Find Me Alert

Submitted by brian_andle on Tue, 01/03/2012 - 12:48pm

There are many times when we need to find out where a student is at the current moment in time. Normally it’s a bit of a process where you need to search for the student, look at his/her schedule for the current date, figure out what period you are in, then figure out where that student is during that period. Well this alert makes it much easier. With this alert you can see exactly where the student is supposed to be at the current moment in time. If you are feeling ambitious you can give it to the teachers too, the teacher alert is included though you will need to update the student pages yourself.

Version History:
V 2.0 (02/24/2009)
– Initial Release

V 2.1 (02/25/2009)
– Fixed problem with minutes beginning with 0 being concatenated (10:05 was showing as 10:5)
– Fixed issue with alert showing the student as in a class and between classes at the same time.
– Improved efficiency

PS 7 (9/27/2011)
- Updated for PS 7. Uses SQL based on the mobile find me but does not suffer from the 10am bug.

NOTE - The following steps may need to be done depending on your system.

CPM Users
Upload alert_findme.gif and alert_findmewhite.gif into the \image\ folder in CPM from the unzipped download.

Image Server Users
If you are using a image server you will need to copy the 2 images to the image folder on your image server.

Customization:

Tags:

Contributor: 
Jason Treadwell
Brian Andle
Pearson
CPM Import Friendly: 
Y

Comments

admiral_brad

Mon, 03/26/2012 - 3:45pm

I am having trouble with the find me command for a small number of students. Basically, I am getting a blank space under the Name\home room\photo area for at least four students. I have checked for commonalities and found nothing in common except their school. Has anyone else seen this kind of issue?

Karina

Thu, 03/29/2012 - 3:52pm

I have a principal who REALLY wants to know where a specific group of students is at a given time. Like a regular Alert list that prints the location of each student in the group.

amaupin

Wed, 04/11/2012 - 1:05pm

I can not get the icon (binoculars) to appear. Instead, the term FIND ME appears in blue where the icon should be. I uploaded the images separately into the images folder where I saw the other "alert" gifs. Is there a more specific folder I should be uploading them to? THANKS!

Andrea Maupin
Bellevue Public Schools

pnoury

Thu, 12/19/2013 - 7:38am

Same problem here, have you found a fix ?

sbarrett

Fri, 04/20/2012 - 7:00am

I am getting the following error when I click on the Alert List icon.

An error was detected contacting the server. Please contact customer support if this continues to occur.

Any ideas?

mabella

Wed, 05/23/2012 - 5:04pm

I'm getting same error as well..

Matthew Abella
The Accelerated School

brian_andle

Thu, 05/24/2012 - 5:36am

Is there a specific browser you are using? The same one posted is the one we use every day in our school and haven't seen the issue you describe.

mabella

Thu, 05/24/2012 - 10:45am

Getting it in both firefox and chrome.

Matthew Abella
The Accelerated School

watersgt

Mon, 07/09/2012 - 9:13am

I am getting the following error when I click on the Alert List icon.

An error was detected contacting the server. Please contact customer support if this continues to occur.
Any solution for this?

ehudson

Thu, 05/24/2012 - 12:31pm

After installing the Findme Alert, the Bus alert icon no longer appears.

brian_andle

Thu, 05/24/2012 - 1:19pm

The Find Me Alert includes a wildcards/title_student_end_css file which will need to be updated with any custom code you may have already added.

SewCrazy2

Tue, 08/21/2012 - 11:43am

Has the above error "An error was detected contacting the server. Please contact customer support if this continues to occur" been resolved??
I thought it was just not working since we were not in session but today is our first day and I am still getting the message!!
Thanks!

watersgt

Tue, 08/21/2012 - 12:05pm

I am still getting it also. We are on PS 7.2.

dd4ml0d

Fri, 08/31/2012 - 6:33am

If you get the "An error was detected contacting the server. Please contact customer support if this continues to occur" try this:

Put the findmealert.html file in the custom\webroot\admin folder, not the custom\webroot\admin\alerts folder.

