ThinkWave Support

First, go to the “Reports” tab and scroll down to the “Customizable Reports” box.  Click “Add Report”.

On this screen, you have the option of installing reports from previous years or loading a pre-designed report template for your transcript.  If you want to create your transcript from the ground up, then click “New Report” in green at the top.

Give your report a title like “Transcript”.  Then, select the drop-down menu next to “Organize As” and decide if you would like one student per page, which is the most common, or if you would like a single, multi page report.  The last setting is to decide if you would like your report displayed in portrait or landscape mode.

Layout

You will start by determining how you want you template to look.  The report is divided into 12 segments both horizontally and vertically.  The rows determine the vertical layout and the cells refer to the horizontal layout of the report.  The total number of each though, has to add up to twelve.

Let's say, you would like to create a header for your transcript.  A header would only need one cell, so delete the second cell and select “12” for the cell width.     

Widgets

The information in your report is put together through the use of widgets.  These can be text, tables, images etc.  To create a widget, click the “Widget” sub-tab at the top.  Select a name for your widget, like “Header”.  Then, select the widget type.  This is where you decide if you want a text, table, or other widget type for your header.  Since you only need one row for a header, select “Row” here.
Then, select where you want to save the widget.  Since you named your report “Transcript”, be sure to save it to the same transcript.  Then, click “Save”.

Let's say you want your transcript's header to contain the school logo, school address and the date.  You will need to create three widgets for this.  So, click “Add Widget”.  Next, you will have to determine what percentage of space you nee for each.  One idea is to choose “2” for the school logo, “6” for the school address and “4” for the date.  School logos are in the default widget list, so just select it from the pull-down menu under “Widget”.

For the school address and date, select “blank cell” in the pull-down menus since these will need to be created.  You will need to tell the widget which line shows which aspect of the school address, for instance.  Click “save” and then click the green “Add Widget” box in the upper left.  Name this widget “Address” and select “table” so that there is room to add all lines of the address.  Hit “save” when finished. 

Next you will be inside the “Address Table Widget” you just created.   You need to tell the widget which line will show which aspect of the address.  Since addresses are usually 3 – 4 lines in total, make sure that your widget has 4 rows.  Since you want it to all line up, select “1” for number of columns.  You can also customize your widget here by changing alignment, adding spaces, etc.  Click “save” when you are done.  Don't forget to make the widget take up 12/12 on your page.  You can type in the address on the lines provided under “ Contents” or use merge functions to populate the address.

Merge Functions

Merge functions will pull the school address or other information from the default data in the setup menu.  This was probably entered when you set up your ThinkWave account.  Building off basic commands, you can modify the merge functions to display what you want.

At the bottom of every widget screen there are instructions for every merge function.  You can copy and paste the basic merge function into your widget fields or add to the merge function to allow for more data to be displayed.  There are definitions for the modifiers and then below are most of the merge functions you will ever need.  The basic command is on the left, then the description of what it does, then the variables that allow you to modify it and finally a sample command on the right.

For example, if you want to display the school name, you would scroll down to find the pre-created command for the name of the school.  It looks like this {{school}}.  Copy this merge function and paste it in the first field under “Contents” in your widget.  The drop-down fields to the right of each line allow you to customize how the text will look.  The first one allows you to customize the font, the second one allows you to choose the darkness and shade of the font and the third column drop-down menu allows you to select the justification of the font to be left, right or centered.  Play with these options to see what you like.