Assigning Bus Passes

Assigning Bus Passes

You can assign bus passes such as fobs one by one in the dashboard, or by editing a .csv file. Both methods work, although if you aren't sure which to use, we suggest starting with the dashboard method.
In order to assign bus passes, you need to belong to a group that has full access to students.

Via the Dashboard

  1. If your bus passes are used with a reader, plug it in to a computer. For example, if you use RFID fobs, you would plug in an RFID reader.
  2. Open the Students tile in the dashboard.
  3. Click on a student.
  4. Select "edit".
  5. Click on the key fob number field.
  6. Enter the buss pass number. For example, tap a fob to the RFID reader, which will auto-populate the field.
  7. Click somewhere else on the screen or press tab. The green arrow means the system has saved the bus pass number.
  8. If there are other bus passes to assign, repeat steps 3 through 7.

Via a .csv File

  1. If your bus passes are used with a reader, plug it in to a computer. For example, if you use RFID fobs, you would plug in an RFID reader.
  2. Open the file students.csv or fobs.csv in a spreadsheet such as Microsoft Excel.
  3. Find the student you will assign the bus pass to. In his or her row, select the key fob number cell.
  4. Enter the buss pass number. For example, tap a fob to the RFID reader, which will auto-populate the cell.
  5. Press the enter key.
  6. If there are other bus passes to assign, repeat steps 4 through 6.
  7. Save the file. Your spreadsheet might encourage you to change the format or file extension, but do not do this. The name of the file should remain students.csv or fobs.csv, retaining the extension .csv.

Keep Leading Zeros With Format Cells

If you want to keep the leading zeros in your .csv file, set the format of the key fob number cells as "text" in the spreadsheet before you enter bus pass numbers. How this is done depends on what spreadsheet you use; as an example here we provide instructions for doing this in one version of Microsoft Excel.
First, select the key fob number column. Right-click, and select Format Cells from the context menu:

In the Format Cells dialog that opens, select the Number tab, and there select Text in the Category pane. Select OK to close the dialog:

Now when you or the RFID reader enter numbers with leading zeros into cells in the key fob number column, the leading zeros will be retained in the cells:

Note that this needs to be done before you or the RFID reader enter fob numbers.
Keeping the leading zeros is only an issue if you are assigning bus passes via a .csv file. If you are assigning them via the dashboard, you don't need to worry about this.

Next Steps

Your next step is to make sure that each bus pass gets to the correct student. See Bus Pass Distribution Strategies for how other schools have done this.

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