Open Registration Process Overview

Modified on Tue, Dec 3 at 11:45 AM

Note: We made updates to the Open Registration portal in October 2024. Please review this article for an overview of changes.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Open Registration Wizard
Open Registration URL
Open Registration Setup Screens
The Open Reg General Setup Screen
Enable and Disable Open Registration
- Additional General Options
- Open Reg Parent Login Settings
Open Reg Student Setup Screen
Open Reg Contact Setup
Open Reg Documents Setup
Enabling and Disabling Document Uploads
Open Reg Appointments Setup
The Search Open Registrations Screen
The Completed Registration Search Screen

What is Open Registration?

Open Registration is a set of screens that allows parents/guardians to "pre-enter" demographic, address and contact information for their newly registering students.

Open Registration does not replace the need for the parent/guardian to come to the district/school office with the required legal documentation (e.g. proof of residency).

It speeds and facilitates that process and reduces the need for district personnel to enter much of the required information about students.

"Open Registration" consists of an open URL (no login required) for a "registration wizard" that walks parents/guardians through the process of entering the required information.

Sample Open Registration "Home" or entry screen view below.

Open Registration has been overhauled to improve ease of use and modernize for use on various devices.

The Open Registration process now begins with a prompt to have the parents select the correct icon:

When clicking in to the new Open Registration users will be met with one of the following screens:

With Login (Kiosk mode OFF) Kiosk Mode Enabled

By default, all Open Reg Packages will require an email address in order to continue.

To prevent parents from creating an account, there is now an option in Setup called Kiosk Mode that will allow them to continue with just an email address being entered. Set Kiosk Mode to Yes to prevent parents from creating logins to Open Registration:

Below find a tour of the updated Open Registration screens.

Open Registration Wizard

The wizard itself consists of a set of screens that capture basic information about students:

Demographic information
Contacts and Addresses

Parents/guardians are walked through these screens for the students they wish to register.

At the end of the process, a paper form is displayed in Adobe PDF so the parents can print it out.

This form summarizes the information that has been entered and includes a bar-code that identifies the "registration ticket".

The parent/guardian must still register in person to present the required legal documentation (e.g. proofs of residency).

How do Parents/Guardians Access Open Registration? The OpenReg URL

Open Registration URL

All districts automatically have an "Open Reg" URL available to them.

This is the URL that parents/guardians will use to complete the Open Registration data entry.

This URL becomes active as soon as Open Registration is enabled on Registration>Open Reg>Setup. It is part of the basic Genesis implementation - you already have it if you'd like to use it. A sample screen is shown at the top of this page.

Genesis ASP Customers Open Registration URLs:

genesis.cX.genesisedu.net/district-name/openReg - where "district-name" is replaced by your district's name. When Open Registration is enabled, this URL becomes live. The X represents a number.

Open Registration URLs if you host your own In-House Server:

If you host your server within your district, your Open Registration URL will be your regular URL with "/openReg" tacked on the end. It will be available whenever Open Registration is enabled.

** Essentially, you remove the /sis and replace it with /openReg - this is case sensitive - so it must contain the capital R.

Please contact the Genesis help desk with any questions regarding this.

Open Registration Setup Screens

Screens used for Configuring Open Registration:

Registration>Open Reg>Setup>Setup - Basic setup options and control the text on the Open Reg screens in the portal.

Registration>Open Reg>Setup>Student - Setup the fields of information that will be collected for students and the order in which the questions will appear.
Registration>Open Reg>Setup>Contacts - Setup the fields of information that will be collected for contacts/address info.
Registration>Open Reg>Setup>Documents - Setup document management for Open Reg and specify which documents can be uploaded and which are required. We added ability to enable document uploads to open registration.

Registration>Open Reg>Setup>Appointments - You can now allow parents to book appointments during the Open Registration process and the settings to enable it/disable it are found via Registration>Open Reg>Setup>Appointments.

Registration>Setup>Custom Questions - You can add custom questions to be asked of parents/guardians during Open Registration.

The Open Reg General Setup Screen

The top most part of this screen is shown below - on Registration>Open Reg>Setup>Setup.

There are five sections on the Registration>Open Reg>Setup>Setup screen:

General options - Controls for enabling/disabling Open Registration (i.e. making it available to parents or turning it off).
Text for messages that appear on the Open Reg screens in the Portal - There are a total of 8 text fields to define the text on the Open Reg screens in the portal, plus fields to define the email "confirmation" message sent to parents/guardians
Student tab defaults - Defaults for the "Student" screen in Open Reg in the Portal.
Address/Contact defaults - Default settings for the Addresses and Contacts screen in the Portal.
Open Reg parent login settings - Controls specifying whether parents/guardians can create logins to enable them to edit their registration packets.

