The Planning Periods screen is used to set up individual planning periods, department planning periods, duty periods, and unavailable periods for teachers so that they display as blocked out on the Teacher Schedules Report. Planning periods may also be imported on the Teacher Constraints tab of the Master Schedule Builder so that teachers are only scheduled into the periods they are available.
Planning periods can be rolled from year to year using the Rollover screen.
The Department Planning Periods tab is used to set up planning periods by department, which can be linked to teachers in the Teacher Planning Periods tab. For example, if the Math department at the school has a planning period during period 3, this can be set up in the Department Planning Periods tab, and then linked to all the math teachers in the Teacher Planning Periods tab.
1. In the Scheduling menu, click Planning Periods.
![Planning Periods](https://media.screensteps.com/image_assets/assets/008/201/453/original/882cc27d-b062-4185-8df5-7b832ee5dfda.png)
The Department Planning Periods tab is opened by default.
2. To add a new entry, enter a Title in the blank row. This title will display on the planning period block on the Teacher Schedules Report.
3. Select the Planning Period.
4. Press Enter to add the row. Continue adding additional entries as needed.
5. Click Save.
6. To edit the Title or Planning Period for a record, make your changes and click Save.
7. To delete a department planning period, click the minus sign next to the Title.
8. In the confirmation message, click OK.
![sandbox.focusschoolsoftware.com says](https://media.screensteps.com/image_assets/assets/008/201/546/original/87dca1a2-f4e7-44a6-9696-0a80204bb186.png)
The row is grayed out to indicate it will be deleted.
9. Click Save to complete deletion.
The Teacher Planning tab is used to assign individual planning periods, department planning periods, duty periods, and unavailable periods to teachers.
1. In the Scheduling menu, click Planning Periods.
![Planning Periods](https://media.screensteps.com/image_assets/assets/008/201/550/original/cb7b8cb6-5993-4f1a-a889-57f264c5c9f1.png)
2. Click the Teacher Planning tab.
Each active and future active teacher at the school is listed. The Scheduled Subjects column will display the subjects of the teacher's assigned sections. This column may be useful for filtering the report and mass updating information. See Additional Features for more information on filtering and using Mass Update.
3. To assign individual planning periods to a teacher that may differ from the department planning periods, select the Planning Period(s) next to the teacher.
4. To assign department planning periods to a teacher, select an option in the Department Planning pull-down. Options are set up in the Department Planning tab. Options display using the title with the period number in parentheses.
It may be useful to filter on the Scheduled Subjects column to view only the teachers of a particular subject. You can then use Mass Update to add the Department Planning for those teachers. See Additional Features for more information on filtering and using Mass Update.
5. To assign a duty period to a teacher, select the Duty Period(s) next to the teacher. One or multiple can be selected.
6. To assign an unavailable period to a teacher, select the Unavailable Period(s) next to the teacher. One or multiple can be selected.
7. Click Save to save your changes.
If your school uses a rotation schedule (the "Advanced Rotation" system preference is enabled in Setup > System Preferences > Scheduling tab), the Rotation Days column is added to the Teacher Planning tab. Each teacher will be listed multiple times in the table, once for each rotation day. For example, if the school uses an A and B rotation, each teacher will be listed twice, with one row for defining the teacher planning periods for the A day, and one row for defining the teacher planning periods for the B day.
1. Use the Next and Prev buttons to navigate through the pages of the report. To navigate to a specific page of the report, enter the Page number and press Enter.
2. To export the report to Excel, click the Excel icon.
3. To print the report, click the Print icon.
4. Click on a column header to sort the report by that column. Click once to sort by ascending order. Click again to sort by descending order.
5. To filter the report, click the Filter button so that it displays ON.
6. Enter the filter criteria in the text box above the column. In this example, the Scheduled Subjects column is filtered to only display Mathematics teachers.
7. Click the arrow to access other filter options.
8. To add an additional filter to a column, click the plus icon. To remove a filter, click the minus icon.
9. To mass update the list of teachers, set your desired filters and click Mass Update.
10. Select the Column to update, such as Department Planning. Select the Value.
11. Click Update.
![Planning Periods](https://media.screensteps.com/image_assets/assets/008/201/639/original/a8e28122-eb1e-4daf-b785-e6140bf19961.png)
The column is updated for the listed teachers.
12. Click Save.
On the Teacher Schedules Report, planning periods, department planning periods, duty periods, and unavailable periods will be represented with a gray block.
If a planning period, department planning period, duty period, or unavailable period was assigned during the same period as a scheduled section for the teacher, the section will display within the gray block on the Teacher Schedules Report.
In the Master Schedule Builder in the Teacher Constraints tab, the Import From Planning Periods button can be used to update the Periods Available column for all teachers (periods that are not planning periods, department planning periods, duty periods, or unavailable periods will display). Only users with the View permission to the Planning Periods screen will have access to the Import From Planning Periods button.