This document will tell you how to use the RTA Data Management Spreadsheet, and should be stored along with it at Z:\RTA Marketing. There are three main tasks detailed herein – hold down the Ctrl button while clicking the task name below to be taken to instructions for completing it.

Create the Monthly RTA Grade Card Report

Gather emails and send them on the appropriate date.

Send postal mail on the appropriate date.

Create the Monthly RTA Grade Card ReportWhat is the Monthly RTA Grade Card Report?

The Monthly RTA Grade Card Report is the heart of the Sylvan RTA Marketing strategy. As the name suggests, a new report is created for each month. It will tell you who to contact, when, and allow you to decide how. It serves as the guide for emailing and postal mailing potential RTAs within that month. The report serves five main purposes:

1. It labels each student record with that month’s grade card date (if any). 2. It labels each student record with the responsible party’s email address. 3. It rates each student as “low-” “medium-” or “high potential” in terms of how likely they are to become RTAs. 4. It sorts students into groups based on grade card date and RTA potential. 5. It organizes data for postal mail label-making.

How do I create a Monthly RTA Grade Card Report?

You’ll use the RTA Data Management Spreadsheet template to create the Monthly RTA Grade Card Report. There are five main tasks that you will need to perform:

1. Run a Symplicity report for inactive students from the previous two years. 2. Run a Symplicity Email Extractor report for inactive students from the previous two years.

3. Input grade card data for each school into the RTA Data Management Spreadsheet template.. 4. Copy the email report data into the RTA Data Management Spreadsheet template. 5. Copy the inactive students report data into the RTA Data Management Spreadsheet template.

Read on for step-by-step directions for creating the Monthly RTA Grade Card Report.

Instructions for creating a Monthly RTA Grade Card Report

You will first run a report of inactive students using Symplicity. Obviously the steps for doing this will be familiar to you, but there are a few conditions that must be met to make sure the report is compatible with the Data Management Spreadsheet template. NOTE: The images provided here are what you can expect to see if using Microsoft Windows XP. Slight cosmetic differences may be present if using a more recent version of Windows, but the steps will be the same.

A1. Open Symplicity, click “Reports” and then click “Student report wizard” from the drop down menu.

A2. You’ll now see the “Student Reports & Query Wizard box, with six tabs listed near the top: Students, Dates, Filters, Verify, Order, and Layout. The first tab, “Students” is visible. Select “Disenrolled Students (Inactive).” Then click “Next.”

A3. You are now moved to the “Dates” tab. Beneath the bold text, click the “2b. Date Range” tab. In the

“From:” field, change the date to the first day of the upcoming month, and then subtract two from the year.

In the image below, the report is being created on October 18th

2010. The user has changed the “From:” date to November 1st

(the first day of the upcoming month) and changed the year to 2008 (2010 minus 2).

A4. Click the “Order” tab. There may be a delay of several seconds while the computer finds the records that fit the date range criteria. Once opened, under the question “5. How do you want to order the students?” click “Grade, Last Name.” Under “6. How do you want to output the students?” click “Export to File.” Then click “Next.”

A5. You are now on the “Layout” tab. Click “Excel 5.0 (.XLS). Then click “Finished”

A6. It will take several seconds for Symplicity to convert the data to the Excel format. When the “Save as” window appears, click the “Desktop” icon on the left side. Do not change the file name. Click “save.”

This will save the file, called “exported students” to your desktop. Leave it there for now; we’ll use it in a bit. You can now close Symplicity if you want.

Now you will create another report, this time using the Symplicity Email Extractor. You will run a report with content similar to the inactive student report you just finished. This report lacks several pieces of information found in the inactive student report, but it does include an important piece of data missing from

the previous report: an email address for each record. Note that if an email address is not on record, that account’s information will not be included in the email extractor’s report.

A7. On the desktop, double click the “Symplicity Email Extractor” icon to start it.

A8. There are three tabs along the top: Filters, Results, and Output. You are currently on the “Filters” tab. In the “Grades” section, uncheck the “Coll” and blank boxes.

A9. In the “Status” section, uncheck all boxes EXCEPT “Inactive.”

A10. In the range area, uncheck “All” in the “Disenroll Date” row. This will change the two associated text fields to a white color and allow you to input numbers. In the left field, change the date to the first day of the upcoming month, and then subtract two from the year. This should be the same date you entered in step 3 above. In the right field, enter today’s date.

