CLOUDY SKY

It is activated only when you visit certain matching urls in your BlueSky application (using a Chrome browser with the extension installed). When this happens, a small piece of javascript code adds ‘Export to Spreadsheet’ buttons on certain pages. When you click these buttons, extra data is gathered from BlueSky and a spreadsheet generated, which is then downloaded to your device. Nothing leaves your browser, and none of your information is sent anywhere else!

Instructions

Reviews Evidence face domain

While undertaking reviews, you can log evidence against different dimensions/standards. To help manage and monitor this evidence, you could build an evidence tracker spreadsheet using this extension. If you are a line manager, you may also find it easier to use a spreadsheet to track evidence submission against review dimensions, such as the UK Teachers’ Standards. This will help to ensure full evidence coverage. When you visit the user or line manager reviews page, you can click on the evidence links (normally shown as ‘Evidence’ or a percentage). The extension will then add an ‘Export to Spreadsheet’ button on the subsequent page which, when clicked, will output links to all the evidence (together with all comments) to a spreadsheet, with relevant dimensions/standards. This spreadsheet will be automatically downloaded by your browser, so you can analyse it in Excel or open straight into Google Sheets.

Journal face

If you maintain a personal journal in BlueSky, this extension will allow you to export all of these journal entries. An ‘Export to Spreadsheet’ button will be added to your journal page. When you click the button, every journal entry in your current view (optionally filtered) is exported (with full text and any associated comments) to a spreadsheet, which is then downloaded by your browser.

Reviews domain

If you are using Reviews (under either the manage or mentor tabs) to track self-assessments, skills or knowlege then you might want to monitor which users have completed different reviews. This extension gives you the ability to export this information to a spreadsheet by adding an ‘Export to Spreadsheet’ to the paged overview of these reviews. You might also find that the evidence percentage indicator does not always show the numbers you might expect. This extension adds a ‘Check Evidence’ button, which will give you an accurate total and a more detailed breakdown, including number of comments, links and documents.

Shared Journals domain

In the BlueSky web-app, you can access Shared Journals under both manage and mentor. These pages allow you to view shared journal entries in a series of pages (10 entries per-page) using various filters (unread/read, by individual and after a specified month). When you use the Cloud Sky extension, an ‘Export to Spreadsheet’ button is added to these pages. When you click the button, the metadata about each journal entry (date, title, author, whether there are comments and attachments) is added to a spreadsheet output (which is then downloaded by your browser). This is essential if you want to monitor shared journals over time (are they being completed each week, for example). The spreadsheet output will include all journal entries from the current page to the last page of your current filter. So, if you have 50 pages, and you are currently at the first one, the extension will get metadata from each of the 50 pages, giving somewhere between 491 and 500 journal entries into your spreadsheet. If you currently are on page 25, then it will be approximately half of that (pages 25-50 inclusive). Not only is this accurate, but it is also much faster than trying to do this manually, because the extension will request several pages at about the same time, working in parallel rather than sequentially processing them.

Lesson Observations domain

Under the admin reports, you can access a report (level 3) called Lesson Observations Report. This allows you to view a filtered subset of all observations (who was observed, who did the observing, when was the observation done and what observation form was used). After the report is generated, this extension adds an ‘Export to Spreadsheet’ button to this report. If you click on this button, then the observations in the current report will be exported to a spreadsheet (that will be downloaded in your browser). The extension also gathers any comments (notes) made against each observation and adds them to the spreadsheet output (included the date of the comment/note, who made it and what was said). Any evidence documents/links are also ‘counted’ and the total added to the output as well. If your observation process relies on the use of these comments (ensuring that the relevant line managers have reviewed the observation and commented on it), then the spreadsheet output will allow monitoring of this process, without having to open each observation to check it has been reviewed and commented!

Licensing

The code is fully open-source but does contain code (many thanks!) from the projects below (any alterations or modifications are marked in the code). Everything else is copyright JD, 2017. This program is free software: you can redistribute it and modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License (Version 3) as published by the Free Software Foundation. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. Please see the full GNU General Public License for more details.

Recent Versions

The most recent versions of this extension are below, showing significant functionality changes and improvements.