BUSTOPS Holiday Schedule

Our office will be closed for the holidays from Monday, December 23rd, 2013 to Friday, January 4th, 2014. 

The office will reopen at 8:00 am on Monday, January 6th, 2014.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

from MicroAnalytics Staff

Support Talk

It’s almost time to start school and you have your routes ready to go.  Before you do another thing, take a moment to review what you should do with your BUSTOPS program to save yourself from potential problems. 

WHAT TO DO WITH BUSTOPS TWO WEEKS BEFORE SCHOOL STARTS…

The computer is your slave; you are not the slave to the computer. 

1.  Ensure the data is complete and print all reports needed. Think how upset you will be if your printer breaks or your network goes down the day before you need the report.

·         Before you start to print your letters or routes, you should review some of them in the Preview screen and compare the information to the information in your student and stops databases. 

·         Depending on the fields you are using in your reports, update commands within BUSTOPS may need to be run.

 2.  Keep a backup saved version of your BUSTOPS files.

 3.  Make last minute changes on paper:

There are always changes to be made.  Hand write your changes during start up on the paper reports.  Often times, changes are made and then those changes need to be reversed or changed again.  Save up your changes and input them in BUSTOPS shortly after school starts and things settle down.  This can save time and mistakes.

 

Following the above suggestions will decrease the rush to get things done, which in turn helps prevent problems.  With these pointers in mind, we wish you all the best in the new school year!

Planning

Just a friendly reminder to everyone - if you haven't booked an appointment yet to advance your grades in BUSTOPS so you can start planning your routes for the 2013-2014 school year, you should do so now.

The next 6-9 weeks will fly by and it will be time for the first day of school before we know it.

Have a safe and pleasant summer everyone!

Safe Guard Your Data

I wanted to remind everyone that you should periodically check with your School District's IT Department to make sure your BUSTOPS data is being backed up on a regular basis.

If the data is on a server, you need to make sure it is being backed up by the IT Department through their procedures.

If your BUSTOPS data is on the c drive of a computer in your office, you need to make sure you are backing it up on a regular basis yourself.  You can work with your IT Department to create a procedure to backup by copying the data to a server drive, a zip drive, or to CD or DVD, depending on their preference.

Regardless of where the data is saved, if it is lost and no current backup in available, it can be a lot of work to recreate the information.

As always, if you or your IT people wish to discuss this, give us a call.

Hope everyone is enjoying Spring so far!

Time to Start Planning

Now that Spring is here it's time to start thinking about a game plan for getting ready for the 2013-2014 School Year routing.

If you haven't already setup a GoToMeeting appointment to get your students' grades advanced, you need to think about when that needs to be done.

Once the grades are advanced you need to:

• reassign students who switch schools to stops for the new school
• enter your new kindergartners and assign them to stops
• adjust the routes for new stops
• print reports - updated route sheets, updated driving directions, send out letters or post cards to students, or create a file with information to be posted in the newspaper or on your School District's website, etc.

If you are comfortable with this process from previous years, call and book an appointment when you normally do.

If you are new to using Bustops or if you are opening, closing or moving locations of buildings this school year, you can always call us to discuss the steps specific to your situation and the timing of when you should begin getting ready.

Happy planning!