A11. Click the “Apply Filters and View Results” button.

A12. You will be taken to the “Results” tab. You can preview the report here, but no changes are needed on this tab. Click the “Output” tab.

A13. In the “Select your output options” section, find the “Destination/Output folder” text field. To the right

of that field, click the button. Choose “Desktop” at the top of the list.

A14. In the “Select your output types” section, uncheck all options EXCEPT FOR “Excel file.”

A15. Click the “Create Outputs” button.

A16. Wait several seconds until you receive confirmation that the email extractor has created the file. Check to make sure the file is on your desktop. The filename will begin with “symplicity_emails_” and end with today’s date. Close the Email Extractor program.

Now that you have run the two reports and have saved them as Excel files on your desktop, you are ready to open the RTA Data Management Spreadsheet template and to begin to enter your data.

A17. You will first navigate to the RTA Marketing folder. On the desktop, double-click “My Computer” and then double-click “Z\:” Double-click the “RTA Marketing” folder.

A18. You’ll now see five icons. Two of these icons will be Monthly RTA Grade Card Reports – one for the current month and one for the previous month. The file name of both are in the format of ‘year_month_RTA’ (for example, 2010_09_RTA is the report for September 2010). You won’t need the report for the previous month now, so move the old file to the “Old RTA Data Management Spreadsheet Reports” folder.

A19. Double-click to open the file called “RTA Data Management Spreadsheet template.” If you look at the bottom-left corner of the window, you will see the four tabs that represent the three pages (called worksheets) that make up the spreadsheet: “dates,” “emails,” “exported students,” and “mailing labels.” You are currently on the “dates” worksheet.

A20. On the “dates” worksheet, most of the schools are grouped by district. You will input the grade card date (if any) that falls within the month for each school. In the “Date 1” column, double-click the cell into which you wish to enter a date, and start typing. Dates should be input in the form of month.date.year. For instance, November 12th, 2010 would be entered as 11.12.2010. If no grade card date falls in the given month, leave the cell blank.

Some schools don’t publish grade card dates, or, like homeschooled students, have grade cards at all. You may need to decide on an arbitrary date to enter for these schools.

Hey! The “Dates” worksheet is missing a school!

You can add schools to the RTA Data Management Spreadsheet template’s ‘dates’ worksheet, so they will be available in all Monthly RTA Grade Card Reports from now on. If you need to do this, read on. If you just need to continue to fill out the report, skip down to step #21.

The RTA Data Management Spreadsheet template is a read-only file, meaning that it cannot be edited and then saved under the same file name; This is to protect the template from being accidentally changed. To add a school to the template you will need to turn off the read-only protection, make your changes, and then turn the protection back on. It’s not difficult, but take care that the only change you make is to add your school(s). The steps for doing so follow.

A. First, close Excel. Changing the read-only protection won’t work if the file is open.

B. RIGHT-click on the “RTA Data Management Spreadsheet template” icon. From the contextual menu that appears, choose “Properties.”

C. The properties menu appears. At the bottom, you’ll see two checkboxes in the “Attributes” section. Uncheck the one that says “Read-only.”

D. Click “Apply” and then “OK.” E. Open the “RTA Data Management Spreadsheet

template” file.F. Add schools as needed. If you need to add a

school name to a group listed by district, RIGHT

click on the cell where you would like for it to appear, choose “Insert,” then select “entire row” and then click “OK.”

G. When the school name(s) have been added, click the button to save the document.

H. Close Excel.I. RIGHT-click on the “RTA Data Management

Spreadsheet template” icon. From the contextual menu that appears, choose “Properties.”

J. Put a checkmark next to the one that says “Read-only.”

K. Click “Apply” and then “OK.”

A21. If more than one grade card date occurs within the same month for the same school, enter that date in the “Date 2” column.

A22. Enter date information for all schools that release grade cards in the given month. Click the “emails” tab.

A23. What you can see of the “emails” worksheet is blank. Minimize Excel so that you can see your desktop. Double-click the file that begins with “symplicity_emails_” that you created with the Symplicity Email Extractor.

