Fields Selecting Gender
Saving your mail merge Extra Documentation There is plenty of documentation for OpenOffice available
to get further information on particular features. A tutorial on how to do mail merges with a database for
OpenOffice.
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186
Chapter 18. Exporting
General principles
Each list view in onCourse has the ability to export data in an almost infinite variety of formats. Simply
highlight the records you wish to export and choose "Export" from under the File menu. A dialog will appear
giving you some choices.
Export format
This popup allows you to specify the format of the export data. For most data CSV and XML are the default
options, but you are able to add as many more export templates as you choose.
Based on
All available records: every record of that type. So if you are exporting 'classes' then every class in the
database will be exported. Careful, this could be a lot of data and might take some time to export as the infor-
mation is sent from the server to the client and then saved to disk.
Listed records: every record in the list you were just looking at. This is the result of whatever search you had
just performed.
Highlighted records: only those records you had highlighted in the list. This is the quickest way to export a
few selected records, particularly when you need to choose them by hand from your query results.
Export templates
Export templates can be added to onCourse through the
Exporting XML
Advanced tricks and tips
You’ve seen how easy it can be to export course information from onCourse and into Indesign. Now we’ll go
into a little more depth with how to customise the output and create any type of publication you can dream
of.
Exporting the classes you need

Your publication will only be as good as your data. Make sure you have entered information in the brochure
description fields for your courses (and maybe also classes if there are specific notes there). Ensure they have
187
Transforming the XML
using XSLT (optional)
the correct sessions, prices and other information. Now open the class list view and perform a search to find
the classes you want. Perhaps you will choose a a subject or select classes by date, price or anything else you
can think of. Now highlight the records you wish to export. You might like to deselect specific classes from
your list because they don’t require advertising or you haven’t confirmed that it will proceed. When you are
done, choose “export classes as XML” from the cog wheel icon in the bottom right.
The XML you export will comply with the schema documentation here.
Transforming the XML using XSLT (optional)

If you have a publication you produce repeatedly you might like to automate the process of getting the text
into the right format. XSLT is a technology which transforms XML according to a set of rules. Don’t be
overwhelmed by the acronyms: the process is simple enough. XML is the format of the data you just export-
ed from onCourse – a set of tags identify each element in the data. A <course> or <startDate> is a marker
which let’s you know what the information represents. There is no styling or design in the XML, it repre-
sents pure data with no prettiness. The XML from onCourse has a schema advanced users might like to see
here
You can create an XSL file which is a set of instructions on how to style that XML. The output is often more
XML, but could be a web page, RSS feed, PDF file or even a Word document. XSL instructions can be used
to create almost any type of document imaginable. Any material which comes from a database can be treated
in this way – for example, the printed White Pages telephone directory is produced in this manner. A sample
XSL file is available on this page for you to look at and modify for your needs.
Some things you can do with XSL:
• Format date and time (eg. “2 Jan 2008”)
• Reorder elements
• Add extra text (eg. “82“ becomes “8 sessions of 2 hrs”)
• Remove elements (the sample XSL removes all the session information)
188
Transforming the XML
using XSLT (optional)
XML from onCourse.
189
Importing into Indesign
After XSL tranform.
Writing XSL:
Writing an XSL file from scratch can be tricky if you’ve never done it before. ish is able to offer services to
produce a file for your needs or you may be able to find a local specialist. If you want something simple, cus-
tomise the sample file attached to this page. We recommend Oxygen for any serious editing and testing of
XSL files.
Running your XSL transform:
If you write an XSL using version 1 of the specification, then Indesign can process it directly while you im-
port the XML.
Importing into Indesign

