In this guide, we will show you how to manage Comment Banks within the Assessment Module, including;
Comment Banks are used within Primary and Secondary Assessment as a way of monitoring and declaring a student’s progress, behaviour or level within a subject/class. This guide is most suited to Assessment Leads and Data Managers.
Access: The minimum permissions required to manage Comment Banks are found in the Assessment Module of Config>Setup>Roles & Permissions.
Comment Banks can be found by going to Config>Assessment>Comment Banks.
If you have not used or created Comments previously, your page will appear blank.
In our example, there are already various Comments that have been previously created.
Comment Folders
On the left of the screen, you have the Comment Folders area which is used to store and organise the Comments.
The Comment Folders can be amended by right clicking one and pressing Add or Edit. This will allow you to add a Sub Folder within that Folder, or rename the Folder you clicked on.
If you wish to delete a Comment Folder it needs to be empty of comments
The maximum amount is three Sub Folders, which means you could organise the Comments by year group>subject>class for example.
Editing Comments
The Comments can be amended by ticking them and pressing Edit on the top of the screen.
This will allow you to edit the Comment Text, Comment Title and assigned groups in the Collections section if desired.
To update the Collections click, first use the radio buttons to choose All or Specific, selecting All will make the Comment available to all Groups and selecting Specific will allow you to make the Comment available to individual Groups. Then click Add, this will open the group selector.
Use the Group Type dropdown to select which Group Type you would like to assign the Comment to, then click Find in the top right to update the list. Then, select the Groups you would like to make the Comment available to by clicking on them once to highlight them and click Done.
The selected Groups will then appear in the Collections section.
Press Save once you have made your desired changes.
Moving Comments
To move a Comment from one Folder to another, tick the Comment that you wish to relocate and press Move To.
You will then be able to choose the destination Folder/sub Folder for the Comment as shown below;
Adding Comments
Lastly, if you wish to create a new Comment altogether, press New.
You will then be able to create a new Comment to suit your preferences/needs.
Press Create once you have added all of the details to the Comment to save it.
Note: When creating or managing a Comment, the Active tick box should be left ticked unless you do not want that Comment to be available for teachers to use in a Marksheet.
Unticking Active will still keep the Comment in the Comment Banks area for later use if required, but means it can’t be used by staff in their Assessments until it is made available.
The Modified Date also allow you to keep track of when changes were last made.
Personal Comment Banks
You also have the option to enable Personal Comment Banks. These are Comment Banks that are only available to individual Users. To access your Personal Comment Bank, and the Configurations, select Personal Comment Banks in the top right hand corner of the Comment Banks page.
At the top of the page you will see the below configurations:
- Enable Personal Comment Banks – Ticking this allows users to create their own Comment Banks.
- Disable Manual Comment Entry – This means that users will not be able to free-type comments directly on to the Assessment Sheets, comments will need to be selected from Comment Banks.
- Personal Comment Banks Require Authorisation – Ticking this means that when a user adds a Comment to their Comment Bank, it will need to be Authorised before it can be used.
Below the Configurations you’ll see a table containing all the Comments users have added to their Personal Comment Banks. If you have selected Personal Comment Banks Require Authorisation then you can use the tick boxes on the left hand side to Authorise the Comments and make them available to use for the user, or untick them to remove them.
If you make any changes make sure you click Save in the top left.
Users can add Comments to their Personal Comment Banks by clicking into a Comment field on an Assessment Sheet.
This will open the Comment Entry box, click the Arrowsin the top left.
Highlight Personal in the left hand menu and click Add.
Enter a Title and the desired Comment, using the Dynamic Fields to personalise the Comment if required. Once you’re happy click Save.
If Personal Comment Banks Require Authorisation is not ticked, the Comment will become available to use right away. If it is ticked, you will need to wait until it has been Authorised following the above steps before you will be able to select it.