Virtual Enrollment Party

Another excellent question, by Rosemary in Buchanan Co. The MOST excellent part of the question is that she READS my stuff!!

"In your email of Aug. 30th, you talk about what we need to do if we want to empty out our projects file (start the new year with each kid having no projects listed). I don't want mine to be currupted, but don't understand if I need to do this just BEFORE I do year-end processing, or if I do it right AFTER."

This goes back to the "don't corrupt your Youth2d file" issue, when I told you all that if you're going to empty out your projects, you can't do it by using the "Delete Member Projects" option under Utilities, you instead have to highlight Youth2d, then choose "Empty File".

Oh, yeah... the answer to Rosemary's question is that it doesn't make a bit of difference when you empty the file--just as long as you've already done your stats, have sent in your backup & ES237, and got a confirmation back from me. If you're ready to do year-end, you can empty the file either immediately before or after you do that process.

I'm only in for a bit today, trying to organize the stacks and piles. I'll be back next Tuesday, with some wedding memories and pics to share!

Posted by Becky at 11:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As promised, here's Delaney Lea. Proud daddy is The Livestock Guy, Mike. Looks like this is some of his best work! We're all anxious to meet her in person!

Posted by Becky at 10:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I got the same question twice today (from Joanie D. and Deb Christiansen): What delivery mode should Clover Kids be?

There's more than one correct answer to that question, which should be good, but isn't always. You have to think about the group--when and how often do they meet, how consistent is the membership, what's the primary purpose of the group?

Here's what I wrote to Joanie when I got the FIRST question:
Under the federal guidelines, a Clover Kids group could be correctly recorded as one of the following delivery modes:

4-H After School Club
4-H Special Interest/Short Term Program
School Aged Child Care Education Program

During my Tour De State last year, we discussed those different delivery modes specifically as they related to Clover Kids groups, and what type of group would best fit in each one of the different categories.

For instance, a group that meets every Tuesday after school, basically the same group of kids, consistently throughout the school year, same club starts up again next year with same & different kids = After School Club

A group that meets every Tuesday & Thursday for 3 months in the winter with primarily the same group of kids, but maybe some in-and-out attendees as well = Special Interest (especially if there is a specific content focus, like Nutrition and Health).

A group that meets every MWF after school, providing a safe place for kids to be during the after-school hours, with an inconsistent membership, no real content focus = SACC

These are probably extreme examples, but they give you an idea of how these different delivery modes could "fit" the many different faces of Clover Kids programming.

Posted by Becky at 11:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

When you've finished your ES237, sent me the backup and paper copies, received confirmation of that, and have done year-end processing, you will need to download and install the newest updates to the project and literature files before you can start entering new enrollments.

There were several project changes this year, and many literature changes (including prices). If you don't download and install those updates, you won't be able to sign kids up for the appropriate projects, nor will you be ordering the right literature for the right price.

Anyway, the updated files have been posted as Winzip files on the Blue Ribbon updates page and are ready for you to use AFTER you do year-end processing. There are (what I think are) pretty good instructions there.

(In response to a question from Lisa N.) Additionally, I re-posted the Activity Codes file from last year, although there haven't been any changes to that for this year. If you try to add the LT1R code to a leader's record, and that code is not there, you need to download and install that file.

Since all of these are data updates (go into your Data folder), they only need to be done once per county, not once per computer.

Posted by Becky at 11:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

For those of you who've been following this little experiment from the beginning, I want to remind you of a sentence from my first post: "I hope I don't make too many mistakes in the beginning, and that I get better as I go along."

Thanks to Anjanette in Carroll Co., I've fixed one mistake, and gotten better (hopefully). Although I had the lovely button for signing up for news via email working right (you could subscribe to the list), I hadn't thought that maybe I should tell the computer to send the notification messages to that list. So, I was getting all my nice notifications, but unfortunately, nobody else was. Sometimes all you can say is, "duh".

Anyway, now if you've signed up, you'll actually GET those messages telling you when the blog is updated.

My next goal is to get all of you leaving comments on the blog!

