Work with Classroom Explorer

Class Visibility and Features in Little Sis

Little SIS provides many powerful ways to explore the Google Classroom classes on your domain, but what you can see and do very much depends on what kind of user you are within Little SIS.

Super administrators can view ALL Google Classroom classes across a Google Workspace domain and have unlimited access to Little SIS features.  Learn about features specific to super admins.

Users who are not super admins can be granted access to a limited set of classes within Little SIS. Depending on your role, you may also have only a limited set of features. Learn more about permissions.

Little SIS keeps a live copy of data for all classes (including their metadata, such as assignments, announcements, etc.) on your domain and makes it available for exploration and bulk actions via the Classroom Explorer.

Classroom Explorer

In Little SIS, you'll use the Classroom Explorer to view classes and their details. Let's take a look at what Classroom Explorer is and how you can use it. In this article, we'll cover:

• What the Classroom Explorer is
• How to access the Classroom Explorer
• Controlling the visibility of rows and columns

What the Classroom Explorer Is

The Classroom Explorer is a grid-based view of all Google Classroom classes to which your user account has access. This includes classes created by teachers, the Little SIS Sync Agent, and other 3rd-party sync solutions. There are up to 25+ fields that can be made visible/hidden, reordered, sorted, filtered, and exported on classes within the Classroom Explorer grid.

Accessing Classroom Explorer

To access the Classroom Explorer:

• Click Explorer from the menu on the left side of the screen. Google Classroom Explorer opens.

Controlling the Visibility of Rows and Columns

It's easier to get the most out of the Classroom Explorer if you know how to make the right data visible to yourself. Let's start by looking at the placement of the key visibility controls. 

1 - Columns (hide/show)

Clicking Columns on the left side of the Explorer opens the column visibility panel, where each available data field can be made visible/hidden. The Count of hidden columns is displayed in an icon at the top right.

2 - Saved Layouts

Layouts are predefined sets of columns in a specified order that can be quickly applied to the Explorer grid.

• Pre-canned views: These layouts are standard with Little SIS and are available to all users.
• Custom saved views: These are the layouts that you have created and saved within your account. Saved layouts are visible only to your Little SIS user account.

3 - Saved Filters

• Saves the applied filters so you can quickly reapply them.
• Any user can create and save filters.
• Saved filters are only visible to the user who created them.
• To delete a saved filter, hover over the name, then click the Delete icon.
  See the Filtering in Little SIS for Classroom article.

4 - Timeframe filter

Pre-defined timeframes for academic years are of the form (YYYY-YYYY) and have a cutoff date set by the Little SIS administrator. The timeframe filter is applied to the class creation date. Other time frame options, including custom start and end dates, should allow you to narrow your view to any purpose.

5 - Column filter

The visible rows in the explorer can be filtered by each column, either via typeahead text or the funnel icon, which offers checkboxes, inequalities, and date filter operators depending on the data type.

6 - Sorting by column value

Clicking a column header will sort the grid in ascending order by that column. Click the column header a second time to sort in descending order. Click the column header a third time to remove the sort.

7 - Reordering columns

Dragging a column will reorder it within the grid. The column order can be saved as a saved view.

8 - Quick remove filters

When in doubt, look at the lower-left corner of the grid to see what filters are currently applied. Clicking the X next to a filter removes it.