Whether or not you processed your XML with XSL, you can now import it into Indesign. Adobe have a
helpful document and another with some example XSL.
The process is simple:
1. File → Import XML
2. Choose your XML file
3. If you are having Indesign process an XSL 1.0 file you can now choose it
4. Ticking “Link” will keep the Indesign document linked to your source XML so that changes to the XML
flow through
5. The structure of the data will now appear in the left column. You can drag any element into a text box in
your layout and have the text automatically flow through.
6. Use the “map tags to styles…” menu item to map the tags against your paragraph and character style
sheets. Once this is done you can save the mapping so that next time you create this document with fresh
data all the styles are linked quickly and simply.
Summary
XML and XSL can be a little daunting at first, but they offer the promise for huge savings in efforts particu-
larly when preparing longer course guides and documents.
CoursesExample.xsl (XML 3 KB) [coursesexample.xml]
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Chapter 19. Frequently Asked Questions
Some of the questions we get asked.
19.1. How do I get started with onCourse?
Have you downloaded both client and server? Grab it from our website [http://www.ish.com.au/on-
course/download]
Have you installed onCourse? See the installation section for some step by step instructions.
19.2. I can't login. What is the username and password?
The default is username is admin and the password admin
19.3. What systems will onCourse run on?
onCourse client will run Windows and Mac OS X with Java 1.6+ installed. onCourse Server will run
on: Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, Solaris with Java 1.6+ installed. See the requirements for onCourse.
19.4. How do you change things on the website?
Do you need to an image? Create forms? Sell random courses?
19.5. How do you enrol via the website?
19.6. Is it possible to save our Contacts from our existing system into onCourse?
The answer is yes, in most cases. This will depend on what information you can export from your ex-
isting system. We have an import facility that expects XML format, and we've also helped our cus-
tomers convert data from other plain text formats to XML. See our import documentation.
19.7. What do I need both onCourseServer and onCourse Client?
onCourse has a server application which can run on your server and and a client application which
needs to be installed on each client machine. You can install the client application on as many com-
puters as you require – there are no limits. If you run a smaller business and only have one main com-
puter using onCourse, you can install the server and client applications on the same machine.
In your office only one machine should have onCourseServer running. We recommend this as peo-
ple have lost track of which machine has the correct datafile at times. Each workstation/machine that
wants to work with onCourse will need an onCourse client installed in order to connect to the server.
19.8. My college is overseas and we need to advertise courses in multiple languages. Can onCourse sup-
port this?
191
OnCourse supports unicode, so it can deal with other language characters with no problems, includ-
ing multi-byte Asian languages. OnCourse web can include multiple languages on your web site, you
can configure the dollar symbol to your local currency and we can work with you to translate the on-
Course client and server user interface to your preferred language if necessary.
19.9. We also track a lot of people. Can we use onCourse to include client, carer, employee, etc contacts or
is that a separate concept?
You can track as many people as you like in onCourse. You can create a contact that is either a stu-
dent, tutor, company or other. A tutor can also be a company (a contractor) and also a student (has
enrolled in your college classes). There is no need to create multiple records for the same person.You
can also create relationships to link multiple contacts to a company for corporate training activities,
parents and children, friends and spouses.
19.10. How much memory does onCourse need?
The memory usage shown by onCourse Server is the currently used value.
The operating system (using Windows task manager or Unix top) will display a larger value of used
memory. This is because the Java VM used by ish onCourse uses additional memory for its own pur-
poses. We recommend that people have at least 1GB of RAM for onCourseServer.
On Unix systems particularly ish onCourse Server may continue to consume much of the available
memory. This is perfectly normal and represents ‘caching’ of the data which accelerates further at-
tempts to read the same information. If needed by other applications, ish onCourse will reduce its
memory usage.
19.11. How do I delete this class? onCourse won't let me delete it.
For the most part, onCourse does not let you delete anything that relates to finacial information. In
this case, you most likely have a class that's had an enrolment, and the enrolment itself linked to an
invoice.
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Chapter 20. Marketing
Marketing is the key to keep existing stu-
dents and gaining new ones
ish onCourse has been written from a marketing perspective right from the start. When students enrol, the
system automatically sends them enrolment information and a tax invoice by email.This is a simple starting
point for encouraging students to continue to interact with the college through your web site and by email,
and to continue to expect useful information from you by email.
onCourse is focussed on selling courses. This is different to many university or school enrolment systems
with an emphasis on the administrative enrolment process. For example, you don’t need to start an enrolment
by finding a student or adding their details to the system. You can start by easily answering questions about
courses, places available and timetables; once your prospective student is comfortable with your offerings
you can quickly find them in your existing database or add them. Data is validated at all times, meaning that
it is that much more difficult to mistype that crucial email address.
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Absolutely effortless integration
Absolutely effortless integration

