Announcing SAMS State Aid Calculations and "the Sandbox"
The State Aid Unit is pleased to announce that the State Aid Calculations (Output Reports) for Claim Years 2005-06 and 2006-07 are now available within SAMS. Claim year 2007-08 reports are expected to be available early in 2008.
This new functionality enables district users to immediately see the effect of district-initiated SAMS data changes on calculated aids in the Official, Revision and new "Sandbox" data area. Please note that SED continually updates data from external sources (i.e. STAC, BEDS Enrollment data, etc.) which will also effect your aid calculations.
These SAMS Output Reports are for informational purposes only and are not considered the official results for payment purposes. For your payable 2005-06 through 2007-08 State Aid calculations you should continue to use the View District Data page, or access the district data page via the State Aid home page.
Using the Sandbox, users can enter changes and immediately see the effect on calculated aids and the edit reports without actually affecting official or revision data. The Sandbox data area can easily be cleared and re-used repeatedly, allowing experimentation with different data scenarios.
Detailed instructions on how to use the "Sandbox" and view the resulting aid changes in calculated aids are below, but can also be found in the updated SAMS Training Manual for District Users.
Please contact the State Aid Unit immediately if you notice any problems with your SAMS calculated Aid amounts or with any of the SAMS functions described above.
Sandbox Data Area:
Refers to all form data entered and saved through the Sandbox Data submenu item located within the Forms main menu. The Sandbox Data Area can be used to “play” with a district’s data to see the effects that various changes to that data would have. The Sandbox Data Area works the same way the Revision Data Area does, except that updates made to a district’s data cannot be submitted for inclusion in the Official Data Area from the Sandbox Data Area. The Change Submission forms in the Sandbox Data Area provide a summary of the changes made to the data in that Data Area and are also used to clear the data area of any changes that were made in it. To actually submit revisions modeled in the Sandbox area to SED, the user must go to the revision area, re-enter and submit the changes as usual.
As soon as data is saved in the Sandbox all calculations associated with changed data are immediately updated in the Sandbox area only. There is no need to "run" any calculations - any form or report viewed in the "Sandbox" will reflect those changes.
In order to view the effects of such changes, the simply select "Sandbox" from the "Data Area" selection box on the "Output Reports" page described below.
In order to clear the Sandbox, choose "Change Submission" for the appropriate form set from the Sandbox Data Area form tree. Click "Clear Sandbox" to reset the data area back to the "Official" data.
Please note that your Sandbox area, like the rest of your SAMS data, is accessible to State Aid staff, and that State Aid staff may at times use this area for testing purposes.
To view or print an Output Report within SAMS, follow these steps:
The Output Report selection screen will appear. The reports available in the tree are based on the Claim Year that is set in the application header. Click Expand All to see links to all available versions of the reports.
The Data Area selection specifies which Data Area the report will retrieve data from and the Data Version Date selection determines what version of data the report will retrieve. See the “About Data Areas” section of the users manual for more information about Data Areas.
The Output Report will be displayed and link will be available to print the Output Report. A separate window will open with a printer friendly version of the Output Report after clicking on the Print Form link. Use the browser’s print functionality to print the report (you may have to adjust your internet browser's page margins to print these reports correctly). To close the newly opened browser window, you must click on the ‘X’ box in the upper right hand corner of the browser window or press ‘CTRL+W’ when that window is active.
