Locations

Go to Admin › Locations › Locations to set up the places your district works in: schools, buildings, offices and warehouses. People, assets and tickets all point at a location, so set these up before you import people or assets.

How locations are organized#

schoolOS has four levels:

1. Your account. Everything below belongs to it.
2. Districts. Every location sits in one district.
3. Locations. A school, a building, a campus or an office. There's no separate "building" level. A building is a location, and Location Type says what kind it is.
4. Rooms. Each room belongs to one location.

A new location always goes into your account's first active district, in alphabetical order. If your role only reaches one district or school, it goes into your own district. You can't move a location to another district after it's made.

A location or a room?#

Both are places, but they do different jobs:

| Make it a | What it gets | Choose it when | | --- | --- | --- | | Location | Its own address, its own row on this page, and a place on people's profiles. A role limited to its own locations can be limited to it. | People work there, it has its own address, or some staff should see only it: a school, an annex across the street, the district office, the warehouse. | | Room | A name and number inside one location. Assets and tickets can point at it. | It's a place inside a building people already belong to: a classroom, the library, the server closet, a portable on the school's grounds. |

People belong to a location and can be in rooms; reach works by location, or by rooms for a role whose assets are at Own and their rooms. So if a building needs its own tech or its own ticket queue, make it a location.

For example, a district with 12 schools, a district office and a central warehouse adds 14 locations. Lincoln Elementary's six portables are rooms of Lincoln Elementary, "Portable 1" to "Portable 6", so tickets from them still reach Lincoln's tech.

The top of the page#

• New location opens the form to add one. You see it only if your role can add locations (Add locations).

Search#

The search box looks at each location's name, code, abbreviation, district name and account name, ignoring capitalization. It finds the text anywhere in those fields. Add a * to match from the start instead: North* finds "North High" but not "Glen North".

When nothing matches, select Clear search and filters to see every location again.

Filter by field#

Filter, next to the search box, has a Location fields group, under a Custom fields heading, with one filter per location field: what a text field contains, a dropdown's options, Yes or No, a date or number range, or whether it has a value. Each filter shows as a chip with an × to remove it, and Clear all removes them all. The button appears once your account has a field (for schoolOS staff, once they're looking at one account).

The table#

Locations are sorted by district, then by name. Select Name, Location ID or Abbreviation to sort the whole list by it instead; select it again to reverse. Location fields don't sort. The columns, left to right:

• Name. Select it to open the location's page. A Default badge marks the default location. The gray line below shows the location type, or the district name when there's no type.
• Location ID. The location's unique ID. Select the copy button next to it to copy it, for example to paste into a spreadsheet or an integration.
• Abbreviation. A dash when there isn't one.

Select anywhere else on a row to open Edit location (or, if your role can't edit locations, the location's page). The ... at the end of each row holds:

• Open: the location's own page.
• Edit: Edit location. You see it only if your role can edit locations (Update locations).
• Make default: makes the location the default. It appears only on active locations that aren't already the default.
• Copy location ID.
• Delete: deletes the location, after moving what's at it. You see it only if your role can delete locations (Delete locations). It's turned off on the default location. See Delete a location.

Use the columns button at the right, above the table, to show, hide and reorder Location ID and Abbreviation, and your account's location fields, listed under Location fields and hidden to start with. Name always shows. Your choice is saved for you in this browser.

Under the table, the pager shows which locations you're seeing and how many there are, lets you pick how many show at once (20, 50 or 100), and moves between pages.

If your account has no locations yet, you see Add your first location instead, with New location and Import from CSV. For more than a handful of locations, import them instead of adding them one at a time.

Add a location#

Select New location. At the top, Account and district shows where the location will go. Then fill in:

• Name (required). Must be unique in its district, ignoring capitalization.
• Abbreviation. A short name, like "MB" or "NHS".
• Location Type. Free text, like Building, Campus or Office. It's shown under the name in the table, so a consistent set of types makes the list easier to scan.
• Street Address 1, Street Address 2, City, State, ZIP Code, Country.
• Latitude and Longitude. Optional. They must be numbers, like 37.7749 and -122.4194.
• Additional details. Your account's location fields, when it has any. Required ones are marked with an asterisk and must be filled in. They're saved with the location, all at once.

Select Create. New locations are active.

schoolOS gives each location a code behind the scenes, made from the abbreviation, or from the name when there's no abbreviation: capital letters and digits, with anything else turned into hyphens. "Main Building" becomes MAIN-BUILDING. Two locations in the same district can't share a name or a code, so two locations with the same abbreviation clash too. If that happens, you see "A location with the same name or code already exists in this district". Give one of them a different abbreviation.

Edit a location#

Select a location's row, or Edit in its ... menu. Edit location has the same fields as New location, plus the location's rooms. Change what you need and select Save.

Renaming a location keeps its code. People, assets and tickets stay linked to it, because they point at the location, not at its name.

