Giving good feedback takes time. And to read such a long post, you're going to need to gifs, memes, and screenshots. So let's improve this post.
Maybe you used to love ActiveGrade for Standards-Based Grading. (Or, like John Baunach, you're just starting SBG this year.) And now you're using Haiku Learning Solo Edition. It's OK, but you're not sure how to use it. I'm going to use this post to explain what I'm doing to make SBG work for me on Haiku. I don't feel like an expert at all, but I've bumbled my way to a workable solution for me. It may not work for you. I'd love to hear how you use Haiku as well, and I'll update this post (and give you credit) with your ideas. For example, I give credit to Kelly O'Shea who asked for more pictures and memes. Hopefully, in a year, I'll just delete this whole post and refer you to something better.
Until then, let's get started.
You can sign up for a free account for Haiku here. Start a new class, and make sure to check the "don't send notifications..." button and uncheck the Comments and Inbox feature, but leave the Calendar Feature. It's worth setting a schedule for your class terms, but these terms can't overlap. I used to have first quarter, second quarter, and first semester grade schedule on ActiveGrade, because, for athletic eligibility reasons, each quarter's grade could only reflect their work during that quarter, but I could have the semester grade reflect the entire semester (so I could let them reassess their first standards all the way until end of December.). So think carefully about whether you'll use quarters or semesters; I'd default for the longest time periods that make sense for your school, for reasons I'll explain later.
Next, click on Manage Class, select Class Settings, go under the features tab, and get rid of as many extras as possible. Remove announcements, attendance, class discussions, dropbox, polls, and wikiprojects.
Now it's time to add your grade book. Click the Grades tab, and Use Standards-Based Grading. Here's where some of the limitations of Haiku come to the fore. You only get one mastery-level calculation. I use maximum for many reasons, but there are so many good reasons to use so many different mastery calculations. Use what makes sense to you, and make your scale.
Go back to Manage Class, click on Edit Roster, and now is the time to add different sections (for the different periods of classes you have that have the same assignments) and add your students. Before you can add grades, your students must sign up for Haiku. The way that worked best for me was to make a .csv file on Excel that followed their sample. Click on Manage Roster, select Import Students, pick Import from a CSV file, and you can find a sample file. This method works best if you use every student's email address; when you upload the file and then send invitations to all students, each student will get an email that allows them to make up their own username and password.
You'll also need to add standards under the Manage Class button. If you select Edit Standards, you can copy and paste each standard, one by one, and add to your class.
Now here's where my method gets good.
Now click on the calendar tab and click on assignments. Click the Add Assignment, making sure to add your standards you're assessing, the date it is due, and even check what grading period it is for. Now if you click the Activities Tab and click assignments, you can click the grade button and assess all your sections at once! And then, if you want to add comments to your colors, go to the gradebook under the Grades tab, and it'll look kinda like ActiveGrade. Below is a gallery of three pictures that will show you these screens in detail:
Of course, I have some letter-grade-conscious students. (I was, until this year, the only teacher using standards-based grading in my school.) So, I wrote a program in Python on trinket.io so students can have the computer calculate their grade without really knowing the numbers behind the calculation. Trinket is pretty easy to use, and the website lets you embed your program on any webpage. So I embedded the calculator I wrote on a page on Haiku. By clicking on the Pages tab, I clicked on Add a Content Block and clicked on Embed the Web™. It was so easy! When I embedded the program, I didn't let them be able to see the code, but for you, I will. Feel free to read the (very simple) code and press play to see what it looks like to my students: