Setting up your first year

This guide walks through the standard workflow for setting up an academic year and producing a board-approved calendar.

The big picture

Each school year, you'll go through six stages:

Create the academic year — its name, months, required student time, and who manages it.
Set up grading periods — quarters, semesters, six-week terms, or whatever structure your district uses.
Set up day types — holidays, half days, in-service days, and other deviations from a normal school day, and the names of your holidays.
Draft the first calendar — the year manager builds it, and the people invited next can clone it.
Invite people — editors who will build calendars, voters who will choose between them, and any observers who need read access.
Vote and certify — collect votes on the approved proposals, pick the finalists, and record the board's choice.

Who does what: an organization admin creates the year and names its manager (stage 1). The year manager does stages 2 through 6.

Inside a year, the year menu on the left lists the steps in this order: Settings, Grading periods, Day types, Calendars, People, and Review & vote. A check beside a step means it has something in it. The Overview page at the top of the menu shows a Next step card that names the one thing to do next. You don't have to follow the order strictly, but each step builds on the one before it.

Step 1 — Create the academic year

Only organization admins create years. Open Organization, then Academic Years (or the overview), and click Create academic year. You'll be asked for:

A name (e.g. "Main School Year" or "High School Track"). It displays with the years, for example "Main School Year (2027-2028)".
The start year — the calendar year the school year starts in.
The year manager — someone who already has an account, or someone to invite by email. Until an invited manager accepts, you hold the year yourself, so it is never without an owner.
The start and end months of the year. If the end month is not later than the start month, the year runs into the next calendar year.
Required student days, required instructional time, and the length of a normal full school day. Enter 0 for a requirement your state does not use.
Whether durations show in hours or minutes.

Open the year by clicking its name in any list of years. These settings can be changed later, under Settings in the year menu, until a certification locks the year.

Step 2 — Set up grading periods

In the year menu, open Grading periods. The first time through, the setup wizard opens by itself and creates your structure in one step. The usual choices are already filled in, so you can press Create periods straight away, or Customize first:

Pick how your district divides the year: a full year, two semesters, three trimesters, four quarters, six six-week periods, or a custom number from 1 to 12.
If you chose an even number of 4 or more periods, you can also track Semesters: two extra periods that cover the first half and the second half. If you could track them and don't, the wizard asks you to confirm before it goes on.
Name and color each period, review the list, and create them. Everything is created together.

You can edit any of this afterward, and add periods one at a time with New period.

Tip: linked periods (like semesters built from quarters) derive their dates from the periods they contain. You don't set semester boundaries yourself; they follow the quarters.

Step 3 — Set up day types

In the year menu, open Day types. Day types are the deviations from a normal school day: holidays, half days, in-service days, remote-learning days, breaks. A normal school day needs no day type.

The first time you open Day types, the setup wizard opens by itself. The typical set and the holidays are already chosen, so you can press Create day types straight away, or Customize first:

Choose day types. Pick which of the typical ones your district uses (Holiday, Teacher Work Day, Half Day, Early Dismissal, Testing Day, Parent Conferences, Professional Dev., E-Learning Day), and rename or recolor them.
Label holidays. Tick the holidays your district observes and put the label on each. These are labels only: the calendar editor prints each one on its date as a guide while you build, and no day becomes a holiday because of it. Select all and Deselect all tick the whole list, Easter is in it, and Add your own label covers any other day.
Review and create.

Afterward, edit a day type, or add your own with New day type. Once the year has day types, the wizard button reads Rerun wizard; it only adds the ones that are missing and never removes anything.

Each day type carries a name, a color, whether students are on-site, remote, or off, whether staff are on-site, remote, or off, and how much student time the day counts for.

In the calendar editor, weekdays between the teacher contract dates are shaded by attendance: green when students are on-site (and on normal days), yellow when staff are working but students are off or remote, and red when everyone is off.

Holiday labels are saved on the year, not on each calendar, so changing one later updates every calendar. A name typed on a single day always wins. When you are done, Done: draft the first calendar takes you on.

Step 4 — Draft the first calendar

In the year menu, open Calendars, then New calendar. Give it a name you and the year manager will recognize, like "Proposed 2027-2028 — Option A", and create the draft. As year manager, build the first one yourself; the people you invite next can clone it as their starting point (open a calendar and choose Clone as new draft).

The editor shows the year as a grid of months, two across. Every change saves as you make it. Start with the teacher contract dates: click the first contract day, then the last. Once both are set, suggested grading-period starts appear as a colored bar on the left edge of a day. Then:

Click a day to set its day type, mark a grading-period start, mark the contract start or end, and add a note. Notes such as "Thanksgiving" appear in the Excel export and in the analysis prepared for the board.
Click two days to select a range. You are asked whether to include weekends. Then apply a day type or a note to the whole range, or clear it.
Validation checks the calendar against the year's rules, and Stats shows student days and minutes against the requirement.

You set where each grading period starts. The system works out where it ends: the last attendance day before the next period begins.

When the calendar is complete, press Submit for approval. Its status becomes In review and it is locked. The year manager then chooses Approve, or Reject with notes to send it back as a draft. Only Approved calendars go to a vote.

Step 5 — Invite people

In the year menu, open People, then Invite to this year. Enter email addresses and choose a role for this specific year:

Editor — can create and edit calendars in this year
Voter — can vote in the voting session and view approved calendars
Viewer — can view only the official calendar

The Year Manager is not invited here; an organization admin names the manager when creating the year and can change it with Change manager. Someone who already has an account is added from the roster instead, by choosing a role for them.

Roles are per-year. Someone who's a Voter for the 2027-2028 year doesn't automatically get any role for the 2028-2029 year. Invitations expire after 30 days and can be resent from the roster.

Step 6 — Vote and certify

When at least one calendar is Approved, open Review & vote in the year menu and click New voting session. Use Ballot preview first to see what voters will see.

A voting session has:

A name ("2027-2028 Calendar Adoption") and an optional description.
How many calendars each voter must choose. Use 1 for a favorite, or more when the ballot is long or the calendars are similar.
A start and end time, in your organization's time zone.

You don't pick the ballot: every Approved calendar is on it, and identical calendars are collapsed to one. To change what is on the ballot, change calendar statuses before you create the session. Only one session can be open at a time.

Voting opens and closes by itself at the times you set. Voters are emailed when it opens, and reminded partway through. They see calendars only as ballot numbers, never the name or the author, and they can change their picks until voting closes.

After voting closes, open Certify & pick finalists: tick the calendars that become Finalists and the rest become Discarded. Certifying locks the year. Afterward the session page holds the board packet, with Amend finalists to record a tie-break and Mark as official to record the board's choice. Void certification undoes a certification and unlocks the year.

What to do next

Open Calendars to see your drafts and keep editing.
Use Compare calendars (from the year's calendars page) to see 2 to 4 proposals side by side with the differences highlighted.
Export any calendar to Excel or PDF, or print it, from its detail page. They are useful for board packets and for stakeholders who don't have accounts.
The Audit log, in the year menu, records role changes, manager changes, and locks and unlocks of the year.

If you get stuck, contact your organization administrator or reach out to support at support@ms-itsllc.com.