Add Court Appointments
- David Malisch
Task 3.7(a): Implement Court Date Selector, Code Table Alternative
Purpose: Creates a table of court appointments to be used when completing citation forms. If your
court has a web service for requesting court appointments, skip the code table alternative and perform
the web alternative instead— task 3.7(b).
TraCS can help you easily manage the court dates (and times) that are entered on the citation forms.
This leads to greater accuracy when completing forms and fewer headaches with the courts. You may
create multiple schedules with each court (for example, separate traffic, juvenile and general schedules),
assign blackout dates, and create a schedule of court appointments for a whole calendar year (or
shorter or longer period) in just a few minutes.
Requirements: TraCS Office computer, web client and system admin account, knowledge of your courts’
schedule.
Start TraCS.
Sign in with a System Admin Account.
Select the Tools tab on the ribbon menu.
Note: you will be working with three utility forms, Court Schedules, which creates one or more empty
schedules for your court; Court Blackout Dates, which defines holidays and other days on which court
cannot be held; and Court Appointments, which creates the actual court dates and times that will be
used to populate the citation forms.Open the Court Schedules utility form:
a. From the Tools ribbon menu, click the violations button.
b. Select Court Schedules.Click the blue Add Court Schedule bar.
a. Note: the button will delete the current group it is above.
b. Verify that the correct TraCS Agency Number for your agency appears.(If you support multiple agencies in the same TraCS database, you will want to login as a system admin
for the agency you want to configure.)Enter the requested data.
a. In the Court field, select the court for which you want to create a schedule.
i. If you do not you will not be able to add/delete/update court schedules. You will receive
the following error message.
b. In the Schedule Code field, enter up to four characters to identify the schedule.
Note: The schedule code must be unique for a given court and is used internally by TraCS to manage the
schedules. Some examples are: “JUVN”, “TRF”, and “GEN”.
c. In the Schedule Description field, enter a brief description of the schedule.
Note: the schedule descriptions will appear in the data bar for selecting the correct schedule when
completing the citation forms. Some examples of good descriptions are “JUVENILE”, “TRAFFIC”, and
“GENERAL”.
d. In the Lead Days field, enter the number of days that should elapse between the date the
citation is written and the date the defendant should appear in court.
Note: 30 days is typical but may be more or less depending on the policies of your agency and the court.
e. Repeat steps 4 and 5 until all schedules have been set up.Press the validate button to validate the form and add the court selections to TraCS.
Note: it is possible to import the court appointments from a CSV file and avoid the data-entry that
follows in the remaining steps. For information on the file format and importing it, please consult the
reference section of this guide.Open the Court Blackout Dates utility form:
Note: Blackout dates are dates that are exceptions to the schedule such as holidays when the court is
closed. Weekends and other dates that are regularly unscheduled are not blackout dates. Blackout
dates are created prior to creating the appointments. If you attempt to create an appointment that falls
on a blackout date, it will not be inserted into the schedule at the time the appointments are generated.
a. From the Tools ribbon menu, click the Violations button.
b. Select Court Blackout Dates.Click the blue Add Blackout Date bar.
a. Note: the button will delete the current group it is above.
b. Verify that the correct TraCS Agency Number for your agency appears.(If you support multiple agencies in the same TraCS database, you will want to login as a system admin
for the agency you want to configure.)Enter the requested data.
a. In the Court field, select the court for which you to add blackout dates.
b. In the Schedule field, select the schedule you want to work with from the list.
NOTE: If you do not you will not be able to add/delete/update court schedules. You will receive the
following error message
c. In the Blackout Date field, enter the date on which court must not be scheduled.
d. In the Appointment Time field, enter the time to black out.
Note: Typically courts only have one appointment per day, for example, 9:00 AM.
e. Choose Yes in the Recurring field if the blackout date is to be observed every year. Choose No in
the Recurring field if the blackout date is to be observed only once.
Note: Christmas and the Fourth of July are examples of recurring blackout dates. Thanksgiving is an
example of a non-recurring blackout date since it falls on different dates each year.Repeat steps 9 and 10 until all blackout dates have been set up.
Press the validate button to validate the form and add the court selections to TraCS.
Open the Court Appointments utility form:
a. From the Tools ribbon menu, click the Violations button.
b. Select Court Appointments.Click the blue Add Appointment bar.
a. Note: the button will delete the current group it is above.
b. Verify that the correct TraCS Agency Number for your agency appears. (If you
support multiple agencies in the same TraCS database, you will want to login as a system admin
for the agency you want to configure.)Enter the requested data.
Note: you may schedule a single appointment or a series of recurring appointments in this step.
a. In the Court field, select the court for which you to add blackout dates.
b. In the Schedule field, select the schedule you want to work with from the list.
NOTE: If you do not you will not be able to add/delete/update court schedules. You will receive the
following error message
c. In the Appointment Time field, enter the time the defendant is to appear.
Note: typically courts only have one appointment per day, for example, 9:00 AM.
d. In the Frequency field, select whether the appointment occurs every week; the first, second,
third, fourth, or last week of the month; or for just one specific date.
Note: more than one option may be selected, for example, you could schedule the appointment for the
second and fourth weeks of the month.
e. In the Recurrence field, select the days of week on which the appointment is to occur.
Note: more than one day may be selected, for example, Monday through Friday. If “specific date” was
chosen in the Frequency field, the Recurrence field does not apply will be disabled.
f. In the Appointment (Start) Date field, enter the date on which the appointment series begins.
g. In the Through field, enter the date on which the appointment series ends.
Note: If “specific date” was chosen in the Frequency field, the Through field does not apply will be
disabled.Repeat steps 14 and 15 until all appointments have been enter.
Press the validate button to validate the form and add the court selections to TraCS.
Court date selector setup is now complete.
User accounts for all Office are updated as soon as you click Apply. However, a distribution will
need to be created and run in order to push the changes to mobile clients.
a. Complete task 4.1 to make a new distribution. (Note: for web services agency see task 4.9 for
alternate to running a distribution)
b. Distribution will run the next time the user logs in and logs off if distribution is set to automatic
download.
c. Or when the user presses the run distribution button.
