Configuring Parent Module Notification Alerts

Above – Display Settings per School on the Parents>Setup>Settings>School Settings>Grading screen indicates how many types of Notification Alerts have been set up for each school (far right column).

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Update Alerts
• Procedure to Enable Alerts for the Parents Module
• Configure the Notification Daemon

Update Alerts

Currently, there are six types of Alerts:

• Letters
• Attendance
• Gradebook Grades
• Messages (including forms, documents and conferences)
• Discipline Incidents
• Course Posts

• Lunch Application Status

Each parent, using the options on their Message Center>Message Alert Setup screen, decides whether to receive Alerts.

To get the Alerts to appear as options on the Message Center>Message Alert Setup screen, you must first configure the system to offer them.

On the Parents>Setup>Settings>School Settings>Alerts screen (shown below), you specify which types of alerts are available for which schools.

Two types of Alerts, Daily Attendance alerts and Gradebook Assignment Grade alerts, must be further configured on the Setup>Schools>School Parameters>Notifications screen as well as the Parents>Setup>Email Templates screen.

On the Email Templates screen, you must create the text of the emails and text messages to be sent to the parents.  

On the School Parameters>Notifications screen, you select which Email Templates to use, as well as create rules for both the Attendance and Gradebook alerts.

What is an Alert?

An Alert is either an email message or text message** that is sent to an email address or phone number entered by a parent/guardian as part of their contact information on the student record, in order to inform the parent/guardian that some event has occurred.

Right now Genesis supports these Alerts:

• Daily Attendance – a message is sent if a student is not present.
• Gradebook grade changes – a message is sent when a Gradebook Assignment grade is entered or updated.
• Discipline - a message is sent when a student has a conduct incident.
• Letter received for the student (e.g. Attendance, Conduct or other Letters).
• Course Post - a message is sent when there a new course post for one of the student's classes.
• Messages and Misc. - Posted forms, documents, conferences, fines, etc.
• Lunch Application Status - a message sent if a student's status on their lunch application changes (can be set to only notify if set to an incomplete status)

Parents must themselves elect to receive Alerts by configuring their parent module logon account. Before parents are given the option to enable an Alert, the Alert must be configured in regular Genesis.

Parents choose whether or not to receive Alerts, and how to receive each type of Alert, on their Message Center>Message Alerts Setup screen.

**Text Messages will only send if a valid mobile provider is selected on the Contact. "Unknown" will not work.

How Alerts Work

Each of the six types of Alerts must be separately enabled or disabled on the Parents>Setup>Settings>School Settings>Alerts screen.

Additionally, Attendance alerts and Gradebook Grade alerts must be defined and configured before they can be used.

There are 3 steps to creating and enabling these Alerts:

1. Creating the Email Templates used for the Alerts (for both email messages and text messages).
2. Defining and configuring the Notifications on the Setup>Schools>School Parameters>Notifications screen.
3. Set the triggers that actually cause Alerts to be sent. These are different for Daily Attendance and Gradebook Grade Alerts: 
   1. For Gradebook Alerts, Turn on the "scheduler" process that sends the Notifications (i.e. the Alert email messages) to the parents.
   2. For Daily Attendance Alerts, set the "Notifications" flags on the Attendance codes that are designed to trigger alerts (e.g. Absent Full Day).

Once they are enabled, each type of Parent notification is triggered in specific way:

• Attendance alerts are real time. When a change to a student's daily Attendance is made, both the old and the new Attendance codes are examined for the need to send an Alert. (note: please visit this page to learn more about marking an attendance code to be available for use in parent alerts)
• Gradebook grade changes are examined by a "Notification Daemon" that runs at specific, scheduled, times of the day. The Notification Daemon locates unsent Gradebook notifications and sends them.
• Discipline alerts are triggered when a student has a conduct incident.
• Course Post alerts are triggered when there's a new course post for one of the student's classes.
• Letter alerts are triggered when the student receives any type of letter (Attendance, Conduct, etc.)
• The general message alerts are triggered by other conditions, such as receiving a form, a document, or a conference notice.

Procedure to Enable Alerts for the Parents Module

Part I: Enable the Individual Types of Alerts

1. Go to the Parents>Setup>Settings>School Settings>Alerts screen.
2. Locate your desired school.
3. Check the checkboxes for the Alert types you wish to enable for the school: 
   1. Letters – Send a notification when the student receives a letter (or other correspondence).
   2. Attendance – Send a notification when an Attendance code is posted for a student attached to the Parent Access account and that Attendance Code is flagged to generate a notification.
   3. Gradebook Grades – Send a notification when a Gradebook grade is posted for a student attached to the Parent Access account. *There is also a Custom option to enter a threshold.  For example, if you set this to 70%, an alert will go out when a Gradebook assignment for a student is graded something lower than 70%.
   4. Messages – Send a notification when any of various other "messages" are received for a student attached to the Parent Access account (ex: when there is a new Document or Form to view/sign, or when the Parent books their own conference time with a teacher).
   5. Discipline Incidents – Send a notification when a student has a conduct incident.
   6. Course Posts – Send a notification when there is a new course post for one of a student's classes.
   7. Lunch Application Status – Send a notification when a student's Lunch Application status changes.
4. Repeat Step 3 for additional schools.
5. Click "Save Settings" to store the alert settings.