By integrating onCourse directly into your web site, it is absolutely trivial to add a new course or modify ex-
isting course information, even in the middle of term. By tightly linking your web site to your enrolment sys-
tem, your web site is always up to date.
The power of a website means you have unlimited capacity for how much information you can provide to
students to assist them in selecting the class that is best for them. You can attach images, pdfs or other files
to course or class descriptions, such as ’what to bring’ lists or sample software files that accompany course
textbooks. When you set up your courses and classes, you can choose when go live and advertise them on the
web, class by class. Once you have given advertising approval, the rest happens with out you having to wor-
ry about it. Change course description, times or locations, your website changes automatically (in 15 minutes
or less).
Places left in classes update continuously. As classes approach their maximum enrolment numbers, your
site reflects this by changing from displaying ‘places available’ to show how many places are left, creating a
sense of urgency for potential enrolments. Once classes are full, students have the option to add themselves
to a waiting list to take up any cancelled places or for the next class on offer.
Class summary on onCourse website
With built in email, SMS and postal contacting your students is simple and efficient.
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Mailing list subscription
With XML exporting of courses and classes your onCourse database can be quickly turned into a hard copy
brochure.
Mailing list subscription

From your onCourse website, or over the phone, students can subscribe to mailing lists for areas of your
business that interest them. For example, you may create a ‘What’s new?’ mailing list that sends a newsletter
to subscribers each term promoting new courses you have added. With built in HTML newsletter creation,
building and sending marketing material is a snap.
Students can self-subscribe or unsubscribe to the mailing lists from their student portal and
you can create restricted ‘Tutor only’ mailing lists also. More about using this feature here
[sales_and_marketing.xml]
Waiting lists
If a course is full, or isn’t available at a time that suits the student, they can be added to a waiting list. This
allows you to easily track how many students have expressed interest in a course and quickly contact them as
places or classes become available. Students can also manage their waiting lists through their web portal and
you can add and remove students directly in onCourse.
If you wish to set up a course as expression of interest only, your online advertising and wait list options will
help you determine community demand prior to scheduling a class date.
195
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Chapter 21. Communication Tools
SMS, Email and snail mail
ish onCourse integrates email, SMS and postal export functionality within the database. This means that not
only can you quickly contact all students who studied with you last term, or quickly reschedule a class when
the tutor calls in sick, but that a full history of all these messages are stored right in the students’ records.
Sophisticated bounce processing is in place for email and SMS, notifying you if a message is undeliverable.
197
No spam please
Advanced queries allow you effective marketing opportunities such as contacting all previous student who
enrolled in French 1 so you can notify them of an upcoming French 2 class. In combination with promo-
tional codes you can quickly and efficiently promote courses to your students.
Students can also subscribe to mailing lists to keep up to date with your new courses or news.
No spam please
Students have the option to opt out of all marketing communication from your organisation, or from a partic-
ular method of marketing such as SMS. However, if you have urgent information to convey, such as a class
cancellation, you are still able to use your communication tools to contact them quickly while respecting
their request not to receive unsolicited marketing emails or SMS.
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Chapter 22. Sending messages
Searching for students
If you wish to find a group of contacts who have a particular history of interactions with your college, on-
Course will allow you to perform advanced search functions, then use the combined email, sms and mail
messaging tool to contact these clients.
For example, you can search for all students who enrolled in a course containing the word “french” in the
last 365 days and then send them all an invitation to enrol in your new class, Provence Study Tour, prior to
it’s public release.
After you’ve selected your contacts or classes that you wish send messages to you should see the send mes-
sage dialog.
Using this dialog you can choose to send:
• email
• sms
• both email and sms
Sending emails
In order to send email you need to have the Send Email box ticked.
You can send out multipart emails out with a text/plain part and/or text/html part. This means you have to fill
in at least one of the Plain tab or in the HTML tab.
In HTML tab there is a field for copying html code and another field for specifying a web url which content
is downloaded. There is a limit to emails of 32000 characters. That means only small websites can be used.
• Sending out SMS - Send SMS must be ticked, if you are already sending them an email, you can choose to
have them also receive the sms by ticking Include people who are emailed
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200
Chapter 23. Mailing lists
Why use mailing lists
Mailing list can be used to group like-minded contacts to allow you to contact groups of people easily. Mail-
ing lists are a special type of tag and work very similarly.
Students can subscribe and unsubscribe to mailing lists from your website and subscriptions can be manually
managed from within onCourse.
Mailing lists are particularly effective when used in combination with the HTML newsletter func-
tion
Creating a mailing list

