Opening the Parent Portal for the New School Year

There are some questions to consider and some tabs to review before you open up the parent's module for the new year to help things go smoothly.

First, there is a main switch to enable the portal which will allow access to your parent and student users. It is found on the Parent Access>Setup>Settings>District Settings>General Settings screen. It is the selection in the "Parents module is currently available for" dropdown.

When you are ready to fully open it up for the year, make sure you update this selection and save.

Did you create all of your new parent portal accounts?  Are they enabled?  Do they have students tied to them?

• You can review your active parent portal accounts via Parent Access>Setup>Users>Logon IDs. 
• You can import new parent portal accounts using an excel via Parent Access>Setup>Users>Import. 
• You can autocreate parent accounts via Parent Access>Setup>Users>Autocreate. 
• You can perform a search using the "Created AFTER" field on Parent Access>Setup>Users>Logon IDs to get recently created accounts so you can then review, email, enable just those accounts etc.  

Are your parent access ROLES set up properly?  Make sure you are only granting access to the tabs you want them to see. 

• You can and should review your roles via Parent Access>Setup>Roles.
• IMPORTANT NOTE: Roles for parent portal users do not update automatically during the summer rollover. So, for example, if the roles change between 8th and 9th graders in your district, Genesis cannot make that determination. Roles must be updated manually by the district for that group of students.

Do the parent accounts all have the CORRECT role tied to their accounts?  The rollover task does not update them based on their school.

• You can review an individual user's role via Parent Access>Setup>Users>Modify User in the "Students Attached to This Account" area.  
• You can assign roles by STUDENT LIST via Parent Access>Setup>Roles>Assign Roles. 
• You can also review/mass update accounts if you MODIFY A ROLE (Parent Access>Setup>Roles, click the modify icon to the right.) 
  • Scroll down to the "Portal User Students assigned to this role" area and click "SHOW STUDENTS."
  • The screen will open up and you can then check off students and assign them to a different role directly from this screen.

Did you mass email new parent accounts a password? 

• You can also email parent access users en masse via Parent Access>Setup>Users>Logon IDs. 
  • Perform a search on the screen.
  • Once you have results, you can click the "Email ALL users found by search."
  • A pop up will appear, and you can select an email template and then click "send emails." 
  • PLEASE NOTE: It will go to ALL accounts populated in your search.

Do you have all your settings set up correctly - as far as what you want parents to see on each tab? 

• You can review EACH tab's settings on the subtabs under Parent Access>Setup>Settings>School Settings.  Review each screen and school to make sure you are displaying only what you want to display.  

• For example, review the REPORT CARD screen to ensure no report card or only the correct report card definition is set to display. This would be modified via Parent Access>Setup>Settings>School Settings>Report Cards.

Want to take a look at the portal before opening it up to all users? 

• You can mark an account (Parent Access>Setup>Users>Modify User) as an ADMIN ACCOUNT.

• THEN: you can open the portal ONLY for "Admin Accounts" so they are the only ones able to log in via Parent Access>Setup>Settings>District Settings>General Settings.