A24. The file opens in Excel. Scroll to the right until you can see column “X.” The text makes it difficult to tell, but this is the rightmost column in the spreadsheet. Scroll down until you can see the bottom row. Click and hold on the lowest cell in column “X” that has text in it (most likely this will frame part of the word “Appointment” – see image below). Continuing to hold down the mouse button, drag the cursor to the upper left corner of the sheet. You will see the selection box follow. Drag the cursor all the way to cell “A1.” This will have selected all text in the report.

A25. Once your cursor is over cell “1A,” you can let go of the mouse button. While still over that cell, click the RIGHT mouse button to bring up the contextual menu. Choose “Copy.”

A26. Minimize the Excel window from which you just copied. Maximize the Excel window that contains the “RTA Data Management Spreadsheet template.” After ensuring that you are still on the blank “emails” worksheet, click cell “A1.” Now click the RIGHT mouse button to bring up the contextual menu again. Click “Paste.”

A27. The data from the email report will appear. Check to make sure that the formatting is correct by scrolling to the right. Column “Y” should be colored blue and contain the email addresses associated with each student’s account.

A28. Once you have confirmed that column “Y” contains the email addresses, click on the “Exported Students” tab. The worksheet that opens will also be blank. Minimize Excel so that you can see your desktop. Double-click the “exported students” file to open the report of inactive students that you ran earlier.

A29. The file will open. Scroll to the right until you see the last column, column “AJ.” Now scroll down until you can see the bottom row. As with the last report, click and hold on the lowest cell in column “AJ”, and then drag the cursor toward the upper left corner of the sheet until it is over cell “A1”.

A30. Let go of the mouse button. This has selected all of the text in the spreadsheet. As before, with the mouse over the selected text, click the RIGHT mouse button to bring up the contextual menu. Again, click “Copy.” Minimize the report and then maximize the RTA Data Management Spreadsheet template.

A31. You should once again be looking at the empty “exported students” tab. Place the cursor over cell “A1” and click the RIGHT mouse button. When the contextual menu appears, choose “Paste.” This will insert the data from the “exported students” file into the worksheet. To check to make sure the data was input correctly, scroll to the right and find the four colored columns, “AK” through “AP.” All but perhaps the “Date 2” column should have some data present.

Hey! What does “School not listed in ‘dates’ tab” mean?

If you see the above message in the “Date 1” and “Date 2” columns, it means that the school listed for that student is not among those in the ‘dates’ tab, and therefore doesn’t have a date listed. You can see what school the student attends in column “O.” If you think that school should be added to the RTA Data Management Spreadsheet template so that it will be among the listed schools for now on, see the instructions in the blue box under step A20 of this document. Otherwise you should edit the cell in the “Date 1” or “Date 2” column directly to show a date, or to be a blank cell.

A32. You’ll now remove all of the students who are listed as college students. Scroll left until you see column “P,” which has the header “grade.” RIGHT click on that header to bring up the contextual menu. Hover over “Sort” and then choose “Z to A.”

A33. This will gather all rows with “Coll” in the “school” column at the top. To delete these rows, click and hold on the second row’s number and drag down until all rows with “Coll” are highlighted. Hold your mouse over any of the highlighted rows, click the RIGHT mouse button, and choose “Delete.” The highlighted rows will disappear and all others will be moved up.

A34. You’ll now sort the data in the colored columns. If you are not already there, click the “Home” menu button in the upper left corner of the Excel window.

A35. Then, in the upper right corner, click the “Sort & Filter” icon. Choose “Filter” in the dropdown menu that appears.

A36. Your view reset to the first column of the worksheet. Scroll back to the colored columns on the right. You’ll notice that each column has a gray box with a downward-pointing arrow in it. Go to the “Date 1” column and click on that gray box. At the bottom of the menu that appears is a series of checkboxes listing each of the dates that appear in the column and an entry that reads “(Blanks).” Uncheck the “(Blanks)” box and click “OK.”

A37. All rows with a blank cell in the “Date 1” column will be hidden from view – all that remains visible are

the students with a grade card date. Now, once again, click the “Sort & Filter” icon in the upper right corner of the Excel window. This time choose “Custom sort.”

A38. The “Sort” window will appear. In the “Column” drop down selection, choose “Date 1.” In the “Sort on” field, select “Values,” and in the “Order” field, choose “A to Z.”