Go to the menu People and select Mailing Lists.
Click the plus + button to create a new mailing list. Give you list a name and description (which will be
available on your website) and select if you wish to allow online subscriptions, or limit the mailing list to tu-
tors only.
Mailing lists could be used for various purposes such as:
• Focus on classes or local events in a specific category your college offers e.g. Art
• Provide a regular newsletter to your staff
• Advertise special promotions and deals, or new courses – a whole college newsletter
• Regularly contact students who meet a particular criteria, such as those aged over 60, to promote spe-
cialised courses, such as Senior’s programs.
Student self subscriptions

When students are logged into your website, they can manage their mailing list subscriptions. They can both
add and remove themselves from the mailing list options you display.
201
Manually adding or remov-
ing students from a mailing list
Manually adding or removing students from

a mailing list
Because mailing lists work just like tags, you can run a query, then select all or some of the students re-
turned, and right click on the mailing list name to add the students to the list. By selecting the mailing list
name in the left column, you will search for all the students currently subscribed to the mailing list.
You can select a group of people and right click on the mailing list name to remove the tag, or for individual
students, open their contact record and delete the tag by clicking on the minus sign.
Unsubscribing a contact from a mailing list

Contacting students on a mailing list In the left column of the students window, select the mailing list you
wish to contact. Highlight the list (You can use Ctrl+A or highlight by selecting the first record, holding
down shift, and selecting the last record).
Use the cogwheel icon on the top right of the screen to select send message to x contacts and proceed to cre-
ate and send your message as usual. Instructions for creating HTML newsletters is available here
202
Chapter 24. Discounts and promotional
codes
Be clever about how you attract students to
your courses by controlling how discounts
are advertised and allocated
In an ideal world you’d never have to give students a discount. They would all flock to your courses at full
price. But discounts can form an integral part of your marketing strategy. Used well, they allow you to attract
students who would not otherwise have enrolled. Used poorly, they represent income you give away to stu-
dents who would have happily paid full price.
Discounts in onCourse take two distinct forms: promotions and concessions.
Concessions:
These are the discounts you think of when you imagine children, seniors, disability card holders or unem-
ployed discounts. These are discounts which can be given either as a percentage of the course fee, or as a
fixed dollar figure. If you decide to give a percentage discount you can also set the minimum and maximum
dollar discount which can be given. So you might to decide to give 10% off for seniors but cap it at $50 so
that $800 course doesn’t start to be discounted too heavily for you. Or a 2% discount which gives at least $5
off that $100 course so it doesn’t appear too stingy.
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Be clever about how you at-
tract students to your courses
by controlling how discounts
Discounts can be given a start and end date. You might want a discount to continue indefinitely or you might
want it to be a special one time offer valid for a certain period. onCourse gives you the choice.
204
Next comes the students entitled to a concession. You might find all students who have enrolled in the past,
are over a certain age, live in a particular suburb or who have a seniors card. You aren’t locking it to the stu-
dents who currently fit the requirement: any student who later is entered into the system with the right age,
suburb or discount type will be able to obtain that discount.
Finally, you are able to set the list of classes which may receive the discount. This might be every class you
run, just your computer courses, or just one course you choose. This gives you flexibility to offer discounts
where you think they will be appropriate, useful and affordable. You may be able to offer lower discounts
to outsourced courses given your margins or it may not be helpful to offer seniors discounts to pre-natal ses-
sions.
With all this flexibility, you can offer discounts to your students in exactly the way you choose. For instance:
• all students under 25 receive 10% off all courses – these are often people with lower disposable income
and discounts are a useful way to attract them
205
• all students who attended a course last term automatically get 20% off selected courses this term
• all students with a senior’s card receive a $20 discount off any of the daytime arts and craft classes
Generally, concessions apply on a long term basis and are based on your college’s fees and charges policy.
Concessions are automatically applied to fees on enrolment if a student meets the conditions you have set. If
you wish to give a special deal to a certain group of people for a limited time only, it is more suitable to cre-
ate a promotion.
Promotions:
Promotions are another type of discount with a string attached. The student must know a particular word or
code in order to obtain the discount. You might decide to perform a letterbox drop in a particular area with
postcard sized teasers for your new dance classes. They explain that the recipient can get a 5% discount by
going to the web site and typing in ‘WALTZ’. When they do this, the web site alters and shows the courses
with fees crossed out and the discounted price alongside in red. The idea is to:
• create the feeling of an offer targeted to a particular group of people, so the recipient feels special.
• track the effectiveness of your letterbox drop
• use an expiry date to create urgency
• micro-market: use different strategies for different demographics
You might distribute your promotional codes by using:
• targeted printed material
• an email mailout to existing or potential students
• SMS
• an alliance with a club or user group – such as a deal with a local RSL that gives their members a discount
through a code in their newsletter
