Enhanced Parent Portal

Note: EPP currently does not support PowerTeacher Pro based sections. As a result the scores page page fragments may need to be removed to show assignments correctly.

Districts not utilizing the new pages added via EPP should evaluate if the stock PowerSchool SIS features are sufficient. Starting with PowerSchool 9.2 the core application provides controls to disable functionality which is also honored by the Mobile App. These settings can be found under Start Page > School Setup > Parent/Student Access.

Version 5 released! This update includes 3 major improvements:
1. Localization of all the new pages. Future updates should include other language packs as well.
2. Separation of the Parent Demographic Change files into its own plugin. This will allow you to make modifications to that page without future EPP core updates overwriting your changes
3. Database Extension table created for the demographic modify fields included.

Please install as a plugin even if you plan on using custom/web_root for your files. This will allow the localization tags and db extension to install. You may still install the web_root files within the zip to your custom/web_root if that method of customization is desired.

IMPORTANT - PowerSchool no longer allows students to edit their own student record. Because of this 1x Class Registration ONLY works when logged in as a Guardian. Students will have full Class Registration ability if 1x is enabled. I am unsure of what version this happened in, just fyi.

This is a new Parent Portal with more options for student screens.

Allows a school or district to show or hide icons on the public portal. The solution now cleans up the automatic e-mail page options when those options are hidden from normal view and displays a message when the grade & attendance page is hidden. Incorporates Roger Sprik's customization that allows a student to submit course requests just one time.

Stock PS pages that you can control;
Grades and Attendance
Score Detail
Score Detail Setup (Traditional or Traditional and Standards)
Historic Grades
Historic Attendance
Email Notification
Teacher Comments
School Bulletin
Class Registration
Balances
My Calendars

Added pages by EPP that you can control;
Grad Progress
Graduation Progress Setup (Grad proggress or Grad planer)
Demo Update
Honor Roll
Test Scores
Next years schedule (for in building grade changes)
Discipline Log
Access Log
Fees
School Info

V 1.0 - 2.X Changes included in documentation.

V3 (6/30/2011)
PowerSchool 7 Edition

  • Updated ALL pages for PS 7 UI changes
  • Added an option to select at the school level if the Graduation Progress or Graduation Planner is used. By default Graduation Progress is used
  • Added an option to select the use of the stock Scores page or if you would like to use a scores page that that combines Traditional and Standards Assignment scores
  • Custom links on the left hand side in the guardian pages do not have icons at this time if you were looking for them. :)
  • Removed Willington example for initial release

V 3.0.1 (7/4/2011)

  • Thanks to Joshua Schoeneck for modifying the EPP 2.x images to make them PS 7 compatible. Images for the links are now included

V 3.1 (8/16/2011)

  • Updated guardian_header and guardian_header_yui wildcards to correctly redirect on first logon. Also fixed unclosed span tag
  • Updated admin\schoolsetup\portals.html to correct first logon screen
  • Updated eppdialyredirect.txt to correctly redirect on first logon
  • Updated guardian\parentdemographics.html javascript to capture the Guardian name using a change in the FTL file
  • Added guardian\bulletin2.html so users can be directed to the bulletin on logon
  • Added \ftl\guardian\studentList.ftl. Added a hidden input to enable JS to capture the Guardian’s name easier

V 3.1.1 (9/8/2011)

  • Updated \guardian\scores.html fixed un-named if’s that cause all sections assignment scores to show.

V 3.1.2 for PS 7.0.1+ (11/8/2011)

  • Updated guardian_header and guardian_header_yui wildcards. The random icon (demo update, class registration) not showing when it should when switching students should be fixed
  • Updated \guardians\Scores.html added the ability to see the Weighting of final average. (Thanks MT @Shelby for all the help testing)
  • Updated admin\schoolsetup\portals.html to add on/off for the showing of the weighing
  • Updated the following files to correct the “String Key Not Found!” on 7.0.1+
    • Luncbal.html
    • Teachercomments.html
    • Termgrades.html
    • Requests.html
    • Requestform.html
    • Autuemailsetup.html
    • Scores.html

V 3.1.3 for PS 7.0.1+ (11/8/2011)

  • Updated scores.html and tgscores.html. The scores pages were not correctly handling assignments there were not published. This has been corrected

V 3.2 (1/13/2012)

  • All pages were touched in some way
  • Fixed issue where Class Reg’s submit button was off the screen
  • Fixed UI issues that become apparent on several pages after the PS 7.1 upgrade
  • Added the ability to remove the download grades link used for Alleyoop and other websites
  • Added term weighting to the Grades History Score page
  • Added standards grades to Grades History Score page
  • Removed some code from the bulletin2 (first page of day) file that will hopefully clear up the error some people were getting. I never got the error in testing

