This guide is aimed at MIS users and explains how to set up and manage the Parents Portal. 

Features include:

Pupil lunches – The ability to record pupil’s meal choices for the week, up to three weeks in advance.

Payments – Allows parents to make payments for specific trips, clubs or items, top up school meal balances and see their payment history.

Attendance – Shows attendance for the year as well as giving parents the ability to log absences.

Reports – The ability to download pupil reports.

Achievements – The ability to see pupil’s recent milestones.

School information – The ability to see school contact information.

Messages – The ability to message teachers or the school office.

Profile – This is the parents profile. When they make changes to contact details they will also be notified by email.

Behaviours - positive behaviour logs only

Many of these features are not set as default and have to be enabled by you. See below to find out how.

Getting started

A step by step guide

1. Configure the portal for your parents using the parent portal in Admin > School Options > Parent Access.

If using the Parent Portal to take payments, you will also need to ensure your Payment Options have Accept Stripe  switched on and include a linked Stripe account.

Please note, any future changes to Parent settings will force parents to be logged out in order for the changes to take effect.

2. Ensure all parents have an email address.

You can check who has one on file by going to Pupil List and adding the column Parent Email. This will bring back the email address from the top priority contact.

Should you wish to see all email addresses you can add the All Contact Information column.

You can also see a contact focused report in Messaging > Parent List.

To add missing email addresses for parents that require Portal access go to Pupil Record > Family tab > Click Edit next to the contact and add the email address to the Email field.

3. Tick Online Access for any parent you wish to be able to access the Portal .

You can either do this by going into each child’s Family tab and ticking the Online Access box or, you can do it en-masse through Admin > Advanced > Pupils > Set Online Access (see screenshot below)

Pick the pupils whose parent you’d like to grant access to using the Filter, then either set Access for First Priority or Access for Parental Responsibility.

4. Send Parent Portal Invite to Contacts. You can do this en masse through Admin > Advanced > Parents > Send Parent Portal Invite to Contacts.

This routine will identify any contact that has a valid email, is linked to a pupil, has online access set and has yet to register for the portal.

Alternatively, individual invites can be sent through Messaging > Parent List using the Email Sign up button next to the listed parent (this option also appears when searching for parents):

Both options will send an email with a link to choose a password and also instructions detailing how to navigate to the portal.