Remember, the point of promotional codes is not to keep the code secret and prevent recipients telling their
friends about it. The effectiveness of your marketing is greatly enhanced by potential students telling as
many people as possible about this great deal they can get by typing in a ‘secret code’.
206
Chapter 25. Concessions
Concessions, discounts and promotional
codes are a powerful part of onCourse mar-
keting.
Find out more about the difference between promotions and concessions and why you might choose to use
them at your college.
Creating a concession
In this example we will set up a concession for seniors card holders:
1. Select Concessions from the splash screen or Courses menu.
2. Select + button from the bottom left of the window
3. In the new window, enter a name for this concession e.g. Seniors Card Concession (you can define con-
cession types here)
4. There are two different types of discounts you can create. You can discount the course or purchase by a
percentage of it’s total or by a pre determined dollar value. To set a 10% discount, select the Discount
Percent option and type 10 into the discount value field.
5. You can also set a minimum and maximum amount for the concession e.g. min $1 and max $10.
6. Setting a valid from and valid to date is optional. If you want to make the discount apply at all times,
leave this field blank.
7. Choose if this concession can be given with other concessions. For example a student could receive this
concession and a further fee discount by using a special promotional code if you check this box.
The next options allow you to select who and how this concession will apply:
• Enrolled within # Days (the student has enrolled at the college in the past # days)
• Age over/under # ages in years
• With xx concession (student has supplied xx concession card type and reference number on enrolment)
• Postcode or Area (where the student lives)
207
Concessions, discounts and pro-
motional codes are a power-
ful part of onCourse marketing.
In this example, you might select the third option With Aged Pensioner concession or with Seniors card con-
cession or you could set it to Age over 55.
1. The last field allows you to assign this concession to certain available classes. You can add or remove
classes by using the + and – signs to the right, including allowing this concession in all current and future
classes.
Promotions
In this example we will create a last minute discount for our previously enrolled students.
1. Create a code for your promotion. This will be what students enter on your website to access the promo-
tional discount (or can be entered by your enrolment staff with phone, mail or in person enrolments).
2. Name and describe your promotion.
3. Set the amount and valid to and from dates as per concession instructions above. In this example we have
limited the date to a one week range.
4. This promotion is for re-enrolling students, so we have set it to students who have enrolled within 60
days.
5. Select your eligible classes. Generally promotions are limited to a few select programs, such as those
which already are over the minimum required, or dance classes or those which are starting in the next two
weeks.
Don’t forget, promotional codes only work if you market them. You can always email or sms special promo-
tions to your students to get them out there quickly. With most promotions you would not want to set a qual-
ifier, like enrolled within x days, as you want as many people as possible to ‘use’ the special code to enrol in
your classes, and hope the students you market the promotion to assist you in your marketing efforts by pass-
ing the deal on to their friends.
208
Concession Values Tab
209
Concession Students Tab
210
Concession Classes Tab
211
212
Chapter 26. Payroll
Setting Pay rates
onCourse allows you to map standard pay rates to tutor types. These are used by default, but can be overrid-
den per class as needed. Some standard Tutor type names are included by default, but these can be changed
or deleted as needed.
Example 26.1. How to create tutor pay rates
1. To open the window go to File > Preferences > Tutor roles .
2. Select one of the existing wage types to edit and modify or create a new wage type by clicking the + but-
ton.
3. Give a name and a public label to the wage role, for example 'VET Tutor Step 1'. The public label shows
as the role in the class interface.
4. Set the expense account for the wage
5. Click on the + button within the pay rate window to add a payrate for this tutor type.
6. In the drop down sheet, define how this type of tutors wage is calculated from the options available e.g.
'hourly'
7. In the rate field, define the dollar ammount per your selected type the tutor is to be paid e.g. $55 per hour.
8. onCosts allows you to take into account any additional expenses related to employing these staff, such as
superannuation, leave loading, payroll tax and workers compensation costs. A common oncost used calcu-
lating additional employee costs in Australia is 20%
9. Setting the state date for this pay rate allows you to keep historical track of payrate increases, and ensures
that if a tutors pay calculation falls accross a change in pay conditions, all sessions delivered before the
change will be calculated at the old rate, with sessions delivered after the change in rate to be calculated at
the new rate. By default this field is set to a historical date five years past for the first entry you create, but
you can change it to the date of you choice.
10.Click Ok and save and close the record. You will be returned to the list screen where you can add or edit
another pay rate.
Caution
If your payrate doesn't start until today, but the class start date is prior to today, no automatic pay
rate will be found when you add the tutor to the class. You can still create a manual pay line in the
213
Assigning tutors to classes
class. Also, if the payrate changes during the class progress, i.e. class spans June and July, and at the
start of the financial year a new pay rate applies, that class budget information will only show the
original pay rate in the cost calculations, but the actual payslip calculations will be correct as to the
timing of each session and the pay rate that applied as each session was delivered.
Assigning tutors to classes

