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Aspen - Did You Know..."Fieldsets: The Ultimate Power"

Aspen - Did You Know About Aspen's Field Sets Opiton? Or As I like to say, "Field Sets: Seeing the Data the Way YOU Want to See It!"

I thought I would use this space to provide additional information about some of the powerful, less well known features of Aspen, our SIS, from Follett School Solutions. One of the hidden gems that I use all of the time, but few people change is the "Field Sets" tool. This tool allows you to organize your data in a manner that makes sense to you, and meets your needs. It's really the tool that allows the end user to see the data in a spreadsheet view that makes the most sense for the specific job at hand. Field sets used in conjunction with queries, and quick charts are a powerful trio that will allow you to get a lot of use from Aspen.

Users can find the Field Sets Menu tool whenever the access any of the data tables in Aspen. Once you click on a table heading (commonly known as a top tab in "Aspenspeak") several options become available, and the field set menu is bundled with a group of tools located in the far, right-hand corner of your browser window, and is depicted in the screen capture below.


Clicking field set option will allow you access to multiple options. You will be able to select from existing field sets (many of these options may have already been created by district staff and shared with everyone in the organization) or manage your field sets. Selecting between the existing field sets will just change your present view to the selected view. This option allows you to make quick changes in how your data is displayed from saved view (or field set) options. 

If you choose the manage field set option you will be able to show/hide, create, edit, copy or delete existing field sets. You will only be able to edit or delete field sets that you own or have access rights to for editing or deletion purposes. Some field sets are system or district field sets, and you won't be able to edit or delete. However you can copy the field set, and then make changes to it to suit your purposes.

The main purpose of using field sets is that the end user can determine exactly how much or how little data they want to view in a particular field set. Depending on the purpose for viewing the data the end user may want to include vast amounts of data displayed in columns according to each field in the database tables, or very specific sets of data that is uncluttered by other fields or columns. In the image below I just wanted to view data concerning our student's Grade Point Average (GPA) and their class ranking. I created a field set that is uncluttered, and contains 5 fields from the student table.

Student Ranking & GPA Data
The illustration above depicts the concept that the end user gets to decide how much or how little data is displayed in a field set. Sometimes it is helpful to have a lot of data for analysis purposes, and sometimes it's helpful to have limited amounts of data, because you just want to create a list of students that meet a specific criteria. In the illustration depicted I wanted an ordered list of students by class rank with their GPA that could be easily shared with the appropriate adults in our organization. 

To create this list I did the following:
  1. Click on the Field Set Icon, and select manage field set. 
  2. Select the Field Set You would like to edit (GPA and Rank), and click the edit button. 
  3. Add and remove fields from the tables listed. The fields that are selected will determine what is displayed in the field set (or the spreadsheet) view.
  4. Click the Save button once you've made all of your changes to your field set. Remember you can always go back and edit an existing field set if you still need to make changes.


I am positive that once you learn how to use this simple, but powerful tool in Aspen you will find countless ways to use it to help analyze the data concerning your students. When you couple this tool with the ability to query the various data sets in Aspen you have a very powerful tool at your disposal. Use the comment tool in Blogger to let me know if you have any questions or requests about what I should write about in my next installation of "Aspen- Did You Know..."

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