V 3.3 (2/29/2012)

  • Fixed UI issues on ppstudentasmtlist.html
  • Added link to home.html for previous page if scores page is not disabled
  • Added mobile version of the parent portal. Files in \guardian\mobile\
  • Added mobile detect code to home.html to redirect to mobile version of the portal
  • Updated tgscores.html and scores.html to fix future assignments not showing issue
  • Updated guardian_header and guardian_header_yui files to include version information. New clickable link will be added to the bottom of the page
  • Updated all guardian files to add version information

V 3.3.1 (4/12/2012)

  • Updated redirect code on pages to handle if parent is denied access but student is allowed access
  • Fixed comment/section description wrapping issue
  • Class Request page now shows the next_schools name instead of the current schools name
  • Added a full year list schedule to the bottom of the My Schedule screen

V 3.3.2 (7/30/2012)

  • Updated district\home.html to include 7.2 data validation
  • Updated wildcards to include 7.2 code
  • Added Teachers Comments page back in to prevent students from bypassing the wildcard security

V 4.0 (8/27/2017) BETA

  • Updated pages to be compatible with 8.0+
  • This download is currently not in plugin form!
  • Existing users should remove existing customized versions of /admin/district/home.home and /admin/schoolsetup/home.html. This version adds links using page fragments

V 4.0 (8/28/2014)

  • Plugin Version
  • Uses page fragments on all Pearson pages rather than customizing directly
  • Added page fragments in the /admin/schoolsetup/portals.html page so you can add new on/off switches without customizing the customization. This allows you to take future versions without redoing your customization(s)
  • Replaced /admin/district/home.html and /admin/schoolsetup/home.html with page fragments. If you have older versions you can now remove these custom pages.
  • /admin/students/more2.html now has page fragment to insert link
  • Replaced /admin/students/schedulesetup.html with page fragment. Please remove custom page if it exists from previous version of EPP
  • Replaced /wildcards/guardian_header.txt and /wildcards/guardian_header_yui.txt with page fragments. Please remove custom page if it exists from previous version of EPP.
  • Replaced customized versions of standard PowerSchool pages in guardian portal with page fragments. Please remove custom page if it exists from previous version of EPP.
    • /guardian/autosemailsetup.html
    • /guardian/home.html
    • /guardian/requests.html
    • /guardian/requestform.html
    • /guardian/schoolinformation.html
    • /guardian/scores.html
    • /guardian/teachercomments.html
    • /guardian/termgrades.html

V 4.0.2 (10/21/2014)

  • Fix for the scores page issue in some setups
  • Update page fragments to do different things when 7.x vs 8.x to account for the change from tables to lists

V 4.0.4 (02/12/2015)

  • Fix for the admin student menu issue that caused the link to show up multiple times
  • Add in link that will show in the upper left side of the admin home menu if there are any updates from the parent portal to be acted on. The link will go away once all have been completed.

V 4.0.5 (03/04/2015)

  • Fix for menu items not showing when Account Preferences is not an option for the user
  • Fix for request form. Previously would auto redirect if the checkbox value was True instead of 1. Now checks for either 1 or True.

V 5.0.0 (07/27/2015)

  • Localization tags added to all pages so that schools can localize any EPP page as needed. Future updates should include more language translations as they are being worked on right now. This modification was sponsored by Orleans Public Schools.
  • Fix for 8.3 - My Schedule page. Will not use built in schedule page if 8.3 or later and the EPP schedule page if the version is earlier than 8.3
  • Move demographics modify page into it's own plugin. This will allow you to update that section without future updates of EPP overwriting your changes
  • Migrate demographic update custom fields to a new database extension. All pages were updated to use the DB Extension. This should improve performance.

V 5.0.2 (08/20/2015)

  • Added DB Extension for 1 field in the schedule setup page
  • Update the schedulesetup fragment to use the new db extension field
  • New plugin for demo modify to fix the missing options in the portals menu and to change the fragment on the home page to use the DB Extension to speed it up

V 5.0.3 (09/11/2015) *Demo update only

  • Fixed the localization tag in html pages. Localization code existed, the tag was incorrect (thanks to cboyle for pointing it out)
  • Remove /admin/javascript/parentdemo.js
  • Update /admin/students/parentdemochange.html to have javascript inside. Update fields and buttons to use cleaner methods. Previously had not updated how the page works since v3. (thanks to vinit for pointing out how old the code was)
  • Update /admin/students/studentpages/parentdemochange.html to properly include the frn (thanks to cboyle for pointing it out)

V 5.0.4 (09/29/2015) *Demo update only

  • Fixed the approve buttons on the admin side
  • Added custom insertion points in /admin/students/parentdemochange.html and /guardian/parentdemographics.html. Insertion point is called pdsdemochange.footer. Thanks to those at PSUG-MI 2015 for the suggestion.

