Set Up Your Bell Schedule in Minga

This article will help you to set up your Bell Schedule. This is a core function that many features within Minga rely upon, like showing student schedules on IDs, and much more.

Note: Bell Schedule is only available with the Plus and Premium subscription plans.

The Bell Schedule module provides school-wide visibility into student and teacher schedules. This feature allows you to build recurring schedules, map periods to your Student Information System (SIS), and manage irregular calendar days like holidays or early releases. After completing this setup, schedules will be visible on user profiles and the main dashboard.

Permission Level Required: Owner | District Manager

Enable Bell Schedule: How to turn on the feature within your school settings.
Select your terms: Select the terms that will be associated with your bell schedule.
Create your Bell Schedule: How to build schedules and map SIS short codes to periods.
Assigning schedules by grade: Associate a separate bell schedule to different grade levels.
Using the Calendar for Irregular Schedule Days: Anticipate and plan for early release days, professional development days, and special occasions.
Make Bell Schedule Visible: Enable visibility for Students, Teachers, and Staff.
Additional Features or Settings
Troubleshooting
FAQs
Resources

How To Enable Bell Schedule

Bell Schedule setup gives you consistent, school-wide visibility into where a student should be during each period, and it can support automation like uploading tardy data to your SIS.

Step-by-step Guide To Enabling Bell Schedule

Navigate to Settings from the primary navigation menu.
Select the Settings tab along the top of the page.
Scroll until you see the Scheduling heading, and click on the dropdown menu.
Toggle the setting Show bell schedule for owners and managers to ON
Keep Show bell schedule for staff and students turned OFF while you are still building or editing schedules.
Refresh your browser, or log out and back in to have the Bell Schedule tab appear next to the Subscription tab in Settings.

⚠️ Important: You can set up schedules first without showing them to the school by leaving Show bell schedule for staff and students turned OFF until you complete the setup steps.

Select Your Terms

Your terms will be automatically rostered in Minga along with student, teacher, and roster data. The term names imported from your SIS are not always the most intuitive or recognizable, so it is best practice to re-name them for your bell schedule.

Step-by-step Guide to Selecting Your Terms

Select Settings from the main navigation menu and then select the Bell Schedule tab.
You will automatically land on the Terms tab, where all the Terms that are rostered from your SIS will appear.
Click on the blue edit pencil to rename the Terms so that they are recognizable to you.
Select Save to confirm any changes.

You can associate the Term to the Bell Schedule from the Schedules screen outlined in the next section, Create Your Bell Schedule.

⚠️ Important: If you do not see any Terms listed, you need to confirm that class rosters are syncing in Minga. (People> Rostering and ensure that the setting Sync class rosters as user lists automatically is toggled ON)

Create Your Bell Schedule

This section covers how to define your terms and build the specific timing for your periods. You must have an active SIS sync for terms to populate. While setting up a Bell Schedule involves several moving parts, our interactive walkthrough is designed to guide you through each step with ease.

In the following examples, we will reference these Minga High Bell Schedules:

Additional Example Minga High Bell Schedules

Interactive Walkthrough:

Step-by-step Guide to Creating your Bell Schedule

Navigate to Settings > Bell Schedule.
Select the Schedules tab.
Click the Create schedule button in the top right corner.
Enter a Schedule name (this name is visible to Owners and District Managers only).
On the Term(s) dropdown menu, select which Term, or multiple terms, the schedule applies to.
Under the Applies on heading, select which Days the schedule will be active on.
Optional: Under the Schedule restrictions heading, you can toggle on Select who this schedule applies to and select which grades or user lists this bell schedule is applied to. For a full walkthrough, refer to the next section Assigning schedules by grade.
Set the Start Time and End Time for each period of your schedule.
Match each period to the correct Period ID/ Short Code (Short Codes come from your SIS).
Click Create or Save to finish.

💎 Tip: You can create separate schedules for early dismissals, late starts, grade-specific schedules, and special event days so your calendar stays accurate without constant manual edits.

Assigning schedules by grade

Schools with grade-specific timetables can assign a separate bell schedule to each grade, instead of forcing every student onto one school-wide schedule.