Once you have defined the default payrates for the various classifications of tutors you employ, you can use
these to automatically and wages costs to your class budgets. You can do this by adding tutors to classes.
Tip
If you do not know who the individual tutor will be in advance to your class scheduling, we recom-
mend you set up a tutor named something like 'To Be Advised' whom you can assign to classes. This
will allow you take wages into account in your initial class budget and viability calculations. When
you know the name of the individual who will be running the class you can replace TBA with the ac-
tual tutor, and make any changes to their pay rate as required.
Example 26.2. Assigning a tutor and payrate to a class
1. In the class window, navigate to the tutor tab. Here you can add one or more tutors, coordinators, assis-
tants or other staff to the class.
2. Click on the + to add a new tutor to the class or double click on a tutor already added to the class to add a
wage to their record.
3. In the tutor edit sheet, type in the surname of the tutor you wish to add to the class. This field will look up
tutors you have already created in the database. You can not add new tutors from here.
4. When you select the tutors role, the automatic pay rate set for this role will be added. You can override
the wage at this point for this individual tutor for this class.
5. Click Ok to add the tutor to the class.
6. Contine to add additional tutors to the class, and define their wages as required.
7. If you have added a coordinator or other assisting staff member to the tutor list of the class you can
choose to remove them from publicity (printing in the brochure and showing on your onCourse website)
by unchecking the option 'Show this tutor in class information'
8. If you need to edit the tutor wage once you have set it, you will need to go to the class budget tab to make
changes. Double click on the wage you wish to edit and check the option 'override assigned role's pay
rate'.
214
Confirming Atten-
dance and exceptions
9. If you did not have a wage added when the tutor was added to the class, e.g. for a historical class, you can
add the wage on the budget tab. Go to + Wage and select the tutor from the list.
10.You can also add tutors to the class directly from the timetable, during the session set up of edit process.
If you add tutors here, you will need to manually add the tutor pay rate from the budget tab.
Confirming Attendance and exceptions

