Guest Posted July 27, 2016 Posted July 27, 2016 This tutorial will talk you through how to produce PDF files of a child's journal, for staff and parents to celebrate a child's time at your setting. The can be made available for relatives to download and, if they'd like, to order a professionally printed copy of. Relatives can also generate their own PDF export, which you can read more about here, but in this tutorial we will go through how your staff on the account can also generate this for them. There's a few things to note before we start: Only manager staff users (as opposed to full staff and PIN only staff) can export PDFs of children's journals. If your observations have a lot of media or the children have been with you over several years, then this can create extremely large files; so we'd recommend that you break down the production of your journals over time. If you're not intending to export a PDF journal at the end of a child's time with you do let the relatives know - so that they can generate this for themselves as per these steps. Depending on the time of year it can take a while for the journals to generate, so we suggest you set notification preferences so you are informed immediately when journals are ready for download. It's not possible to include videos in PDF files, so these will not be exported but they will be represented by thumbnail images. The videos can be exported as part of a mass export of each child's media though. This tutorial will talk you through how to do this. Parents can purchase printed books of their child's journal through our partner publishing company, Group Hugs, if they wish. This is the type of PDF they will need in order to do that. You can link them to this tutorial which explains how they can purchase the book. We'll start by looking at how you can export journals to PDF. To skip to the section on downloading them after they have been exported, click here. Exporting Journals Firstly, click on your name in the top right-hand corner (1) and do to the Control Panel (2). Once on this section you will need to select the 'Manage Children' option from the left-hand menu (3). You can download journals for all active, inactive and awaiting deletion children. Also, the download won't be deleted if you delete/inactivate a child before the relative gets a chance to download it. If you just want to export journals for say active children, click on the filter button across the top to access active children only. You can also use these buttons to quickly navigate to inactive and awaiting deletion children should you need to. If you only want to download a journal for one individual child, find the child's name in the list and then click on the cog button at the end of the row of their name (1) and select the 'Export journal to PDF' option (2). Alternatively, if you want to export several journals at once, you can put a tick in the boxes next to all of the children you want to export a PDF journal for (1). Or if you want to select all children from that page, change 'Select Items' amount to 'All' (2). Once you're happy with the selected children, choose 'Export journals as PDFs' from the pop-up options box (3) and press 'Go' (4). Note that the default is 20 children per page. So if you have more than 20 children you'd like to export the journal for, just change the amount to something more suitable (1), and then select all again (2). You can also use the filters to search for groups, e.g. Penguin Class, so you can export journals for specific groups of children. For that, you'll need to be on the 'All' children list (1) and then click on 'Filter & Sort Children' (2). You have many filters to choose from, including by group (3) and also status (4). Press submit (5) when you're done. Once you have selected the children and pressed 'Go' to 'Export journals as PDFs', you'll then be presented with a screen offering a set of options for the journal export. I'll walk you through all of the different options available here. Children First of all, you can make changes to the selected children by adding more (1) or removing any you don't want to download a journal for (2). Recipients You will need to decide whether this journal is for staff members or relatives (1) If you choose relatives on multiple children exports, it will export for all relatives. Or if it's an individual child export then you can choose which relatives you'd specifically like the download for. If you would like relatives to be able to see, download, and order a printed book from their Tapestry login, you will also need to tick to 'allow recipient to download' (2). This will have no affect on which managers can see and download the export. You can also give relatives access after the journal has been created. You can help relatives download their child's journal by linking them to this tutorial which will explain the process to them. Note, if you select relatives but have their permissions set to hide group media, photos and video thumbnails from group observations will not be displayed. If you choose staff as the recipient then only managers will be able to see the export as it appears within the Control Panel - regular staff members will not see it. Please note that journals exported for 'staff' can't then be changed to 'relatives' If you need to export a journal for a relative, you will have to make sure that the recipient is set up as the relative. It is then up to you to grant them access immediately or at a later date. Date Range Using the 'From' and 'To' and sections, you can then set a date range for the observations that you would like to be included in the journal. For example, you might like to create a file once a term, or once a year, or for specific dates. The default range covers the period from the first observation for that child to the last. Observations This section will determine which observations, and what parts within an observation, will be exported. On the first part 'Filter Included Observations' you can choose whether you would like to include group observations and/or the observations created by relatives. If you have set the recipient as 'staff' you will also see the option for to include observations that are 'Hidden from relatives'. That is referring to ones which have the status 'Staff Only'. If this is for relatives, rest assured that if you decide to include group observations relatives will only be able to see the name tag for their child. You will also be able to see how many observations will be included in this PDF. If you know this PDF will be used to order a printed book copy of the journal, you might want to use the observation count to consider whether the PDF is likely to be too short/too long to do so. It will need to be between 46 and 1596 pages long. Reports You can choose to include reports from within the previously selected date range (1). Any