Questions answered about School Networks - bulk import, security, etc.

[Mark Messinger]

During the course of preparing to implement some school networks in Oregon, Regional Network Administrators came up with some questions that couldn't be answered simply by referencing the system manuals available to us. Here are the answers to some questions that might be encountered by others of you who are either currently running or planning to implement school networks.

Many thanks to the folks at Rideshare Online Support, for responding to these questions.

Q1. When are accounts purged, after School Network bulk email import, when user doesn't validate into the network?

A1. The system will not remove the account if the Schoolpool user has trips. All accounts that have no trips and have not validated their email address are removed per the global setting “Non-validated user account to be removed after 7 days”.

Q2. Can family's street addresses be suppressed in the School Network Batch Match result?

A2. Yes. While running batch match, set 'Show text address of matched members in matchlist PDF' to 'No'.   

Q3. If the School Network is configured to be more restrictive than the user’s setting, the School Network prevails. If the user chooses to configure more restrictive security, then the user’s settings will prevail. Is that correct?

A3. If the school network is set to restrict matches, the school user can set 'Who can see this trip' either to 'Parents from his school' or 'No one'. If user sets the option to 'No one', the system will not list the user as a match. But the user can find matches from the school network and send a rideshare request.

If the school network is not set to restrict matches, the school user can edit the trip details and opt to match with any school, his school or no one. The system honors the user's preference while matching trips.

Q4. How are the settings in the ridematch mode checkboxes used? Can users specify they are seeking matches for (as examples) bus rides only, or maybe Bike  and Carpool only? How would users in the system express those preferences? It looks to us as though the Ridematch Modes setting applies to all records imported in the Bulk Email Import.

A4. When a user creates a trip, the user can select the appropriate trip modes. They can seek matches for their preferred combination of modes(bus rides only or car and bike rides only). In case of bulk import, the system uses the trip mode selected by the admin for all the imported users part of that import. If during the import, the administrator has data about preferred user modes, the admin could perform multiple imports with appropriate modes for the selected group of users.

Here's an example: If all users want carpool, but five users also want the bike mode, two separate imports be required (one for all users who only want carpool and a second for those users who want both carpool and bike).

Q5. The “Restrict matches within network” is a yes/no setting. The manual reads, “You can restrict matches to within the same school or allow parents to seek matches from other schools in the neighborhood.”

There are going to be some networks in Oregon set up at schools which are fairly close to one another.  At least one location will have two schools which “co-locate” at the same address.

We have two questions:

Q5a. If “Restrict matches within network” is set to “No”, do parents need to have validated themselves into both school networks in order to be matched within both networks? If I am a parent with only one child in just one school, can I be matched with a different school network (I’ve not validated into the other network using, for example, a passcode)?

A5a. If the parent’s school network is not restricted and the other school network is also not restricted, then the parent can match with users from the other school. The parent needs to only be part of one school network.

Q5b. If parents can be matched to other School networks – networks which the parent has not validated into – how does the system define the range of the “neighborhood” into which other school networks need to be located? How close does the location of one school have to be to another, for both schools to be considered in the same neighborhood?

A5b. If a match from the other school exists and the other school is also not a restricted network, the match is included. There are many factors that influence a match – the destination location (the location of the school itself) is one of the factors. Other factors include the origin (many cases the home address), the distance traveled, directional vector etc.

Q6. What fields of the School Network bulk email import CSV file are required to perform an import with no errors?

A6. First name, last name, phone, home address(complete with city, state and zipcode), first child name/grade are required fields in the CSV. Child name must be accompanied by grade information. If mailing address columns are empty, the mailing address is set to Home address.