Using Comment Banks

Comment banks in Aspen let you insert canned text into fields or in gradebook columns. After users insert the text, they can edit and add to it. Users at different organization levels can create and use comment banks and comment bank codes in the following ways:

• District users can create comment banks and associate them with fields on templates, transcript definition columns, or school courses.
• Intermediate Organization users can create comment banks and comment bank codes, and associate banks with transcript columns or with courses from the school course catalog.You can also create comment bank codes for banks created by the district.

Note: Depending on their security privileges, users who create a new comment bank table at an intermediate organization may need to notify the systems administrator at the root organization.

• In the School view, users can create comment banks and comment bank codes and associate banks with transcript columns or with courses from the school course catalog. You can also create comment bank codes for comment banks created by the district and intermediate organization.
• In the Staff view, teachers can create comment bank codes within comment banks for report cards and transcript-defined comments associated with the courses they teach.

Attaching comment banks to transcript definitions and courses allows teachers to choose comments for report cards instead of writing them from scratch.

Your district can also use the Report Card Comments table for teachers to select comments in the gradebook. The differences between comment banks and the Report Card Comments table are shown in the following table:

Comment banks	Report Card Comments table
Teachers can edit and add to a comment once they select it.	Teachers must use the comment exactly as it is written.
Variables can be put in the text of the comment to pull specific information about a student or record, such as name or gender. Example: Wendy is a pleasure to have in class. She is a respectful student.	Variables cannot be included, and comments cannot be added to or edited by the teacher.

Note: If you use comment banks, teachers will not be able to use the Fill-Down Values option on the Scores page in the gradebook; they must select a comment from the bank for each student.

If you associate a comment bank with a transcript definition column, you can attach a specific comment bank to each course, so that teachers assigned to that course automatically see comments from that comment bank in their picklist.

When creating a comment bank entry, you can use variables to call information about the student or record you are entering the comment for, such as a student’s name or gender.

To use comment banks, do the following:

• Create a comment bank.
• Create comments in the comment bank.
• Attach the comment bank to a field or transcript definition column.
• Select comments from the bank.