Publishing Reports

Publishing makes a report final. MarkBook freezes what the report says, keeps a PDF of it, and tells the family. You need the permission Publish to parents. To act on many reports at once you also need Bulk generate and publish.

What publishing does

• The report content is frozen as a snapshot. Later changes to marks, comments or the template do not change it.
• The PDF is archived with the snapshot, so a download always gives the same document.
• Editing is locked until the report is unpublished.
• Parents get a push notification, and can open the report in the family view (see Parent View).
• Optionally, parents get an e-mail with a download link (see E-mailing Reports to Parents).

Publish one report

1. Open Reports and click the Approved card. (If your school has no approval step, use Draft.)
2. Open the row menu (More actions) and choose Publish report.
3. Confirm: "Publish this report? The final PDF will be archived and editing locked."
4. Tick E-mail parents in the dialog if you want to send the link now. It is off by default.

The status shows Publishing… for a moment. Publishing runs in the background. MarkBook says the report is ready in a moment and that families are told when it is. The first checks are quick: if the report is not allowed to be published (for example approval is missing), you get the reason at once.

Publish many reports

1. Click the Approved card.
2. Select the rows. Select all picks the whole list.
3. Open Actions → Publish reports, then confirm. The reports are published one by one in the background.

A progress window shows the result, such as "18 succeeded, 2 failed". Reports that failed stay as they were, so you can fix them and try again.

Example

After SLT approves all Year 7 reports, the head of year opens the Approved card, presses Select all, chooses Actions → Publish reports and ticks E-mail parents. Two reports fail because a PDF could not be stored. She tries those two again a minute later.

Publish reports is not offered on the Pending approval card (a decision is needed first) or on the Published card.

A published report is frozen

On the Published card you can still View report, Preview PDF, Download PDF, open Version history, and Resend e-mail. You cannot edit it or publish it again in place. To change it:

1. Choose Unpublish report. This needs the Unpublish permission. Confirm: "It goes back to draft; the last PDF stays available until re-published."
2. Edit the report.
3. Submit it again if your workflow requires it, then publish.

WARNING

Unpublishing contradicts something a family was already told. Do it only when the report is wrong, and tell the parents.

Version history

Each publish makes a new edition. Open the row menu and choose Version history to see every edition, who published it ("Published by Ms Pop"), and the archived PDF. The newest is marked Current. Editions never change. A report that was never published shows no versions.

What parents see

Only published reports reach families. Which family members may see or download reports is a school setting; see Family Permissions.

Edge cases

• Storage or PDF service down. Publishing fails and the report stays as it was. Try again later. If it keeps failing, contact support.
• A slow publish. If publishing takes longer than usual, reload the list after a minute to see if it finished.
• Deleting a published report needs the permission to unpublish, because it removes something families may have seen.

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