Attendance is in place within onCourse for both tutors and students. You do not have to use this function as
part of payroll, but it can be a useful tool for verifying that each session that was scheduled for pay was at-
tended as required. Tutor attendance can be set for each session on the class Attendance tab. For each ses-
sion that was created and linked to that tutor, you have the option to mark the tutor as attended, absent with
or without reason and partially attended
Example 26.3. Setting tutor attendance for payroll
1. Open a class record and navigate to the attendance tab.
2. For each session, click on the attendance icon and set the appropriate attendance. Click once for attended,
twice for not attended. Three clicks will set the session back to unmarked.
3. To set the attendance to partial attendance, or absent with reason, right click on the attendance icon and
select one of these options. When you select one of these values a drop down sheet will appear with fields
for additional information to be set. Either of these options need to be approved for payroll in the window.
4. To set partial attendance, you need to enter in the sheet how many minutes of the scheduled session min-
utes the person was in attendance for. Approving this payroll variation means the person will be paid for
the full session. Leaving it unapproved means they will be paid only for their time in attendance.
Generating Payslips
Broken.
215
216

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Website Administration Guide

7. Creating Courses .................................................................................................................... 51

Modifying contact details .................................................................................................... 96

Creating a mailing list ...................................................................................................... 201

onCourse client is available for the following platforms:

2. Double click on the installer after it's finished downloading.

2. Double click on the installer after it's finished downloading.

3. Run onCourseServer by double-clicking on Applications -> onCourseServer

3. Run onCourse by double-clicking on Applications -> onCourse.

Running the Server

For existing users:

Running the Client

1. Username is "admin". Password is "admin".

2. Click the on the "advanced" button to see the server details

3. Click on "Find Server" button that appears, then click "login"

To update, this is the recommended process:

1. Stop your currently running onCourse Server

2. Backup data folder by default: onCourse.iocdata

3. Install the updated client and server

4. Start onCourse Server

Installing onCourse Server on other platforms

Uninstalling the server

1. Type the following command as root in a shell:

pkg_info -v | grep -i oncourse

Starting and stopping the server

And of course stopping the server is just:

In order to upgrade to a newer version of onCourse Server, run as root:

replacing 768 with however much memory you wish.

Linux, Solaris and any other Unix

tar xvf onCourseServer.tgz

4. This should extract a directory onCourse with two files in it.

Troubleshooting connection problems

1. A connection to the server could not be established.

1. This is generally networking issue or onCourse server may not be running.

2. Your workstation or the server may not be connected to the network.

1. You are attempting to connect an older client with a newer server.

2. You are attempting to connect a newer client with an older server.

1. Either the password is incorrect or the username is incorrect or both.

General Preferences Terms and Definitions

Services The college name, ABN, and website details

Messaging Covers the sending and receiving of emails

Maintenance This covers the service backup

Setting your General Preferences

3. Now enter the College Website URL e.g. rosewoodcollege.com.au

The Messaging Tab

3. Enter the account name followed by the account password

LDAP Authentication Tab

Message Templates Tab

1. Navigate to File > Preferences > General > Maintenance tab

2. In the Identifier field enter your NTIS RTO id in the field.

Importing and Exporting data

Direct access to the SQL database:

JDBC Driver: org.apache.derby.jdbc.ClientDriver

XML export of courses,classes,sessions,tutors,sites and rooms:

Reports in csv, Excel or PDF format:

1. Export AVETMISS 80 and 85 files from your legacy enrolment system

An example import xml file can be downloaded from here. [http://www.ish.com.au/s/oncourse-schema/

We also have the formal XML schema [http://www.ish.com.au/s/oncourse-schema/dataImport.xsd] and user

Other legacy systems

To edit or add general ledger accounts, go to ‘Financial’ -> ‘Accounts’

Accounts no longer needed can be disabled.

Advanced onCourse Features