School Management: System Settings

System Settings enables you to control site-wide settings for your organization.

To access System Settings:

1. Click Tools in the header.
2. Select School Management.
3. Click System Settings on the navigation menu.

PowerBuddy allotments

Choose Review PowerBuddy Allotments to review the remaining usage allotment balance.

All PowerSchool products with PowerBuddy integrations share a usage allotment for all of the PowerBuddy features within those products. For example, in Performance Matters, PowerBuddy for Assessment uses one allotment each time you generate or regenerate item content. In Schoology, PowerBuddy for Learning uses one allotment each time you generate content for an assignment or discussion.

Districts must use their usage allotments by June 30th. Unused allotments do not roll over.

For example, if a district has one PowerBuddy product and an allotment bank set to 3,000,000, then the allotment distribution on July 1st would be 3,000,000.
After July 1st, if that district had used 1,000,000 allotments, added another PowerBuddy product, and purchased another 3,000,000 allotments, then the district allotment balance would be 5,000,000.

Designated district contacts will receive email notifications when allotments reach low thresholds and when there are no remaining allotments.

PowerBuddy features will become inactive if the usage allotment reaches zero.

PowerBuddy settings

Use PowerBuddy settings to configure PowerBuddy for Learning and to review chat logs.

Turn on PowerBuddy

Turn PowerBuddy for Learning on to give access to PowerBuddy AI chat and content generation for Schoology. This applies to the entire district. To manage permissions at the role level, select the Schoology permissions link and set access for roles.

Restrict access for individuals

Restrict students or faculty from using PowerBuddy chat and content generation.

1. Choose Restrict users.

2. On the Restricted access page, enter the user’s name or ID to search.

3. Select the user and choose Restrict access.

On the Restricted access list, select the Remove icon (trash can) to remove the user from the list.

Student chat settings

Manage which students can access PowerBuddy chat by grade level and minimum age. 

1. Choose Review settings.

2. On the PowerBuddy chat settings page, select which course grades you want to have access to chat.

3. Enter the minimum age students must be to access chat.

4. Select whether or not to grant students access if their grade and age are missing in the system. By default, access is blocked.

5. Choose whether to Include images and videos in chat responses.

6. If you choose to include images or videos, select which media sources.

   • YouTube (videos)

   • Wikipedia (images)

7. Save your changes.

Student chat logs

Review the chat logs for all students you have permission to access. Conversations can take up to 15 minutes before they are loaded into the chat log and are available for 60 days. To access conversations older than 60 days, submit a Schoology support ticket.

1. Choose Review chat logs.

2. On the Student chat logs page, find the conversation and select Review Chats.

   • Optionally, search for a student or filter by time frame or course. Chat logs default to the last seven days.

3. Select a conversation to review.

4. If needed, download a conversation. There are two options to download an individual conversation from the student’s chat log.

   • Select the Download icon (down arrow) for the conversation.

   • Open the conversation and select Download.

If a conversation has flagged chats, the number of flags are marked in the Flagged chats field for the student. Review the chat and open the conversation for more details.

AI can make mistakes when filtering content. Always review content to confirm accurate flagging.

Access codes

You can enable or disable the ability for students to use an Access Code to register for an account. By default, the system has this feature enabled.

The following options are available:

• Enable course access codes: This setting enables users to request to join a course by entering an access code. Users will be able to Join a course from the My Courses page by adding a course access code.
• Enable group access codes: This setting enables users to request to join a group by entering an access code. Users will be able to Join a group from the My Groups page by adding a group access code.
• Enable student registration with an access code: This setting enables users to register on their own from the Schoology homepage. The user will be able to navigate to app.schoology.com, and use a course access code or group access code to create an account within your Enterprise organization.
• Enable parent access codes: This setting enables parents to create accounts and monitor their child's account by entering a Parent Access Code.
• Select the default role for a new parent: Parents registering a new account using an access code will be set to this default selection (we recommend using a Parent role).
• Enable registration codes: This setting enables users to create faculty user accounts by entering the appropriate code for their role. Click Enable to the right of each role to enable registration codes for a particular role.

System settings apply to your entire organization. You may further enable or disable the ability for a particular role to join courses and groups using an access code by selecting or deselecting the permissions Use course access codes from the Permissions area.

Default time zone

The time zone selected from the drop-down menu will serve as the default time zone associated with newly created users under your system.

Default language

The language selected from the drop-down menu will serve as the default language associated with newly created users under your system.

Calendar system

Administrators have the option to enable the Hijri calendar at the district level. This allows users at the school level to choose their calendar display preferences, including displaying Hijri dates side-by side with Gregorian dates (within certain content), and a Hijri toggle on calendar and date pickers. 

To change your calendar system at the district level, choose between Gregorian or Gregorian and Hijri from the list, and click Save Changes.

Organization logo

The logo image uploaded to this area will be used for certain reports printed from Schoology.

Parent settings

Default parent account

As the System Admin, you can set the default landing page for parent accounts.

• Main Account: This option will display the main account (the parent's Recent Activity area) to parents when they log in.
• Child Activity: This option will display the children's Recent Activity area to parents when they log in.
• User Account Preference: This option enables the parent to set his/her own landing page from their Account Settings.

Parent access

This area enables you to determine the content accessible and viewable to parents.

• View child's course submissions: This option enables parents to open and view the submissions a student makes in a course assignment.
• View child's grades: This option enables parents to view the grades the child receives in a Schoology course.
• View child's attendance: This option enables parents to view the attendance marks a child receives in a Schoology course.
• View child's mastery grades: If your school or course uses learning objectives, this option enables parents to view the mastery grades in a Schoology course.

Parent email digest

As the System Admin, you may also set the default settings for parents' reception of an email digest. This email digest provides a summary of their child's activity on a scheduled basis, which parents may set from the Notifications area of the Child Activity.

• Off: This option requires that the parent login to their Schoology and elect to turn on their email digest.

• On: This option sends an email digest to parents on a weekly or daily basis of your choosing. Parents may log in to their Schoology account and turn off or adjust these settings for their personal accounts at any time.

  

  Changing this will set the default setting for all users within your organization who have not customized this setting in their Account Settings.

Learning standards

Enable Learning Standards for your organization. Instructors will be able to select from these learning objectives wherever they create course materials and rubrics.

• Common Core, Next Generation Science Standards, State Standards, American Education Reaches Out Curriculum Frameworks
• American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL)
• College and Career Readiness Standards for Adult Education

Set default home page

Changing this will set the default home page setting for all users within your organization who have not customized this setting in Account Settings.

Choose between:

• Recent Activity
• Course Dashboard