The old Powerschool 6.x version had it in the alerts subfolder...but the 7.x version is one level up - I tried this and it's working now for me.

pnieto04

Thu, 11/01/2012 - 9:34am

I just upgraded to 7.5. Curious to see if this works. I uploaded using PS Administrator option and I am not finding where it installed to or if it did? Can someone please help me. I am having trouble uploading the images as well. Any help would be great.

Peter N.

kveilleux

Thu, 11/01/2012 - 7:48pm

I'm on 7.2.2 and it is working fine. In custom page management - check the following: Admin/alerts - you should see findmealert there and under wildcards - check the title_student_end_css.txt - you should see it reference the alrert if you open it up. Also, do you have an image server? Did you add the 2 images to your image folder? They will not upload in CPM.

gmyers

Mon, 02/25/2013 - 11:44am

We are using it with 7.6.1 with no problems. I must say our staff appreciates this customization more than anything else I've implemented. They would demand a return to a prior version of PowerSchool (or a different SIS) if it ever stopped working.

Greg Myers
Trinity School of Durham and Chapel Hill

mbates

Tue, 02/26/2013 - 11:26am

I got the same error message mentioned earlier, and it turned out to be file permissions -- we manage customizations manually, via ssh/sftp, and the new files (the images and findmealert.html) had no read/execute for any but Administrator. I've been nailed by this before, and am not sure if it's a side effect of using Cygwin and its ssh server, or normal Windows behavior, or what. Anyway just posting in case it helps anyone else.

jdehlinger

Wed, 07/31/2013 - 9:10am

I am a newbie to custom pages, can someone help me install this search, sounds great!

lmilliard

Fri, 08/16/2013 - 6:07am

The instructions say the teacher alert is included but I do not see it. I would really like to put it on the teacher side could you send or post instructions please. Thank you.

jtreadwell

Tue, 08/27/2013 - 9:35am

lmilliard, If you look at the description it states:

"If you are feeling ambitious you can give it to the teachers too, the teacher alert is included though you will need to update the student pages yourself."

My previous response is why.

Jason Treadwell
Custom Solutions Specialist
jason@powerdatasolutions.org
www.powerdatasolutions.org

jtreadwell

Tue, 08/27/2013 - 9:34am

I actually have an updated version of this that I've put on a few servers to test it out. It changes the alert to the new standard type of alert (in screen popup rather than it's own window). Once its been tested a little more I'll post it.

As for the teacher side, that is going to take a bit more time as the teacher pages don't have a wildcard, they have individual pages that would need to be updated with each and every powerschool update. I'm not sure why Pearson hasn't made the same wildcards on the teacher side as they did on the admin side but I'm sure there is some reason. I've made custom wildcards for the teacher side with no problem so I'm not exactly sure what the holdup is.

Jason Treadwell
Custom Solutions Specialist
jason@powerdatasolutions.org
www.powerdatasolutions.org

jchavarie

Wed, 10/23/2013 - 12:06pm

We are a hosted PowerSchool client. I installed the find me files in all the right places. The icons display as expected but clicking the Find Me icon displays the "An error was detected contacting the server. Please contact customer support if this continues to occur".

If I go directly to the /admin/alerts/findmealert.html page, I can see the valid information but it won't display in the expected pop-up format. Any suggestions how to manage permissions for this as a hosted client?

cyoung

Fri, 10/25/2013 - 11:44am

Thank you for this customization - it works perfectly. I just had to re-add my customization for the title bar.

Cassandra Young
Strive Prep
Denver, CO

skilburn

Thu, 12/19/2013 - 7:22am

Best customization. This is great thank you so much

Stephanie Kilburn
District Student Database Specialist
Amity Regional District #5
Woodbridge, CT

dubbskkhs

Wed, 02/12/2014 - 7:41am

Thanks to so many who developed this - but since "Find Me" is standard on the Mobile pages, why customize?