A39. Next, click the “Add Level” button in the upper left corner. This will create another row of three dropdown fields. In the first new field, choose “RTA Potential” from the very bottom of the list. In the second field choose “Cell Color.” This will cause the third field to split into two dropdown fields. From the field that currently reads “No Cell Color,” choose

the most vivid yellow. Leave the field that says “On Top” alone.

A40. Click “Add Level” one more time. From the first field, choose “RTA Potential” again. From the second, choose “Cell Color.” Leave the field that says “No Cell Color” alone, and change the field that says “On top” to “On Bottom.” Click “OK.”

All rows are now sorted into groups with the same date, and then each date-group is arranged with the students with the highest potential to become RTAs on the top, and the lowest on the bottom.

A41. All that’s left is to save the document as the newest

Monthly RTA Grade Card Report. Click the button or “File” in the upper left corner, and choose “Save as.” The automatically created filename is “Copy of RTA Data Management Spreadsheet template.” Change it to a filename with format “Year_Month_RTA.” For instance, if the report was for the month of November 2010, you would name it “11_2010_RTA.” What you just renamed and saved is the newest Monthly RTA Grade Card Report, and it is now available and ready to use for emailing and postal mailing.

Use the Monthly RTA Grade Card Report to schedule and send emailsHow do I use the Monthly RTA Grade Card Report to send emails to potential RTAs?

The Monthly RTA Grade Card Report lists students with grade card dates within that month, along with any email associated with their account. To enhance the possibility that the student will become an RTA, we want to send an email marketing message on the same day his or her report card is released. You will open the Monthly RTA Grade Card Report to the “exported students” worksheet, copy email addresses that have the same grade card date, paste them into Microsoft Outlook, and then schedule them to be sent on the grade card date.

Instructions for using the Monthly RTA Grade Card Report to schedule and send emails

B1. On the desktop, double-click “My Computer” and then double-click “Z\:” Double-click the “RTA Marketing” folder.

B2. Open the upcoming month’s Monthly RTA Grade Card Report. It will have a filename in format of ‘year_month_RTA’ (for example, 2010_11_RTA is the report for November 2010).

B3. If you are not there already, click the “exported students” tab at the bottom of the Excel window.

B4. Scroll right to the colored columns, “AK” through “AP.” You’ll notice that rows are organized so that the dates in column “AK” (with header “Date 1”) are grouped together and in ascending order.

Hey! What does “Inquiry number not listed in ‘email’ worksheet” mean?

The Monthly RTA Grade Card Report looks at its ‘emails’ worksheet and matches the inquiry number and email address in each row. It then looks in the “exported students” worksheet and puts the email address in the same row with the inquiry number it saw before. If there is an inquiry number in “exported students” that isn’t also listed in the “emails” worksheet, you will see the message ““Inquiry number not listed in ‘email’ worksheet.” Most likely, this is because there is no email address listed for the account in Symplicity, and it is therefore not included in the “emails” worksheet.

B5. Click and hold the mouse button over the first email address in column AM (with header “email address”). Drag the cursor downward until all email addresses with matching dates are selected. Remember this date for use in step 12.

In this image, rows 2 through 9 in column “AK,” all share the same grade card date: 11.02.2010. Correspondingly, you would

select the email addresses in rows 2 through 9 in column AM.

B6. RIGHT click anywhere over the selected cells to bring up the contextual menu. Click “Copy.”

B7. Minimize Excel. Open Outlook and click the “New…” button to open a blank email. RIGHT click on the field next to the “To…” button. Click “Paste” in the menu that appears.

B8. You cannot see them right away, but the email addresses have been entered into the address field. Click anywhere outside the address field and they should appear, separated by semicolons. Don’t worry if a few addresses are duplicates – Outlook will send the message only once, regardless of how many times the email address is repeated in the address field.

B9. Type or paste the contents of the email you want to send to the addressees. If you don’t know what should be sent, check with Leslie.

B10. Once you have created a satisfactory email, it is time to schedule the day on which it will be sent. In the upper left corner of the Excel window, click “Options.”

B11. On the right side of the ribbon, click the “Delay Delivery” icon.

