Subsections

• Directory Overview
• Directory Details - Main Administration Site

Introduction

Open Administration for Schools will be abbreviated as Open Admin or OA throughout this document. OA is a loosely coupled system that is designed to be simple to update and develop for. It is designed to be run with 3 virtual web sites per school and a couple of additional websites that may be used for a division wide installation or with an individual school. However, this is entirely up to the school and only parts may be used as desired.

OA consists two main types of files:

• HTML files - these files are simply a series of links organized into groups for demographics, attendance, discipline, etc. and point to the matching script and may pass values to it.

• Perl (CGI) scripts - that are called from the HTML files and create links back to those web pages. The perl scripts use the perl DBI interface module to talk to a database (MySQL or PostgreSQL) to store or retrieve data. They may also run external programs such as pdflatex to generate PDF reports or external XML parsers to parse XML encoded data files.

Directory Overview

The distribution, as downloaded, consists of the following directories:

1. docs - empty; documentation is now available by separate download to keep sizes of the downloads small.

2. global - contains only a single configuration file, global.conf, to configure multiple schools together.

3. iep - contains the special education application which runs as a separate website.

4. school - contains the main websites for a single school.

5. sis - a single site for division wide use. Poorly used. Not much interest.

6. utility - contains files to help with installation.

The main directories of interest are school and iep which consist of directories which contain HTML files or perl scripts (CGI scripts).

The school directory contains files for the main administration site (used by secretaries and administrators), the teacher site for teachers, and a parent site for parents and students.

The directories are:

• admin - HTML files for the main administration website.
• cgi - Perl (CGI) scripts for the main administration website.
• tadmin - HTML files for the teacher website.
• tcgi - Perl (CGI) scripts for the teacher website.
• padmin - HTML files for the parent site.
• pcgi - Perl (CGI) scripts for the parent site.
• etc - stores configuration files that are used by the perl scripts.
• lib - contains libraries used by the perl scripts.
• templates - contains template files used by the perl scripts for input forms and reports. This allows the student and staff tables to be extended with additional fields. These fields are then added to the templates.

Directory Details - Main Administration Site

The main administration site uses the files in the admin directory and the cgi directory. The files in admin are:

• index.shtml - main index page.
• attendance.html - attendance page.
• discipline.html - discipline page.
• fees.html - fees system, also lunch program, locker system.
• schedule.html - scheduling, student/staff location search, transportation.
• export.html - export/import data and Saskatchewan SDS page.
• repcard.html - report card system, subjects, transcripts and subject enrollment.
• eoy.html - start/end of year page; manage staff, school dates, preregistration.
• help.html - help system, links to documentation.
• admin.css - the single CSS stylesheet that controls look and feel of the website.
• entrynotes.html - help file for student entry. Linked from index.shtml.
• favicon.ico - an empty file (0 bytes) present so that it's absence doesn't clog the error log files.

It also contains the following subdirectories:

• download - a directory in webspace into which pdf reports, etc. are copied by scripts so that users may download them. It should be cleaned out on a regular basis by cron scripts.
• images - the location of the school logos (full size for main page(logo.gif) and a thumbnail(logotn.gif) for the subpages).
• js - javascript libraries.
• pic-big - full size student pictures (mugshots). Size set on import by settings in etc/image.conf.
• pic-sm - thumbnail size student pictures.

The main admin site cgi script directory ((cgi) contains all scripts for the main site.

It also contains the following directories:

• attendance - All attendance management and reporting scripts.

• discipline - discpline scripts called from discipline page.

• dbfimport - import scripts from SIRS 3 software (SIS)

• entry - student enrollment and withdrawal scripts.

• eoy - start/end of year scripts such as staff and date managment.

• export - export scripts for exporting data in a variety of formats.

• fees - fees subsystem - accounts receivable.

• image - image management scripts for student pictures (mugshots).

• inac - Canadian schools INAC (Indian Northern Affairs Canada ) reporting system to federal government for First Nations schools.

• ldap - LDAP Management scripts - manage users on external LDAP server

• locker - manage lockers and locks.

• meta - the meta scripts to edit and update the meta table. This table controls the type of entries for fields in the student and staff forms and reports.

• old - all directories may have older unused scripts stored in these named directories.

• prereg - preregistration and waiting list scripts.

• repcard - report card system including printing of report cards, subject management, and subject enrollments, etc.

• repcard_pk - Pre Kindergarten report card scripts. Actual reporting itself is in the report card script in repcard folder.

• sasklrn - scripts to update Sask Learning with the latest local data and to Query the provincial database as well.

• schedule - student scheduling scripts including scripts to locate students and staff at particular times, etc.

• staff - staff management scripts for the staff and staff_multi tables.

• usermanage - manage user accounts on external servers.

• xlat - translation scripting to read other scripts and html files and generate phrases to be translated. Also rewrites scripts with new

The SaskEd management system has scripts in cgi/sasklrn, but is not freely distributed since it it geographically limited in area to only Saskatchewan, and this helps to pay for development.