The sections below discuss these elements of the setup.

Enable and Disable Open Registration

The initial question at the top of the Registration>Open Reg>Setup>Setup screen enables or disables the Open Registration system:

To turn on the Open Registration portal, set this parameter to Yes and click Save Options.

To turn off - to disable the Open Reg feature - set this parameter to No and click Save Options. The Open Registration URL will then be disabled.

Additional General Options

Option	Notes
Override banner name of Open Registration	Allows you to customize the text in Open Reg
Enable Proper Casing on Fields	Will force fields to be cased to have the first letter capitalized and the following to be lower case if the field is in all upper or lower case. Will not affect dropdowns
Upper Case all Fields (will override above option)	Force upper casing for the entire text entered into text fields. Will not affect dropdowns
Disable Override Option for Street Map Address
Disable registration for packages with invalid zip code
Enable registration for packages with invalid zip codes on only Emergency Contacts
Allow parents to import contacts to open reg
Single Student Mode	Allows only one student to be added to an Open Reg package. Registering multiple students would require multiple packages.
Strip first/last name accents	This will strip the accents from and student/contact first and last name when they're submitted in open registration.
Provide each student in a Package with a submission PDF	When the registration summary pdf is generated at the end, each student will receive their own page with just their information provided, as if they were submitted separately.
Kiosk Mode	A quick access mode that will only prompt users for an email upon entering Open Registration. They will not be able to log back into their account from Open Reg.

Text Options for Open Registration Screens

The fields shown below control the messages displayed on the various Open Reg screens in the portal.

There are a few "Text" fields that can be configured for different areas of Open Registration:

Open Reg Not Available Message This is the HTML-enabled message that is displayed when Open Reg is not enabled.
Welcome Screen Message - This is the HTML-enabled message that is displayed on the Open Registration URL 'home' screen.
Students Tab Message - This is the HTML-enabled message that is displayed on the Student demographics page of the Open Registration wizard.
Addresses / Contacts Tab Message 1 - This is the HTML-enabled message that appears on the "Addresses" page of the Open Registration wizard.

Addresses / Contacts Tab Message 2 - (HTML Supported) (Will appear after primary parent/guardian have been added)

Confirmation Page - Print PDF Message - Filling out a value here will override the default message of "Please print the PDF below for your own records. Thank you." that appears on the final screen of the Open Reg process.
Confirmation Page - Verify information is correct: (HTML Supported)
Email confirmation message - This message is shown when an email is sent. It cannot contain HTML.
Printed Form message - This message appears on the bottom of the PDF form that is generated for the parent/guardian to print out at the end of the Open Registration process. It cannot contain HTML.
Home Language Form Message
Completed Registration - An email to send when a student has been fully registered into Genesis. Will not send if no subject/message are filled out

Student Defaults for the Open Reg Student Screen in the Portal

The fields in the "Student Tab Defaults" section on the Registration>Open Reg>Setup>Setup screen control.

Option	Notes
School years to be used in Open Registration	The options are "Current and Next School Year", "Current Year Only", "Next Year Only".
Career Prompt (HTML supported)
Default Municipality	Allows the Students screen to default to your local district's municipality (if you cover a single municipality). If the field is blank, the Municipality field will default to blank in the Portal.
Add Gender Preference Question	Adds a question to Open Registration for a students gender preference, options taken from gender preference generic code, and changes the current gender question to say 'Birth Sex'
Text for the Desired School Question drop down list:	What language to use to ask parents/guardians to choose their desired/preferred school. This does not require you to enroll the student in the selected school. Unlike the old system, the "School" drop down is always displayed.
Include a blank option in the drop down list (Cannot have blank option and be required on Student tab above)	You might check this so that the parents are not required to choose (they may not have a choice or know which school the student should attend).
Schools available to select	If none are checked, all are displayed (the drop down can't be empty).
Grade Levels that will appear	If none are checked, all are displayed (the drop down can't be empty). Minimum Date Of Births for Registering: If a grade level is not available or the from through dates have passes/have not happened yet, the grade level will not appear in Open Registration. If a message is filled in the parents will be able to see the missing grade level followed by the message in a pop up during Open Registration. Min. DOB will prevent parents from registering their child into a grade level they are too young to register for. Minimum Date of Birth will automatically be advanced one year if registering for Next Year. Your OpenReg must be set to collect School Year, Grade Level, and Date of Birth in order for Minimum Date of Birth to prevent registrations.

Address/Contact Tab Default Fields

This section contains the following options:

Option	Notes
Default City
Default Zip Code
Prefix for Contacts	Whether to turn on or off the "Prefix" (Mr., Ms., Mrs. etc) field for contacts.
Require Guardian 1 Email
Require at least One Emergency Contact
Require at least One Other Contact
Prompt user for second guardian
Require a valid street name based on the street number provided and the information provided on Setup > Districts > Streets

Open Reg Barcode Form

We have an option for the Barcode Form itself - you can choose whether or not to "Remove 'Desired' from 'Desired School'."

Open Reg Student Setup Screen

The Registration>Open Reg>Setup>Student screen has two sections:

Required Questions
Open Registration Question Group Sequence

Required Questions

This section allows you to specify which questions, in which groups, will be displayed, and, of those, which are required (that is, which must the parents/guardians answer):

When you have determined which fields are visible and which of those are required, click Save Required on the screen to save the changes.

Open Registration Question Group Sequence

This section specifies the order in which the "Open Registration Question Groups" will be displayed on the Open Reg Students screen in the Portal.

The sequence numbers control the order in which the sets ('groups') of questions are displayed on the Open Reg Student screen in the Portal.

To change the order of questions, change the sequence numbers and click the Save Sequence button.

The questions which are part of each group are shown in the upper portion of the screen:

Open Reg Contact Setup

The Registration>Open Reg>Setup>Contacts screen allows you to set a few options for contact info as well.

Open Reg Documents Setup

The Registration>Open Reg>Setup>Documents screen allows you to enable and disable the uploading of documents into Open Registration.

It now also allows you to specify what documents can be uploaded and those which must be upload (i.e. those which are required):

The screen has three sections:

Enable/Disable attaching documents to registration packets
Controls to specify which documents can be uploaded
An editable list of the specified documents.

Enabling and Disabling Document Uploads

You can enable/disable documents by checking/unchecking the "Enable Documents" option via Registration>Open Reg>Setup>Documents.

Defining Documents that can or must be Uploaded

This control allows you to specify all of the types of documents that a parent/guardian can upload as part of Open Registration.

You can also specify which documents are required (i.e. must be supplied).

There is no limit on the types of documents that can be defined.

To specify a document requirement:

Identify the Doc Mgt Doc Type to use to store the document. This must pre-exist the creation of the Open Registration Document Requirement.
Provide a school year to store the document as part of -
Provide an internal name for the document.
Provide a prompt to display to the parent/guardian when they are asked to attach the document.
Indicate whether this new document requirement is mandatory (i.e. required - the parent/guardian must provide it).

Once all of this information is provided, click the "Submit Doc Requirements" button to create the requirement. The new requirement will appear in the list at the bottom of the screen.

The List of Document Requirements

This section of the screen identifies all existing "Document Requirements" - whether not each is actually "required" or merely available, is indicated by the "Required" column:

To remove a requirement, click the trashcan icon. This will not affect any existing documents attached to registration packets or student records.

To edit a document requirement, click the edit icon.

This brings up a panel where you can reset the Doc Type, document title and prompt for Open Registration, as well as toggle whether or not the document is required:

Open Reg Appointments Setup

The Registration>Open Reg>Setup>Appointments tab allows you to enable/disable appointments in Open Reg.

For more info/details on this new feature, please go to the main article on Open Reg Appointments.

The Search Open Registrations Screen

Once Open Registration is enabled and parents are using it/submitting Open Reg packages, you will find entries on the Registration>Open Reg>Search Open Registrations screen.

You can search for students by Barcode ID, Family Last Name, School Year, Anticipated School, Anticipated Grade, Student Form Progress, Denied/Not Denied, Appointments From/To, Reg ID, and by Status.

Once you have search results on the Registration>Open Reg>Search Open Registrations, you have options to Register or Pre-register the students, delete out entries, modify the status of the application, enter appointment info, and print out a bar code form:

To PRE-REGISTER students from this screen, click the icon in the "Pre-Reg" column. This places the student into a holding school and the student will not be activated until you perform the summer rollover with us.
To REGISTER students from this screen, click the icon in the "Reg" column. This enters the student as a new student in the current school year and you will continue to register them as you normally would.

The Open Reg screen warns the user if a student exists right after they click Register or Pre-register. The system will compare with the current system school year when looking for students.

You should get this pop-up if the student matches to an existing student in the system:

Additional options with search results on this screen:

Update School Year
Update Grade Level
Update School
Update Status:
Add a Note
Add an Appointment
Print out the form (for one student, or all students)
Create a "Logon" for the Registration package itself
View/manage documents uploaded to Registration package
Modify the package itself - which logs you out and brings you to the Open Reg portal
Archive the student registration package
Deny the student registration package

The Completed Registration Search Screen

You can view Completed and Archived registration packages via Registration>Open Reg>Completed Registrations.