B12. The “Message Options” window appears. The “Do not deliver before:” checkbox is already checked. Change the date to match what was listed next to this group of addresses in the Monthly RTA Grade

Card Report. Change the time to 12:00 AM. Click “Close.”

That batch of emails will sit in your Outbox until the next time Outlook is opened after the given date and time.

B13. Go back to step 5 and repeat for the next batch of emails that share the same grade card date. Continue until all emails for the month are scheduled.

Use the Monthly RTA Grade Card Report to schedule postal mailings and print labelsaddress labels.How do I use the Monthly RTA Grade Card Report to schedule postal mailings and print address labels?

The Monthly RTA Grade Card Report collects the necessary data to create mailing labels and schedule when they will be sent. You will open the report, go to the “mailing labels” worksheet, clean up the data and then use Microsoft Word to print the labels.

Instructions for using the Monthly RTA Grade Card Report to schedule postal mailings and print address labels.

C1. On the desktop, double-click “My Computer” and then double-click “Z\:” Double-click the “RTA Marketing” folder.

C2. Open the upcoming month’s Monthly RTA Grade Card Report. It will have a filename in format of ‘year_month_RTA’ (for example, 2010_11_RTA is the report for November 2010).

C3. Click the “mailing label” tab at the bottom left of the Excel window.

Each row contains the postal address information for all “High” and “Medium” RTA potential students. The rows are also organized into groups of like grade card dates, but there are blank spaces interspersed throughout.

C4. If you are not there already, click “Home” in the upper left corner of the Excel window.

C5. Then click the “Sort & Filter” icon and select “Filter” from the drop-down menu that appears.

C6. You’ll notice that each column now has a gray box with a downward-pointing arrow in it. Go to the “Date 1” column and click on that gray box. At the

bottom of the menu that appears is a series of checkboxes listing each of the dates that appear in the column and an entry that reads “(Blanks).” Click “(Select All)” to UNCHECK all selections. Then click the box next to “(Blanks)” (This may cause the “(Select all)” box to become filled in with black – that’s fine). Click OK.

C7. Now the ‘mailing labels’ worksheet has hidden all rows that have a grade card date. What you probably see now is mostly blank rows and a few student records that have no grade card date. To delete these “junk” entries, click and hold on the first row number beneath row 1 (row 1 contains the column header names). You will see the whole row become selected. With the button still held down, drag the cursor downward until you reach or are past row 1000. Release the button.

C8. Hold the cursor over any of the selected rows and click the RIGHT button. When the contextual menu appears, choose “Delete Row.”

C9. All of the rows are deleted and replaced with empty rows. Click on “Sort & Filter” again, and then “Clear.”

C10. The rows with dates will appear. Now that there are no blank rows or rows without dates, you can make mailing labels. Save your changes to the Monthly RTA Grade Card Report and then close Excel.

C11. Open Microsoft Word. If you are reading this document in Word, open a new blank document.

C12. Click the “Mailings” menu option near the top center of the Word window.

C13. In the upper left part of the Word window, click the “Start Mail Merge” icon. From the drop-down menu, click “Labels.”

C14. The Label Options window appears. In the “Label vendors” drop-down field, choose “Avery US Letter.” In the “Product number” field, scroll down and choose “5160.” Click “OK.”

C15. You’ll be taken back to the blank document. Now click “Select Recipients” and then “Use existing list...”

C16. The “data source” window will appear. Click “My Computer,” then double-click “Z:” and then open the “RTA Marketing” folder. Click the Monthly RTA Grade Card Report. File. Now click “Open.” When the “Confirm Data Source” window appears, click “OK.”

C17. The “Select Table” window appears. Click ‘mailing labels$’ and then “OK.”

C18. You are taken back to the document. Now you will see “<<Next Record>>” tiled over the sheet. Click the “Insert Merge Fields” Icon and choose “RP_First”

C19. You’ll see <<RP_First>> appear in the upper left of the sheet. Repeat the “Insert Merge Field” until you have created the address label format in the image below. Be sure to insert a space between each field.

C20. Next, click the “Update Labels” button.

C21. You’ll see all of the addresses from the Monthly RTA Grade Card Report appear. You can save that Word document for use later, or print the labels out now. Note that the labels are not marked with the grade card date – you’ll still need to refer back to the Monthly RTA Grade Card Report to see that data. However, the labels are still grouped by date.