Advance patron grade levels and remove patrons who have graduated or transferred to prepare your system to import new students for the next year. Some libraries do it at the end of the year, and others do it at the beginning of the year. Either way is fine, just don't skip it.

There are two ways to advance your patron grade levels for the next year. Advance All Grades in Patron Preferences is the easiest option, but the Advance Patron Grade utility allows you to advance a more select group of patrons. Patrons who advance past the final grade in the grade table are assigned the value for Last Grade, which is usually "Graduated".

Advance All Grades

Advance all of your patrons to the next grade level at the same time.

1. Go to Tools > Preferences > Patrons.
2. Open the Grade Table tab.
3. Double-check the grade table and the Last Grade field for accuracy.
4. Check the Advance Grade After date, and change it if necessary. This is usually the graduation date or the last day of school.
5. Click Advance All Grades.
   
   

Advance Patron Grade utility

Need to be more precise about which patrons to advance? Select patrons by one or more options, including status, security group, policy, homeroom, grade, last name, and barcode.

1. Go to Tools > Utilities.
2. Select Patrons > General category on the left.
3. Choose the Advance Patron Grade utility on the right.
4. In the Selections tab, enter the criteria needed to select the patrons you intend to update.
5. Click Run.

Change patron policies

Do your patron policies match your patron grade levels? If not, you need to update each patron record so their policy matches their new grade. Run the Change Patron Policy utility for each grade.

1. Go to Tools > Utilities.
2. Select the Patrons > General category on the left.
3. Choose the Change Patron Policy utility on the right.
4. In the Selections tab, enter the criteria needed to select the patrons you intend to update. 
   
   1. Patrons with a Status of: Limit the operation to one particular status, like Active, or choose Any to include them all.
   2. Patrons in Grade: Enter the user-defined value for the grade that needs to change (e.g. 8th), as defined in Grade Table preferences.
5. In the Options tab, choose the policy that will be assigned to the selected patrons.
6. Run the utility.
7. Repeat steps 4-6 for each grade, as needed.
   
   

Patrons will transfer in and out of your school. You'll want to clear out patrons who have left, add new patrons to Alexandria, and update existing patron information. You can do this all through imports.

Patron information can come from any source that provides a text file in a tab-delimited file format; most word-processing and spreadsheet applications support files in tab-delimited format. In most cases, patron data is readily available in a machine-readable format from your school’s front or district office. Other schools automatically import updated patron information from a Student Information System (SIS). Since all libraries import patron information a little differently, check with your school or district office to find out how patron data is maintained.

Before you import new student records, using the Change Patron Location utility can help you later determine which patrons are no longer enrolled at your school and should be removed from the database. 

Change Patron Location utility

If your tab-delimited import file includes patron homerooms, change the Homeroom for all of your currently-enrolled students to the same value. This example will replace the Homeroom for all of your currently enrolled students to “Gone”.

1. Go to Tools > Utilities.
2. Select the Patrons > General category.
3. Choose the Change Patron Location utility on the right.
4. In the Selections tab, choose the options needed to select a group of student patron records. For example, you may want to select a student-only policy and/or security group — you don't want to accidentally update Operators and/or Staff records.
   
   1. Patrons with a Status of: Active
   2. Patrons in Security Group: Patron
   3. Patrons with a Policy of: (Student)
   4. Patrons from: Homeroom
      
      1. Leave the From and Through fields blank if you want to update them all.
5. In the Options tab, type “Gone” in the Change Location to field.
6. Run the utility.

The Homeroom field for all of the patrons matching your selections will be changed to "Gone". Next, import your new student records from your SIS. 

Import Patrons

Quick Patron Import

A new import at this point will update the Homeroom for all patrons who are returning for the school year. Those who are not returning will retain the Homeroom "Gone".

1. Go to Tools > Import.
2. Select the Patrons category on the left.
3. In the Imports pane, click Choose File. Locate the import file on your computer.
4. In the Settings tab, make the following selections:
   
   • Skip First Record: Check if the first record in your import file is an unrecognized header.
   • Patron Updates: Allow Import to Modify Existing Records
5. Run the import.

The Homeroom for all returning patrons will be updated. The next step is to remove the other patrons, the ones with the Homeroom "Gone".