Letterhead Templates are used to create the header and footer templates for a district's documents, including report cards, transcripts, and letters that pertain to attendance, discipline, grades, billing, school trips, etc.
For customers with the Purchased Communication Translation add-on: Letterhead Templates automatically translate into the student's language, as specified in the default language field. This automation applies unless the template has already been manually translated, in which case the original translation will be preserved, ensuring that customized content remains intact.
Creating letters, transcripts, report cards, and similar documents is a two-step process in Focus. First, the letterhead template is built in Letterhead Templates. This template includes the information in the header and footer, as well as the general layout options like page orientation and paper size. Next, the body of a document is written in Print Letters & Send Email.
Once a letterhead template is built and saved in Focus, it can be applied to any letter before it is printed or emailed. A letterhead template is not necessary to create the body of a document, but the template must be created first to use it in a letter or email. If a letterhead template isn't selected, the content in the Print Letters & Send Email editor will default to size 8 x 11 and portrait orientation settings.
Both of these features can be built, previewed, saved and updated directly in Focus, and the edit boxes include a number of easy tools to fully format every document.
1. In the Setup menu, click Letterhead Templates.
2. Displayed on the Letterhead Templates screen are all existing letterhead templates located on the left side of the screen. From here, click the Title of any template to open, review, and edit.
3. Click + Add a Letterhead Template at the bottom of this list to create a new Letterhead Template.
4. Enter a Title for the template and press the Enter key.
5. If this template is school-specific, select the School from the provided pull-down. Select All Schools if the template will be used district-wide.
6. If needed, you can select a different Language from the pull-down. The Langauge defaults to English [EN].
7. From the Default for pull-down select a program to make this template the default selection for a specific letter type. When this default is set, the template will appear by default as the template selection on the programs screen.
8. If your district has enabled transcript printing by students, parents and/or teachers, a Letterhead Template must first be set up and a assigned from the Default for Teachers, Parents & Students pull-down.
Once the template is assigned, you must select default settings and save them via Grades > Transcripts in order to determine what data displays on parent and/or student transcripts printed via Student/Parent Portal > Grades. Note: The selected letterhead template applies to teachers as well if your district allows teachers to print transcripts.
Permission for students and parents to print transcripts can be enabled via Users > Profiles: Print Transcripts.
9. Select the programs this letter template should be made Available For from the provided pull-down.
Select Communication from the Available For pull-down to make the letterhead template available for user in Communication.
10. Select the profiles who should have access to the letterhead template from the Available to Profiles pull-down. If the Available to Profile pull-down is left blank or set to null, the template will be available to all profiles. This setting impacts any screens that use letterhead templates to print as well as the Print icon located in the footer.
11. Select the Page Orientation and Paper Size from the corresponding pull-downs.
12. Select whether to Include Hard Page Break between Students and Select Font Size from the provided pull-downs.
13. Use the text editors to create and edit Letterhead Templates. There are two editors: the Header and the Footer. The open word processing box is equipped with a full formatting palette; note that hovering your mouse over any tool in the formatting palette will display a short description of what that tool will do. See Word Processing Tools for detailed information.
14. When finished, click Save.
Click the Preview icon to preview a text-type version.
Correct spelling and grammatical errors with the SpellCheck tool.
Undo and Redo any actions while creating documents.
If you have applied a format or have copied and pasted text into the body of the word processing box, you can utilize the tool shown to Remove Format.
Use these tools to Cut selected text, Copy selected text, Paste text from another document, or Paste from Word.
You can also Bold selected text, use the Italics tool, Underline text, and Strikethrough text.
Use the X tools for Subscript and Superscript text as shown in the image.
Link or Unlink hyperlinks using these two tools. There are several options for creating links with Phantom JS:
a. On the Link Info tab, enter how you’d like to see the link displayed in the Display Text text box. Choose a Link Type from the pull-down; options include: URL, Link to anchor in the text, and Email. Select a Protocol, such as http:// or news://. Then enter the URL in the text box provided. Click OK when finished.
i. Select Email under Link Type to create links for letter recipients to reply with an email. You can select to write automated subject titles and/or text, as well. Different information will be required, such as E-Mail Address, Message Subject, and Message Body.
b. If using a URL, you will see a Target tab. Select this tab to set a Target, such as <frame>, <popup window>, Same Window (…self), Parent Window (…parent), etc. This determines how you want recipients to open the link.
c. If desired, you also have the ability to upload a document as a link. Select the Upload tab to Choose File. Once uploaded, you can choose to Send it to the Server to be saved there as well.
d. For additional options for either a URL, Email, or Upload, click on the Advanced tab.
Use the following tools to Insert/Remove Numbered List, Insert/Remove Bulleted List, Decrease Indent, Increase Indent, and create a Block Quote.
Use the following tools to Align Left, Center, Align Right.
To insert an image, click on the Image icon. This will allow you to browse for an image attachment. If there is a lot of data that you’d like to sort into a table, click on the Table icon. If needed, you can Insert Horizontal Line, or Insert Special Character. The last tool shown here can be used to Insert Page Break for Printing.
a. Add a logo or another image to the Letterhead Template by clicking the Image icon to display the Image Properties pop-up window. Note: Images can be linked with relative paths, e.g. /focus/assets/logo.jpg.
b. If Table is selected, a Table Properties pop-up will display. Here you can set the number of Rows, Columns, etc.
To change the font/format, use the Paragraph Format pull-down. Some of the options include different headings, Address, Normal (DIV), etc.
To change the size of the font, use the Font Size pull-down.
Click on the Source button for CSS/HTML embedding.
Select the Text Color button for a variety of text color options or the Background Color button to change the background color of the text.
Use this tool to Insert a Field from Focus. Depending on what is needed, select the correct header, such as Demographic, Enrollment, etc., then select the field. Multiple logging fields can be added to a template. Use the search options to access logging fields stored within each category. Selected fields will appear in the text editor, and will fill as student-specific information when the letters are printed.
At the bottom of the word processing box, you will see a description of each entered section. Clicking on any of them will highlight the corresponding section. For example, if you click on body, all of the text entered will be selected. Or, clicking on h1, will select the heading entered.
To create a new Letterhead Template based on an existing template, or to test changes for an existing template, copy the Source Code into a new Letterhead Template by following the steps explained in this section. Note: You do not have to be familiar with HTML to perform this task.
1. In the Setup menu, click Letterhead Templates.
2. Displayed on the Letterhead Templates screen are all existing letterhead templates located on the left side of the screen. From here, click the Title of any template to open and duplicate.
3. Click Source in the tool bar to view the HTML Source Code of the template.
4. Select all of the Source Code and copy it. This can be done using Ctrl-A and Ctrl-C keys for PCs or Command-A and Command-C keys for Macs. You can also right click the mouse for additional options and select Copy, as shown in the image below.
5. Now create a new Letterhead Template following steps described in Creating and Editing Letterhead Templates.
6. Click the Source button on the text editor of the new template, and paste the copied Source Code into the new template. Use the Ctrl-P keys for PCs or Command-P keys for Macs. You can also right click your mouse for additional options and select Paste, as shown in the image below.
7. Click the Source button again to view the copied template.
8. Click Save.
1. In the Setup menu, click Letterhead Templates.
2. Displayed on the Letterhead Templates screen are all existing letterhead templates located on the left side of the screen. From here, click the Title of any template to open, review, and edit.
3. Make all the necessary edits by clicking the fields and entering new text or changing the selection.
4. Click Save to apply changes.
5. Click the delete button (black minus sign) to delete a letterhead template.
a. In the Confirm Delete section, click Delete.