Step-by-step guide to selecting grades

Navigate to Settings > Bell Schedule.
Click Create Schedule.
Name the schedule and select the terms the bell schedule will pull period data from.
• Use a name that identifies which grade or group this schedule applies to, since Minga does not label schedules by grade automatically.
Select which days the bell schedule is active for.
Under the Schedule restrictions section, toggle ON Select who this schedule applies to.
On the Select Restriction drop down, select Grades.
• There is also the option to select Lists if the schedule applies only to select class rosters/User Lists.
In the next dropdown menu, select the grade, or multiple grades, the schedule will be applied to.
Match each period to the correct Short Code
Set the Start Time and End Time for each period.
Click Add period to add additional periods.
Click Save to apply the schedule.

✅ Outcome: Students in the assigned grade see this schedule's timings on their My Tools Dashboard under Today's Schedule. Teachers who teach classes across multiple grades see the correct timings for each class they teach, without needing to switch schedules manually.

💎 Tip: If two grades share the same schedule, you don't need to create a duplicate. Assign the same schedule to both grades instead.

Using the Calendar in Bell Schedule

Each bell schedule you create will automatically be applied to the Default days you select, but in some cases, there may be days where you need to implement an Early Release Schedule, or remove a schedule entirely. On the Calendar setting, you can select a schedule, or no schedule, for specific dates.

Step-by-step guide to the Calendar for your Bell Schedule

Navigate to Settings > Bell Schedule > Calendar.
To change the view of the calendar, click on the gear icon to the top right of the screen.
Select day, week, or month.
The correct Bell Schedule will automatically be applied to the default days selected in Creating your Bell Schedule.
To change the schedule selected, or to remove the default schedule, click on the schedule listed for the date.
On the Use schedule drop down, select or de-select the bell schedules as needed.
To have no bell schedule applied for the day, select No schedule.
Click Update to save your changes.
You can always restore the default bell schedule for the day by clicking Reset to default.

💎 Tip: You can use the date selector to view past or future dates. To navigate back to the current day, click the Today button.

Make Bell Schedules Visible

Step-by-step Guide to Enabling Visibility for Staff and Students

Select Settings from the main menu.
Click on the Settings tab along the top of the page.
Locate the Scheduling heading and click on the downward facing arrow.
Toggle ON Show bell schedule for staff and students to make schedule information visible across your school’s Minga.
Turn the toggle for Show schedule on student profile to ON to show a student’s entire daily schedule on their student profile.

Note: Students may already see basic daily schedules in My Tools. When Bell Schedule is enabled, it adds more granular details such as Teacher names and room information.

Troubleshooting

● Issue: You cannot see Bell Schedule in Settings.
○ Solution: Once you have turned ON the setting Show bell schedule for owners and managers, you will need to refresh your browser or log out and back into Minga to have the Bell Schedule tab appear in Settings.

● Issue: You do not see any Terms in Settings > Bell Schedule > Terms.
○ Solution: You can populate Terms only when class rosters are syncing from your SIS, so you need to confirm roster syncing is enabled and active in your SIS connection. If you do not see any class rosters importing in your sync, double-check that the correct terms are selected under People> Rostering> Manage class rosters to be synced.

● Issue: Staff or students cannot see schedule details.
○ Solution: You can make bell schedule details visible by turning on Show bell schedule for staff and students in Settings > Scheduling, and you can control profile visibility using Show schedule on student profile.

● Issue: Staff or students cannot see their schedules at the start of the new semester.
○ Solution: Check that the correct terms are selected in your Bell Schedule. At the start of the term, the previous term or semester may be set up for the Bell Schedule and the new term will need to be selected.

FAQs

Can Teachers set up or edit Bell Schedules?

No, the only roles that can access or set up Bell Schedules by default are Owner and District Manager. To allow a user with the role of Teacher to edit or access bell schedule set up, you can change their role to Owner under People.

How do I create a bell schedule that supports early dismissals or late starts?

You can support early dismissals or late starts by creating separate schedules in Settings > Bell Schedule > Schedules with the correct period Start Time and End Time, and then assigning those schedules to the appropriate days in Settings > Bell Schedule > Calendar.

How do I make Bell Schedules visible to staff and students?

You can make bell schedules visible to staff and students by turning on Show bell schedule for staff and students in Settings > Scheduling, which makes schedule information visible across your school’s Minga.

How do I show a student’s full schedule on their profile?

You can show a student’s full schedule on their profile by turning on Show schedule on student profile in Settings > Scheduling, which adds the student’s entire daily schedule to the student profile view.