Helping Families With Parent Portal Access and With Access to Students

Helping Families With Parent Portal Access and With Access to Students

Introduction

This article describes potential problems and the troubleshooting steps you can take to address any problems that families are having with filling out the Annual Student Update.

Communication to Families About the ASU. Each year, all families of registered students need to complete the Annual Student Update in PowerSchool . Those students must be coded with the No ASU alert.  Then when an email is sent, Russ is to exclude people that have this alert...[gjo check that he is doing this.}...He is not supposed to just upload all students or send to all students in School Messenger. There is usually a cut off date is for recently registered students who registered approximately 30 days before the launch of the ASU. Victor makes this decision.

Each year all families receive an email, text and/or phone call with directions as to how to complete the form. In general, they log in to the parent portal, click on forms, and fill out the forms under the Annual Student Update heading.

The most common problems are below and you will try each one until the parent is successful.

A. Does the Parent Have a Web Account?

Parents without a web account cannot log in to the portal. They will get an error every time they try to log in.

  1. On the Start page, select Contacts from the drop down and search for the parent. If you cannot find the parent, search again and be less restrictive, i.e., type only a few letters of the last name. When searching for contacts, be sure the Access Accounts Only box is NOT checked.
  2. Look at the Web Account Access section shown below. If there is nothing there, refer to Section B below.
  3. If the parent does have an account, verify the user name. Click the Edit Account button. Proceed to section C below.


B. Reset or Create the Parent's Web User Name and/or Password.

On the Start page, click on the Contacts search tab. Look up the parent by last name. Click on their record to view it. You will see their username under the Web Account Access section as shown above.  If there is no web account, there are two things you can do.  1) Manually create an account for the parent (Step 1 below) or 2) Tell them to go back to the portal login (Step 2 below) and create an account. 

1. Manually add the account and give the parent the username and password.  To do this, click on the Add Account button. Make sure you have the Account Enabled box checked, enter a user name and password. The email is pulled from the Email section of the parent account. If there is not an email that displays when you select Use Existing Email, then you need to go back to the Contact page, go down to the Email section and add an email. Once that is done, you can come back here and add the email. The system will not let you add an account without an email. 


OR

2. Have the parent use the Create Account link on the login page. You will need to supply them with the student's access ID and access password.  



If the parent has forgotten their password, you can do one of two things. 1) click Edit Account under the Web Account Section (screen shot shown in Step A) and change the password. Or 2) Tell the parent to return to the parent portal login page and click on Forgot User Name or Password. 

If a parent does not receive an email to reset their password, send a ticket to the helpdesk at datasystems@bsdvt.org. 

When you reset a password, enter 12345678 as the new password and ask the parent to try logging in again. Tell the parent that they will be prompted to change their password immediately upon login and that their password must be 8 characters long.

If a parent's account is locked from too many login attempts, you will unlock the account using the Account Enabled box.

C. Does the Parent Have Access to the Student's Data

  1. On the parent account go to the Students section. 



  2. See the screenshot above. Notice that Jennifer has no check in that column. When this happens a parent will say "I can see my other students but not Jennifer." This is a clue that the parent does not have permission to Jennifer's account.
  3. Click on pencil icon. To give the parent permission to the student's account, click on the pencil under the Action column.  You will see the screen below that has 3 tabs. 
    Active tab:
    1. Enter the relationship if it is wrong or blank. 
    2. Leave Start and End Dates blank.
    3. Verify and check the appropriate check boxes. This is VERY important as you wouldn't want to show a parent as having custody when they don't. This could cause problems as you can imagine. Same for School Pickup.  Make sure the data is correct in the first 4 check boxes. 
    4. Click the Receives Mail box if this person should receive School Messenger calls and emails.


      The parent is NEVER an Emergency Contact because we need two emergency contacts besides the parents. 
  4. Go to the Data Access tab and check Can Access Student Data And Email box. 



A New Student is not Available in the Parent Portal.

  1. Go to the student record and write down the Access ID and Access Password that is on the Access Accounts page in the student record.
  2. Give this information to the parent.
  3. In the portal, have the parent click on Account Preferences. Then the Students tab.
  4. Select Add.
  5. Have the parent fill in the following information, using the access information for the student.
  6. Once this is done the student will appear at the top left heading with parent's other students.


Other Possible Problems

  • Duplicate Accounts - Sometimes, the parent will have two accounts that need to be consolidated. You may find that some students are on one account and another student is on a different account. See...this document for instructions on consolidating accounts.
  • Sometimes a parent needs to clear their browsing history for it to work. Refer them to this article.
  • In some rare circumstances, the parent has created an account using another person's name but with their own information, including email address. The problems described in this document could cause the problem in this other account, but you won't know that another account exists unless you search by email address.

Escalation Procedures

If you have tried every fix described in this document and still cannot figure it out, send an email to the help desk at datasystems@bsdvt.org.
If the problem has anything to do with not receiving email, send an email to the help desk at datasystems@bsdvt.org.

The data team cannot troubleshoot these problems without a help desk ticket, so please do not email us directly.



    • Related Articles

    • Helping Parents Access Their Student Accounts - Troubleshooting Steps

      The Powerschool Parent Portal is what parents use to register a new student, fill out the annual student update form, change their contact information, and to sign up for afterschool activities. For middle and high school students, the parents can ...

    • Resend the Parent Approval Email

      The Enrollment Email sent to parents when a new student record is approved and imported into SIS is tied is an automated process tied to an update to the U_ECOLLECT_ENROLL.STUDENTEMAIL field. If this email did not initially go out, was lost, or needs ...

    • ECollect and Enrollment School and End Of Year Rollover

      Article regarding Ecollect and the End of the Year. Students in this school need to be inactivated so they will not be rolled over.  Before Rollover Run the PSCB \ Enrolllment\ Enrolllment Search - Student Entry/Exit while in the Enrollment school.  ...

    • Ecollect End of Year Checklist

      Here   The End of Year as seen within the pre-registration portal is on July 1st of each year. After this date, the available options that families see will need to be updated. On July 1, each year, a user with permission to access to District ...

    • How to Download Birth/Residency Documents from Ecollect

      To access documents through Ecollect, follow these steps. Go to the student record and click on Ecollect forms.  Under the Registration heading click on Birth Verification or Residency Verification. See Screenshot 1 below. You can see there was a ...