You can also select a location's name, or Open in its ... menu, to open its own page. It shows Details (Name, Abbreviation, Location type, District, when it was Created and Last modified, and its Location ID with a copy button), Address (the street address and coordinates) and Rooms. Edit location, at the top right, has one more field there, Code, if you want to set the code yourself. Leave it empty and schoolOS makes one from the abbreviation or name.

Rooms#

Rooms are the places inside a location that assets and tickets can point at, like "Library" or "204".

In Edit location, the Rooms list shows each room's Room name, Room number and Type. On a location's own page, the list also shows Capacity. A long list gets a search box.

To add a room, fill in Add room at the bottom of Edit location (or select Add room in Rooms on the location's page):

• Room name (required).
• Room number. Same as name is checked at first, so the number copies the name. That suits rooms that are only a number, like "204". Uncheck it to give a room like "Library" its own number, or none.

Select Add room. The room is saved right away, even if you then select Cancel on the location. If the location already has a room with that name or number, you see "A room with the same name or code already exists at this location".

To change a room, select its row (or Edit in its ... menu), edit it, and select Save room (Save on the location's page). In Edit location, Reset goes back to adding a new room.

To delete a room, select Delete in its ... menu and confirm with Delete room. Assets that were in the room keep its name as text, but they're no longer linked to the room: they read AHS › 104 (deleted) wherever a device's place is shown, so the old record still says where it was. A deleted location reads the same way on the tickets and devices that pointed at it.

To add many rooms at once, use the Locations & Rooms tab of Admin › Account › Import Data, which adds buildings and their rooms from one file. For one building's rooms, pick that building at the top of the tab (how).

Print room labels, in Rooms on the location's page, prints a sheet of QR codes on letter paper, one label per room with the building, the room's name and a short code to type when a camera won't scan. Stick one by each door. Scanning it on an audit filters the list to the room and makes the next scans count as made there, so devices found in the wrong room are flagged. In a room check, it's how teachers open their room.

Wherever a place is shown, it reads as the building and then the room, AHS › 104, or just the building when there's no room. Tickets show the building.

The default location#

Your account has one default location. People and assets that arrive without a location go there: people imported, rostered or added without a Location Name, and assets created without a location. One exception: when whoever adds them has a role limited to a district or to their own schools, and the default is outside it, new people aren't placed at the default, and new assets go to that person's home location instead. A new account starts with a default location named "District". Rename it to whatever suits you.

The default location has a Default badge in the table.

To choose a different one, select Make default in its row's ... menu. The old default loses its badge. Only active locations can be the default, and you need permission to edit locations (Update locations).

The default location can't be made inactive. Make another location the default first.

Which location should be the default?#

| Make the default | What happens | Choose it when | | --- | --- | --- | | A real place, like the district office or the warehouse | New devices and unplaced people show up there, as if they'd arrived. | New devices really are received and imaged there before they go out. | | A holding location, like the starting "District" or one you name "Unassigned" | Anything without a location is easy to spot: filter Assets by it, or sort People by Location. | You'd rather see what's missing a location and fix it than have it look placed. |

Either way, check the default location now and then and move what's there to its real school. A person at the default location whose role reaches only their own locations sees what's at the default location, not their school.

Delete a location#

Select Delete in the location's ... menu. Before anything is deleted, schoolOS checks what's at the location and shows you:

• People whose home location it is, or who work there as one of their other locations.
• Assets at it.
• Rooms in it.
• Open tickets and open tasks at it. Tickets that are solved or closed, and tasks that are Done or Denied, don't count.

If nothing is there, confirm with Delete location.

Otherwise, choose a location under Move them to and select Move and delete. Your default location is chosen for you; you can pick any other active location you can see. Pick the place that took over the building's work, not just the default: when Jefferson Middle's annex closes and its classes move into the main building, move them to Jefferson Middle, and its rooms, assets and open tickets land where the people now are. Everything moves and the location is deleted in one step: if anything goes wrong, nothing changes. Afterward, a message tells you what moved and where.

What moves to the new location:

• People. Their home location changes to the new one. Someone who worked there as one of their other locations now works at the new one instead; if they already worked there, the old one is simply dropped.
• Rooms. They move with the location, so assets stay in their rooms. If the new location already has a room with the same name, the moved room gets the old location's name added, like "Library (Old Annex)". A room number that's already taken gets the old location's code added.
• Assets.
• Tickets and tasks, open or closed. Their history then reads as if the work happened at the new location.
• Parts stocked there, and their stock.

A deleted location disappears from this page and from location pickers. You need permission to delete locations (Delete locations), and both locations must be within your reach.

Who sees which locations#

What someone sees on this page depends on how far their role reaches:

• Roles that cover your whole account see every location in it.
• Roles limited to a district see that district's locations.
• Roles limited to their own locations see only the locations they work at: their home location and any other locations on their profile.

What they can do there depends on their permissions:

| Permission | Lets them | | --- | --- | | View locations | Open this page and the location pages. | | Add locations | Add and import locations. | | Update locations | Edit locations, add, change and delete rooms, and choose the default location. | | Delete locations | Delete locations, after moving what's at them. |

Set these on Admin › People › Roles.