Managing Academic Activity Categories and Weights

Categories are how Ad-Din turns everyday classwork into a report card mark. Instead of adding up every quiz and assignment equally, you tell Ad-Din that (for example) Assignments are worth 40% of the subject, Quizzes 30%, Projects 20% and Class Participation 10%. Teachers then simply record activities under the right category, and Ad-Din works out the subject percentage and grade for you.

This guide explains how to create categories, how the 100% rule works, the Assessment category that Ad-Din creates for you automatically, and how to move categories in and out of the portal in bulk using Export and Import.

A category belongs to one class, one class section and one subject — all three together. That combination is important, and it is the single thing that causes most confusion, so it is worth being clear about it up front.

For any one class + class section + subject, the weights of the enabled categories should add up to 100%. The screen shows a running Total weight at the bottom of the Active list, and warns you with Must equal 100% whenever the total is anything other than 100.

Ad-Din will stop you going above 100% — it will not let you save a category that pushes the total over. It will, however, let you sit below 100% while you are still building the list, so you can add your categories one at a time without being blocked. Just make sure you finish the job, because a subject that only adds up to 80% will not report the way you expect.

A typical Grade 5 Math setup for one section might look like this:

It happens in two stages, and knowing this makes the weights much easier to reason about:

1. Inside a category, Ad-Din averages all the activities a student has been marked on, taking each activity's own weight into account. A 50-mark test therefore counts for more than a 10-mark exercise if the teacher weighted it that way. The result is a percentage for that category.

2. Across categories, each of those percentages is then multiplied by the category's weight, and the results are added together to give the subject percentage — which is what lands on the report card.

So a student who averages 80% on Assignments (weight 40) and 90% on Quizzes (weight 30) contributes 32 points and 27 points respectively towards their subject total.

1. Sign in at portal.ad-din.ca.

2. Open the full menu and go to Madrasah / School > Admin Portal > Academic Activity.

3. Select Category Management.

On the left you will see a Filters panel with four dropdowns. On the right is the list of categories and the Add New, Import and Export buttons.

The list only appears once Ad-Din knows exactly which set of categories you mean, so you need to choose all three of the following:

1. Class — choosing a class clears the two dropdowns below it and reloads them. If the class has only one section, Ad-Din selects it for you.

2. Class section

3. Subject

The list loads by itself as soon as all three are set — there is no separate "view" button to press. Until then the screen shows the prompt "Choose a class, class section and subject to view its categories." If the combination genuinely has nothing set up yet, you will see "No categories found" instead.

The fourth filter, Status, lets you narrow the list to Enabled or Disabled categories. Results are shown in two groups, Active and Disabled, with a count beside each.

You do not start from a blank slate. Every time you add a subject, Ad-Din automatically creates one category for it, so that teachers can begin recording activities straight away rather than being blocked on setup.

So adding "Mathematics" to a Grade 5 that has sections A, B and C creates three Assessment categories — one per section — each at 100%.

This also happens when you add subjects in bulk by importing them, and it is created in the background a moment after the subject is saved. If you go straight to Category Management and do not see it, wait a few seconds and reload.

1. Click Add New in the top right. The Add Category form opens.

2. Fill in the fields below.

3. Click Save. A confirmation dialogue appears reminding you that some of the information cannot be edited afterwards — click OK to confirm.

Repeat for every category in the subject, then repeat the whole exercise for each remaining class section and subject. It is a one-time setup for the organization, and it is much faster if you have your weights written down before you start.

Click anywhere on a category row, or use the Edit button on the right of the row. Only three things can be changed: Category name, Weight in % and Status (Enabled or Disabled). Class, class section, subject and category type are all locked.

When you click Save, Ad-Din shows an important warning and gives you two ways forward:

Disabling is almost always what you want. Set Status to Disabled when editing. The category moves to the Disabled group, stops counting towards the 100% total, and can no longer be used for new activities — but every mark already recorded under it is preserved.

Deleting is permanent and removes history. Use the Delete button on the row. Ad-Din asks you to confirm and warns you that the action cannot be reversed and that the associated history of the category will be lost.

A teacher who tries to change a category somebody else created will be turned away. If a teacher asks you to change a category they cannot touch, an administrator can make the change for them.

Export gives you a spreadsheet of your entire category setup. It is the fastest way to review everything at once, to share the setup with colleagues for checking, and it is the required first step before importing.

1. Click Export. You do not need to choose a class or subject first.

2. Wait while the file is prepared. Ad-Din checks repeatedly and downloads it as soon as it is ready.

3. A ZIP file is downloaded. Open it and you will find four CSV files.

Import lets you set up or adjust many categories at once in a spreadsheet rather than clicking through the form dozens of times. It is far quicker for a new organization, or when you are rolling the same weighting out across many sections.

1. Export first and unzip the download.

2. Open ExportedActivityCategoriesCsv….csv in Excel or Google Sheets.

3. Edit the rows you want to change, and add rows for anything new (see the rules below).

4. Save it as a CSV file — not as .xlsx.

5. Back in Category Management, click Import. The prompt "Choose a CSV file for importing." appears.

6. Choose your file. The import starts immediately; there is no extra confirm step. Click Cancel instead if you opened the prompt by mistake.

7. Wait for the confirmation message. Stay on the page while it runs.

• It is all or nothing. If any row fails, nothing at all is saved and your existing setup is left exactly as it was. Fix the row and upload again.

• Existing categories can only have their name, weight and status changed. Changing the class, section, subject or scoring type of an existing row will be rejected. To move a category, disable the old one and add a new row with a blank CategoryID.

• The 100% cap is checked per class + section + subject, before anything is written — and it counts categories that are not in your file too. So you cannot sneak past the limit by importing a partial file.

• Classes, sections and subjects must already exist. Import will not create them for you.

• Row numbers in error messages count the header as row 1, so "row 5" is the fourth category in the file — the same row number your spreadsheet shows.

• Agree the weights before you touch the portal. Changing them later has consequences; deciding them in a meeting costs nothing.

• Use the same category names across all sections of a class. Report cards and comparisons between sections read far better when Grade 5A and Grade 5B both call it "Assignments".

• Deal with the Assessment category deliberately. Right after adding a subject, decide whether to rename it, reweight it, or disable it — do not leave it sitting at 100% and then wonder why nothing else can be added.

• Finish each subject to exactly 100% before moving on. It is much harder to spot a subject stuck at 80% months later.

• Disable, do not delete. Deleting destroys history; disabling keeps it and achieves the same thing for future work.

• Export before you import, and keep the export. It is your reference for the ID columns, and your record of what the setup looked like before you changed it.

• Set up categories before teachers start recording activities — ideally at the start of the year, alongside classes, sections and subjects.

• Setting up Ad-Din Solution for Academics Success (Kindergarten to Grade 8)

• Setup Categories

• Setup Academic Subject and Strands

• Setup Academic Class Sections

• Manage Academic Activities from Ad-Din Web Portal

• Building Academic and Islamic Studies Report Cards