You can use the mobile pages, on any smart device, or even on a standard desktop...

just by including the following at the end of your url:

/admin/mobile/home.html

Melissa A Dubbs

rdodger

Fri, 02/14/2014 - 9:27pm

The Find Me alert has a long history. It started as a project at Pearson ALS (Advanced learning summit). Jason advanced it quite a bit after that to pretty much what you see today. The mobile pages adapted Jason's version which is now part of PowerSchool. After that Brian took Pearsons changes, that accommodated hosted customers, and created the current customization.

At this point both are the same, just this one adds it for non mobile users, and if you look it's pretty much line for line the same. :)

gmyers

Thu, 04/03/2014 - 2:07pm

A change in the customization I would like to see is use the image from the mobile pages "/images/mobile/alert_findmewhite.gif" rather than adding the extra images. This saves the trouble of doing an upload of the images and it looks a bit better than the one I had uploaded.

The other modification I made is using the "student.alert" insertion point (new in 7.11) on the standard title_student_end_css.txt page by adding the page "title_student_end_css.findme.student.alert.txt" with this in it:

<!-- Find Me Page Fragment Insertion -->
<script>
//Insert homeroom or advisory name along with a link to find the current class
$j(document).ready(function(){
$j('p:first').append($j('#findStudent'));
});
</script>
<span id="findStudent">~([01]home_room)&nbsp;<a href="/admin/findmealert.html?frn=~(studentfrn)" class='dialogM' title='Find Me' ><img src="/images/mobile/alert_findmewhite.gif" height="24" width="31" alt="Find Me" border="0"></a></span>
<!-- End Find Me Page Fragment Insertion -->

This places the find me link down in the line with student identification information and adds the homeroom just before the link. Now I not only have the link where I want it, but can easily add any field I want to that line.

Greg Myers
Trinity School of Durham and Chapel Hill

jtreadwell

Sat, 04/05/2014 - 9:30am

Greg,

That's a good point. When I initially posted this customization there wasn't a built in one for mobile pages so I had to provide the image. In fact the image came from the starter project back at ALS. I just added to it and then posted for people to use. If/when I update this project I'll be sure to keep that in mind. Right now that insertion point is only in 7.11 and most people aren't on that version yet so updating won't help the vast majority of people. You can thank former PDS contributor and current Pearson employee Brian Andle for getting that much needed insertion point added in.

Jason Treadwell
Custom Solutions Specialist
jason@powerdatasolutions.org
www.powerdatasolutions.org

gmyers

Wed, 04/09/2014 - 10:16am

I can't thank Brian enough for all he has contributed, and while I'm at it thanks to you too. Insertion point improvements alone are reason enough to upgrade to 7.11.

Greg Myers
Trinity School of Durham and Chapel Hill

skilburn

Wed, 02/26/2014 - 7:28am

Has anyone tried to put this on the teacher's pages yet? If so was it similar?

Stephanie Kilburn
District Student Database Specialist
Amity Regional District #5
Woodbridge, CT

mschreiber

Fri, 02/28/2014 - 11:37am

I just finished doing this,

The Title_Student_End.css template is where the code resides on mine(on the admin side) , enabling it to show up there. The problem is, the way my code was given to me, they had 'admin' where you see the first ~[directory] which was causing the Power Teacher to prompt me to re-login.

The solution: I remade a new css template called Title_Student_End_Teachers.css and used the following code on the first section. It works well.

~[studentalert] 

gmyers

Wed, 04/09/2014 - 10:11am

I place a copy of the findme.html in the Teachers directory then added a file in the Wildcards directory named teachers_header_fr_css.findme.content.header.txt with the following contents:

<!-- Find Me Page Fragment Insertion -->
<script>
//Insert homeroom or advisory name along with a link to find the current class
$j(document).ready(function(){
$j('form > p').append($j('#findStudent'));
});
</script>
<span id="findStudent">~([01]home_room)&nbsp;<a href="/teachers/findmealert.html?frn=~(studentfrn)" class='dialogM' title='Find Me' ><img src="/images/mobile/alert_findmewhite.gif" height="24" width="31" alt="Find Me" border="0"></a>&nbsp;</span>
<!-- End Find Me Page Fragment Insertion -->

This places the Find Me icon for teachers at the end of the student identification line on the student pages and adds the homeroom to that line. It works well for me and does not require modification of any of the standard pages.

