Overview
This article explains the application setting known internally as “Set the starting day of the week“. This setting specifies which day of the week the system should treat as the first day for displaying calendars, timetables, and weekly schedules. Once configured, the chosen starting day is automatically applied across the system’s calendar and timetable views, with no additional setup required.
What This Setting Does
“Set the starting day of the week” is a single-choice setting: it presents the seven days of the week (Sunday through Saturday) and lets the institution pick exactly one of them as the day that should appear first whenever a week is displayed.
– The day selected becomes the first column, or first day shown, in weekly and monthly calendar grids and timetables across the system.
– The remaining six days automatically follow in their normal order after the chosen starting day. For example, choosing Monday results in the order Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday; choosing Sunday results in the order Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday.
– The default starting day, before any change is made, is Monday.
– This is a single configuration for the whole institution, defined separately for each system language the portal is offered in (see Pre-requisites below). It is not set per user, per role, or per academic term.
Where It Is Used
Setting location: Set the starting day of the week (Main Settings > General Settings > Localization Settings > Time and Days)
Once configured, the chosen starting day is applied automatically, without any further action needed, in:
– General calendar views used throughout the system, including the main Calendar, Class Room booking calendar, Learning Rooms, Online Meetings scheduling, the Exam Scheduling calendar view, the Grade/Internship plan calendar, and the calendars shown to Parents for their child’s Attendance & Progress (Absences).
– Sessions – the weekly and calendar views used for class Sessions and their scheduling.
– Attendance & Progress (Absences) – the weekly timetable views used to review or record absences (with one noted exception – see Notes below).
– Default “this week” date ranges – when a user opens the Sessions list, the Student Statistics dashboards, or the Exam Scheduling list without picking specific dates, the system automatically proposes the current week using the starting day defined here.
– Day-of-week selection lists – anywhere in the system where staff pick one or more days of the week from a list (for example, Timetable and course scheduling, Transportation route/bus scheduling, Teacher Duties, _Teacher_/_Student_ availability and scheduling constraints, Absences, Contacts, Online Meetings, and Re-Registrations), the days are listed in the order that starts with the day chosen in this setting.
Business Logic / Behavior
– The setting stores a single chosen day (for example, Monday). The system then treats that day as the first position and lists or displays the remaining six days after it, in their usual sequence, wrapping back around at the end of the week.
– This affects the visual starting point of weeks and the order in which days are listed – it does not change which days are treated as active/working days for the institution. That is a separate, related setting (see Related settings below).
– This setting also does not affect week numbering (for example, “Week 1”, “Week 2” style academic week labels) – it only changes which day is shown first within a week.
– Inferred business rule: because this is a single-choice setting with a default already provided, the system always has a defined starting day – there is no “nothing selected” state to account for.
K-12 Mode vs Higher Education Mode
“Set the starting day of the week” behaves identically whether the institution operates in K-12 Mode or in Higher Education Mode. There is no difference in the underlying logic, the available options (all seven days remain selectable in both modes), or how the chosen starting day is applied across the system.
Note: The choice between K-12 Mode and Higher Education Mode is controlled by a separate, unrelated institution-level setting (“Enable Configuration for Higher Education”) that changes the institution’s overall working mode. “Set the starting day of the week” does not control, and is not controlled by, that mode switch. Both K-12 and Higher Education institutions simply choose the day that matches how their own community thinks about the week – for example, a K-12 school and a university might equally choose Monday, or equally choose Sunday, depending on regional convention rather than on which mode the institution runs in.
Example(s)
Example 1 – K-12 school using the default Monday start
Elementary School A leaves “Set the starting day of the week” at its default value of Monday. When staff opens the weekly Timetable view or the Calendar, Monday appears as the first column and Sunday as the last. When a day-of-week list is shown elsewhere – for example, when setting up a recurring Online Meeting – the days are listed starting with Monday: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday.
Example 2 – institution changing the starting day to Sunday
Following the preference of its regional office, Institute Beta changes “Set the starting day of the week” from Monday to Sunday. From that point on, every weekly calendar and timetable view – including Sessions, Exam Scheduling, and Attendance & Progress – shows Sunday as the first day of the week and Saturday as the last. Any list of days of the week presented elsewhere in the system, for example when configuring a Transportation route schedule, is also reordered to start with Sunday.
Example 3 – default “this week” range
A member of staff at Alpha Institute (from Example 2) opens the Student Statistics dashboard on a Wednesday without selecting any dates. Because the starting day is set to Sunday, the dashboard automatically proposes the range from the most recent Sunday through the following Saturday as “this week”, rather than a Monday-to-Sunday range.
When to Use
“Set the starting day of the week” is not a simple on/off switch, so a traditional “When to Enable” / “When to Disable” description does not directly apply. The guidance below explains when and how to configure it instead.
When to change it
– Change this setting during the initial setup of the institution to match the day the institution, its staff, students, and parents naturally consider the start of the week.
– Change it if the institution’s community, for example due to regional or cultural convention, expects weeks to start on a day other than Monday, such as Sunday or Saturday.
– Revisit it if staff, students, or parents regularly report that calendars or timetables “look wrong” or start on an unexpected day.
When to leave it as is
– Leave the setting at its current value if the displayed week order already matches what your staff, students, and parents expect. There is no functional benefit to changing it beyond matching this expectation, since it does not affect which days are treated as working days, or how attendance, exams, or other records are calculated.
Notes
Pre-requisites
– There is no other setting that must be configured before this one; “Set the starting day of the week” can be configured independently.
– This setting is defined separately for each system language the institution’s portal is offered in. If the institution offers the portal in more than one language, check that the starting day is configured as intended in each language, since a value chosen under one language does not automatically carry over to another.
Related settings
– Institute active days: (Main Settings > General Settings > Localization Settings > Time and Days): defines which days of the week are treated as active/working days for the institution. It is configured in the same Time and Days area but serves a different purpose – it does not affect which day appears first in a calendar or timetable.
– Holidays Configuration (Main Settings > General Settings > Localization Settings > Time and Days): lets the institution mark specific one-off dates as non-working, separate from either the weekly starting day or the weekly active-days pattern.
– Enable Configuration for Higher Education (Main Settings > General Settings > Higher Education Customization): switches the institution’s overall working mode to Higher Education. As explained above, it does not interact with “Set the starting day of the week” in any way.
Known exceptions
– In a small number of specific screens – the date-range selector used in the Daily Marking view, and the weekly timetable view under Attendance & Progress (Absences) – the first day shown does not follow this setting and currently always starts on Monday. If one of these particular screens does not match the starting day chosen elsewhere, this is a known, isolated exception rather than a sign of misconfiguration.
Assumptions vs confirmed functionality
Confirmed: this is a single-choice (one day) setting, not a multi-select or on/off toggle; the chosen day becomes the first day shown in calendar and timetable views and the first entry in day-of-week lists throughout the system; the default value is Monday; the setting is defined separately per system language; and behavior is identical in K-12 Mode and Higher Education Mode.
Assumption: the specific business reasons an institution might prefer one starting day over another, such as regional convention or community expectation, are inferred from common practice rather than stated explicitly in the system.