Posted by Becky at 03:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I got another great question, from Brenda Welch this time: They're having a volunteer training event this week, and she wanted to know how/if to record that in Blue Ribbon so that it shows up in NEXT year's data, not this year's.

Since we're still in the first half of September, technically whatever goes on now would be on this year's 4-H enrollment year. That wouldn't really be an appropriate way to record the training, though, because it affects the upcoming 2007-08 year.

My suggestion to her (and to everyone else) is that you wait to enter the data into BR until after you've finished this year's stats, have done year-end processing, and are working on the new year. At that time, enter the data into the Training Log, but "fudge" a bit on the date--make it AFTER Sept. 15, 2007. Also, remember to edit each attendee's record with the Activity Code "LTR1", with the Activity Year=2008 (the year is named by the end of the 4-H program year).

Keep those great questions coming in! Remember the "Becky's Job Security" rule...

PS--here's a little reward for those of you who actually do read my blog--Mike A. just called and they're on the way to the hospital... baby's on the way!

Posted by Becky at 02:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

There are also a couple of built-in reports that may help uncover the source of the unbalance, and I forgot to list them in the last entry.

Both are located under the Reports menu, Special Reports. The first one is "Members with Invalid Club Links" and it doesn't have any parameters, just pops up a preview. If there aren't any, there's a zero on the preview. The second one is "Invalid Primary Club Code Report" and on the parameters, you will need to select Members-Clovers-Special, New-Return-Terminate. If you get an error message "no data with those parameters", you don't have any records with problems. If you do get a list on the report, those will be the records you need to change. Check each one's Clubs/Units tab with the 3-digit clubID at the top of the screen and you will find a discrepancy to be fixed.

I'll keep posting these tidbits as they arise in the counties!

Posted by Becky at 03:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I've had several questions about a common unbalance issue on the printed ES237 reports--The total on Chart 13.2 line 13 is a bit higher than the totals on page one. It takes a bit of sleuthing, but can usually be solved with some good detective work.

Normally what’s happened is you have some folks marked as members, clovers, or special who have one club membership, and that club is marked as “not a youth group unit”. Many times I find that these are “special” category, and they’re people who should be marked as “other”.

When I go through county files looking for that error, the first thing I do is note which club numbers are “not a youth group unit” from the club codes screen. Then I go to Member query and do a filter on category=S and look to see if any of them belong to one of those clubs. That finds the problem about 75% of the time.

If that doesn’t do it, then I do a filter in Member query on clubID= (each of the “not a youth group unit” numbers) and look for people who are members of those clubs and are marked as members, clovers, and specials. That catches most of the rest of them.

The other thing I do is to go to the ES237 report, and instead of doing the complete/combined, I do Test Member/Leader by Club, previewing each club report. At least that way I can narrow down which club(s) are causing the unbalance issue, and can look at their members to find the problem.

If you find that you have this unbalance issue, try these suggestions to find the culprit. If you absolutely cannot find the problem, send me a brand new backup and tell me what's happening, and then I can find it for you!!

Posted by Becky at 05:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I had an interesting question today from Linn County, as they were working on re-enrollment forms. Seems their re-enrollment forms were printing with the words "yes/no" under the "Yrs in Project" and "Club" columns instead of just blank lines like should have been there for additional projects.

At my age, memory is failing, but I kind of thought I might have remembered that there was a report formatting problem like that once and it possibly could have been solved by an update or something. Like I said, memory is failing. Anyway, Mary Dlouhy and I sleuthed out the fact that their program files had not been updated to fix that issue. I posted the update file on the web on the Blue Ribbon updates webpage in case there are others of you finding this error. The instructions are pretty complete, I think, and you do NOT have to be logged in as Administrator to do this update.

You only need to do this update (on every BR computer in the office) IF you are seeing the same problem with the re-enrollment forms. If not, you can just forget I wrote this... easier for me to forget than you, I'll bet!!

I'll probably be posting the BR lit, project, and activity file updates within the next few days. Remember that you cannot download and install those until after your ES237 is all done, signed, sealed, backed up & delivered (and you get a response from me saying it's a good backup!)

Posted by Becky at 03:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)