Greg Myers
Trinity School of Durham and Chapel Hill

nkelly

Tue, 09/09/2014 - 1:02pm

We just upgraded to ver 8 & I can't seem to get this to work.
What am I doing wrong?
TU!

lcurtis

Wed, 09/10/2014 - 7:24am

I have 8.0.2.0 and I just loaded the plug-in but I can't see any reports. I ran the PDS Setup once I loaded it and turned on links open in new tab and I set to Dynamic. I tried rescan reports but it doesn't seem to do anything.

Do I have to load one by one the reports I want within this plug-in? If so, where are all the individual reports that used to be all rolled into one big bundle of reports?

Thanks for clarifying,

lcurtis

Wed, 09/10/2014 - 8:46am

I realized after I posted that you do have to download the individual plug-ins. I'm good.

Thanks for this option! This is great!!

dgilchrist1004

Mon, 07/27/2015 - 1:17pm

Just installed FindMeAlert on 9.0.1 and I am seeing that the alert is 1 hour off. Therefore it shows students in the incorrect class period. We are hosted by Powerschool so I cannot readily change the system time. Is there an adjustment I can make with the customization or do I need to have PS support adjust something with the server?
Thanks!

melissahartley

Thu, 07/30/2015 - 1:49pm

Hello! We were using this alert and since we updated it no longer works. Looks like it is a plugin now. I have no idea how to make this work again. Are there directions anywhere to walk me through install? Thanks!

terri.sorensen

Mon, 08/03/2015 - 7:28pm

When I try to install the Find Me plugin, I get the following error. Any suggestions?
"Plugin file contains an unrecognized file: admin/findmealert.html"

nmarden

Fri, 02/03/2017 - 7:18am

Hi,
This is a great feature but it doesn't work if a student has a rotating schedule. If works only if the student has a consistent schedule.
Is there a work around so it will work for all students schedules?
Thank you.

NM

lwelsh3

Mon, 08/28/2017 - 9:06am

Having trouble uploading the zip file- this is the error I get.

Errors were found during plugin installation.

Plugin file contains an unrecognized file: admin/findmealert.html

prescott

Thu, 09/14/2017 - 1:07pm

SB

SB

angela.serna

Fri, 09/15/2017 - 12:54pm

I'm wondering if anyone else is having this same issue. This works for some students, but not others. Schedules are complete so not sure what the problem is.

Angela Serna
Registrar
The Academy

dmartinson

Thu, 10/05/2017 - 9:52am

We have two schedules at our middle school (grades 4/5 and grades 6/7/8). Should we have two calendars for one school?

dmcmullen

Tue, 04/16/2019 - 12:43pm

I was not able to download stating Plugin file contains an unrecognized file: admin/findme.html. Any suggestions?

Thank you.

efunk@basd.net

Thu, 12/17/2020 - 8:17pm

I recently took over Powerschool support at our district. We had the old Find Me plugin but now I am learning that it is now built in to PS. Can you tell me how to shut off the old one?

PSCB

Fri, 12/18/2020 - 1:45pm

Navigate to :
Start Page > System Administrator > System Settings > Plugin Management Dashboard

Locate the Find Me plugin and click delete.

--
Rob Staats
PSCB Development

efunk@basd.net

Fri, 12/18/2020 - 3:33pm

Unfortunetly it is not listed, at least not as Find Me. The only thing I see is..
PSCB - Base Resources 1.6
PSCB - Customization (Std Att Pages) 1.6

PSCB

Mon, 12/21/2020 - 5:10pm

The Find Me plugin is no longer available for download. It is now included in the latest releases of Powerschool.

--
Rob Staats
PSCB Development

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