included reports will appear at the end of the exported journal, and will be categorised separately in the contents list. If the recipient is set to 'Staff' you'll also be able to include reports that haven't been published for relatives (2). Again, under 'Items To Display' you can decide which items within the report you'd like to include (3). And underneath you can see how many reports each child has for the selected period and the names of the first and last reports created for them (4). Advanced Assessment Options Under 'Assessment Options' you can choose to include assessments within the observations in the journal. There are two options (1) for you to choose from with this, these are: Include all selected observations, but only show the following assessments. This will include any observation regardless of whether the observation contains any assessment but will only display the selected assessment(s). Only include observations that have the following assessments. This option will only include observations that contain specifically selected assessments. Once you have chosen one of these options, you can then select which assessment framework/s you want to be included in the export by ticking the box (2). If a framework is broken down into different areas and aspects you can also filter the assessments by down by these (3). When exporting for relatives, you'll see an orange label (4) next to any frameworks that haven't been made visible to relatives. However, if you select it, it will be visible on the journal export so do bear this in mind if you prefer relatives not to see the assessments. Items To Display 'Items To Display' will allow you to select other items you may want to include, which can be done by ticking/unticking as preferred. PDF Options There are a few things you can do to change how the PDF looks. Those can be found in this section. The first is the name of the PDF (1). This is what the file will be called when you download it. Then you'll see the option to include/exclude a cover page (2) and what the text on it says (3). By default it will be included. Please note, we would strongly recommend including the cover page if you are exporting for parents. As well as giving the PDF a front cover, if the parents ever want to purchase a printed journal, they will need this in order to have the profile picture of their child appear on the front. You also have the option of including a contents table and deciding how it displays (4). Again, we recommend including this. Here's an example cover page of a child's journal: In the 'Journal Layout' you will be able to customise details of the layout by choosing whether reports and observations are in one list or separate on the contents page (1). You can also choose how entries will be presented (2) with three different options: Split across pages. This will mean observations run one after another, with no large blank spaces. This is our recommended option. Start every journal entry on a new page. This will start each observation on it's own page regardless of length. Start long journal entries on a new page. Lengthier observations will begin on a new page rather than using up empty space immediately after the previous observation. To reduce the overall number of pages you may also want to change the format (3). Again there are three options: Default. This is intended more to be viewed on screen, and reflect the look of Tapestry itself. As such this will include larger photos and larger text compared to the following formats. Background colours will be maintained with this format. Compact. This option makes the images and text smaller in the observation, but still contains background colours. Compact with reduced colour. This option makes both the images smaller and removes background colours from observations. We recommend the default option, especially if this export is for families, and even more so if the PDF will be used to order a printed journal from Group Hugs. If you are planning to print it on your own printers and are not so interested in the media, you might want to use one of the compact options in order to save ink and paper. You can also choose whether you'd like to include photos or not (1). This might be handy if you are creating a journal to send to a setting that does not use Tapestry. If you do include photos you can also change how many photos appear in a line (2) (if you're trying to save paper you can choose the lowest option). Once you are happy with all of your choices, click on 'Submit' (3) to create the exports! Downloading Exported Journals The PDFs will then be queued for generation, and view the downloads and their progress (1) or head back to the Manage Children page (2). You can access the Downloads section at any point in your account through the Control Panel (3). If your relatives don't have a Tapestry account, or you prefer to distribute them in a different format, once you have downloaded the journals you can burn them onto CD/DVD (with sufficient memory) as required or save them to a USB stick. Please do remember to check that they have copied across properly before you send them out to parents though! In the 'Downloads' section you will see which PDFs are still generating, which ones are ready to download, and how long you have until each download will be deleted. This does not mean the child's actual account will be deleted, just that you will need to go through the export process again if you want the PDF. Once the export's ready you can download a copy (1). If you've selected the recipient as 'relatives' then you'll see a download for each relative (2) and can see if they have permission to download the file- in this case they have permission (3). You can also see whether the journal has been downloaded by that relative or any managers (4). If the journal has been exported for relatives, but they don't have permission to download it then you can allow the download by clicking on 'Change' (1). Or you can do this in bulk by ticking the box for each export (2) and selecting to 'Enable Relative Download' and then 'Go' (3). If you have exported the download for staff only, you won't see a relatives name. If you want to allow the relative's to download then you'll need to repeat the export process again and select the correct recipient. If you have a lot of downloads here and you want to narrow these down, you can use the filters at the top of the page. For example, you can filter by recipient (1) - this can be staff, relative, or an specific relative - or by download status (2). This will allow you to check which relatives have downloaded their children's journal at the end of the academic year. Please feel free to send in any support requests to customer.service@eyfs.info if you require any further assistance. Go back to Main Tutorials Page
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