MarkBook - Trevlac Import File

MarkBook^®

Trevlac - MarkBook Export File

Trevlac provides a student administration management system for numerous school districts around the world. Trevlac sells a gradebook interface that exports a file specifically for MarkBook. It's installed with the Trevlac system but requires a purchased key to unlock it. MarkBook can also submit summary data, attendance, learning skills, and comment text back to Trevlac electronically as per section 11-2. For information on Trevlac, or on their utility for MarkBook, or to purchase the key, contact:

Trevlac Computer Services Ltd.
P.O. Box 1120, 45 Ontario St. S.,
Grand Bend, Ontario, Canada N0M 1T0

Phone: 1-519-238-6780, 800-363-3633 (for Canada and US)
800-265-1653 (Canada only), Fax: 1-519-238-6770
Email: sales@trevlac.com

There is an export to MarkBook as part of Trevlac's Gradebook package. This package is a separate purchase from Trevlac. Once the key is installed, access the Gradebook Interface as per the following image. From Trevlac's main screen, click on Utilities, select General, and click on Gradebook Interfaces.

Trevlac's Main Screen with Gradebook Interface

Trevlac's Main Screen with Gradebook Interface

Click the radio button beside the word Export as in the next image. To the right of Export is a drop-down selection - choose MarkBook. To the right, pick a destination path for the file once created. Make sure that the Current Calendar year is selected properly - Trevlac doesn't always default to the current year. 04 is shown in this image. Then, click the green check mark button and the file creation will commence. It may take several minutes to complete. Once complete, click the exit door symbol at the bottom center of this screen and locate the file in the destination specified - U\MARKBOOK\ in this example. The file will be named Trevlac7.txt.

Trevlac's MarkBook Export

The export file created is a comma-delimited ascii (plain text, .txt) file. The following Notepad image shows a sample of a Trevlac7.txt file. There are 13 fields per student in this file. Each row (a record) contains 13 items (fields): Last Name, Given Name, Gender, Date Of Birth, Home Form 1, Home Form 2, Student Number, 2 Telephone Numbers, Student Email Address, Parent Email Address, a Miscellaneous field, and all Courses with Sections in a single field. Most fields are encased in quotation marks and all are separated by commas. All students in the school appear in this file and they're sequenced in alpha order by surname. Three student records show in this example. The first sample student, Aaron, is taking six courses. Next is Adam Joel who is taking four courses. Note that the Trevlac file has a header row with titles for each field. Many of these students don't have Email addresses, second telephone numbers, or Miscellaneous data - hence the blank or null fields.

Trevlac's Export file for MarkBook

MarkBook will "filter" students from this whole-school file based on the last field, Courses. Use the techniques described in section 4-4 and section 4-5. Match the fields as per the following image. Near the center left is a yellow up/down counter indicating that this Trevlac7.txt file has 476 records of which we see only the first one, the header row. The fields in each record are displayed vertically. The critical match is on field 13. Use Import If #1 as shown in this example. Then, type the desired Course Code and Section into the Import If #1 contains cell. Make sure that the DOB format matches as in the lower left. Then click on the Import Students button at the lower right.

In the above example, the teacher is selecting all students taking course/section MAT20SA-03. NOTE: the text must be an exact match. Notice the difference between the letter O and the number 0. For instance, If this teacher attempts to import with "MAT2OSA-03", no students will be found! If the course code contains a dash or a space, that character must be included. Click the Import Students button at the lower right and MarkBook will hunt the entire Trevlac file to import all students taking the specified course code and section.

If planning to submit summary data to Trevlac electronically, it's important that the student numbers in the MarkBook records are an exact match. Even if the class was originally typed by hand into MarkBook, it's possible to add the correct student numbers from a Trevlac7.txt file using MarkBook's Update-From-File function described in section 4-8. A fresh Trevlac7.txt file should be generated periodically to enable all teachers to keep their MarkBook records synchronized with Trevlac's data base.

Electronic submission back to Trevlac is described in section 11-2.

Manual: Go to section 4-8 to see how to update classes from a file.