Part II: Configuring the Notifications for Attendance and Gradebook Alerts

1. Go to the Parents>Setup>Email Templates screen.
2. Create or modify Email Templates for the Daily Attendance and Gradebook email messages or text messages you wish to send.
3. Go to the Setup>Schools>School Parameters>Notifications screen.
   
4. Click on "Add Notification", and you will see this window pop up:
   
   1. Select the Grade Levels you wish to define the Alert for. Options include selecting one grade level or specifying all grade levels.
   2. Select the Email Template to use for this Alert in email form and/or text message form.
   3. Specify whether or not to enable it (set "For Parents" to 'Yes').
   4. Select the Notification Type. Options include Daily Attendance, Gradebook Grades, Attendance Letters, Conduct Letters, Student Letters, Student Request Letters, and Conferences.
   5. Enter the Description – this is the text you wish to appear on the Parent Module Message Center>Message Alert Setup screen. E.g. "Send me an email when my child's Gradebook grades are updated".
   6. Specify the Sequence # to place this Notification in the list of Notifications on this screen.
   7. Click "Add Notification" to add this Notification to the list.
5. Add additional Notifications if you desire.  These are specific to the selected school

Procedure to View and/or Update Existing Attendance or Gradebook Parent Alerts for a School

1. Go to the Setup>Schools>List Schools screen. Click on the "P" parameters icon for the school whose notifications you wish to view or update.
2. Click on the Notifications tab to bring up the Setup>Schools>School Parameters>Notifications screen.
3. The list of Notifications currently defined for the School will be displayed:
   
4. Update fields as necessary: 
   1. Grade Levels – an Alert can apply to one or all grade levels.
   2. Notification Type – There are two: Daily Attendance and Gradebook grades.
   3. Email Template – Locate and maintain the Email templates on the Parents>Setup>Email Templates screen.
   4. Description – Prompt that appears on the Message Center>Message Alert Setup screen.
   5. For Parents – Switch to turn this Alert on or off. Yes/No.
   6. Sequence # – This number simply sorts the notification in the list on this screen.
5. When you are finished updating the fields, click "Save Changes" to store your updates.
6. To delete a Notification (instead of updating it), click the corresponding trashcan icon.

Configure Daily Attendance Codes to Trigger Alerts

Alerts are triggered when an individual student's Daily Attendance status is changed either to or from a flagged Attendance Code.

Each Attendance code has two separate flags, one controls what happens when a student's Daily Attendance is changed to the Code and the other controls what happens when a student's Daily Attendance is changed from the Code to any other code.

Procedure to Configure Notification Flags on Daily Attendance Codes

1. Go to the Attendance>Codes screen.
2. Locate a code you wish to update and click on the "Edit" icon corresponding to it. This brings up the Attendance>Codes>Modify Code screen.
3. Locate the "Notification Scheme" checkboxes on this screen:
   Check the checkboxes as desired. The top checkbox causes an Alert to be sent when a student's Daily Attendance code is changed to this code.
   The bottom checkbox causes an Alert to be sent when a student's Daily Attendance code is changed from this code.
4. Click the "Save" button at the bottom of the screen to store the changes.

Configure the Notification Daemon

Note: the Notification Daemon task will NOT process any parent alerts while the Parent Portal is Inactive.

In computer language, a "daemon" is a program that runs automatically in the background to perform certain tasks over and over again.

In the case of Email Alerts, the "notification daemon" determines if grades have been updated and sends the specified emails to the parents.

By default, the "notification daemon" is not enabled and Gradebook alerts are not detected and thus not sent.

To turn the daemon on and run it one or more times a day, you must be a system administrator.

Follow the procedure below.

Procedure to Enable and Set Run Times for the Notification Daemon

1. Go to the Parents>Setup>Settings>School Settings>Alerts screen. If the Notification Processor is disabled you will see this:
    
2. Click on "Enable Notification Processor".
3. Once you have enabled the Notification Processor, click on the link that says "Click here to configure how often the Notification Processor processes messages."  This will bring you to the Core>Scheduler screen.
4. Locate the line for the "Notification Daemon":
   
5. Check the "enable" checkbox to turn on the Notification Daemon.
6. If desired, change the hours at which the Daemon runs. By default, it is configured to run at: 
   • 8am (to capture changes made during the night)
   • 3pm (to capture changes made during the day)
   • 7pm (to capture changes made in the late afternoon).
      The list of hours is found in the second text field from the right. Hours are in 24-hour format (0-23 rather than 1-12a/pm). If you wish to change the minute of the hour at which the daemon will run, replace the 00 in the rightmost text field with a 2-digit number between 00 and 59. This specifies the minute of the hour the daemon will run. The default ("00") is "on the hour".
7. Click the "Save" button at the bottom of the list to store the changes and enable the daemon.

Procedure to Disable the Notification Daemon

1. Go to the Parents>Setup>Settings>School Settings>Alerts screen. If the Notification Processor is enabled, you will see this:
   
2. Click on "Disable Notification Processor".