V 5.0.5 (10/25/2017) *Demo update only

  • Fixed performance issues by making home page query more efficient.
  • Removed pre 8.0 support
Sponsor: 
Orleans Public Schools

Customization:

Contributor: 
Brian Andle
Jason Treadwell
Matt Freund
Roger Sprik
Images: 
Plugin: 
Y
CPM Import Friendly: 
Y

Comments

School A (Middle School) has Hide standards grades in Parent Access unchecked.
School B (Elementary School) has Hide standards grades in Parent Access checked.
Parent signs in to the EPP and looks at his middle school kid. The Standards Tab appears in Grades and Attendance but the students has no standards grades and the parent gets a messaging saying so. However, when the parent clicks over on his elementary student, the standards grades are all there for the parent to see, even though the setting was checked to hide the standards grades in Parent Access.

Similar problem with Course Requests (class registrations). The parent can see and change course requests, even if a school has denied access by going to his student that does have access first.

Thanks,

Sarah Chambers
TRECA

Yes, we are having that same problem here at New Paltz, particularly with the Course Requests (class registrations) screens. It only happens when there is more than 1 student linked to the account, and at least 1 school has the feature enabled. Basically it makes the "hide" feature useless. :-(

Is there any way to store the Username of the Parent who last submitted a demographic change instead of their Firstname Lastname?

Is there any way to get the Guardian Username instead of Firstname Lastname to store to the parent_wholastchanged field?

We enabled this feature in the parent portal. Now parents who have multiple students in their accounts have access to screens they should not be able to see. It is like a back door into screens that parents should not have access to, but do because another student in their account does.

For instance, we opened the student registration for students entering 10, 11 & 12. Because a family has a student in those particular grades, they were able to click on that screen, then click on their other student who was not in one of those grades, find their screen, and register even though it was not open.

Same thing happened on Standards Tab, we closed the portals for standards which we use at the elementary level. However, because a parent had that Standards tab for a middle school student, they were able to click on it and see their elementary student grades.

Please advise.

Thanks,

Sarah Chambers
TRECA
schambers@treca.org

Same problem here at New Paltz Schools....

Hi. Has anyone experienced duplicate menus showing up down the left hand side? This also causes our content, which appears to be vertically centered in the frame on the right, to be much lower down, sometimes below where the user will see without scrolling. If anyone knows how to at least get our content to be vertically on the top of this frame, it would be very helpful. Thanks!
Avron

Did you try different browsers to see if this is browser specific?

Jason Treadwell
Custom Solutions Specialist
jason@powerdatasolutions.org
www.powerdatasolutions.org

Yep. Happens on all browsers that I looked at Safari, Chrome & Firefox. Any ideas?

I tried different browsers but still getting this problem. Any ideas for where I can look?

I am trying to add another icon and it just is not working. Are there instructions on how to do this? I copied the #btn statement and the if statement for the school info and made minor changes to the names (changed all "school info" to "school info test" for names but left the pref part of the if test checking the school info test). I have uploaded all these wildcard files and the icon and page with the school test name. I also submitted customization but it will not show up. What am I missing????

Linda

I used the tip above to put an alert on the home screen when a parent has made changes to demographics. It slowed down the loading of my start page to approximately 6 sec per load. Has anyone else encountered anything like this? I've removed the indicator for the time being because the slow-down was unbearable.

Thanks!

--Great Doubt is the Beginning of Great Enlightenment

We are running Enhanced Parent Portal v 3.3.2. I have been asked by administration to add a page for Progress Reports. I was able to successfully change the Parent Portal Settings screen on the Admin side. I stole the 'Balances' slot and renamed it 'Trimester Progress Reports'. I don't know which pages I need to modify and with what in order for the page to show up in the navigation on the Parent Portal. Can you provide some information as to how to go about doing this? It appears that it is not easy!!
Thank you!
Chris

I am currently using the enhanced parent portal which has been wonderful. This year I have added a custom online enrollment icon/link to the parent portal and it is working fine when a parent logs in. I was trying to make changes to the "portals.html" page so I can turn it off until we are ready for parent to enroll their students for the upcoming school year. The name shows up in the Parent Portal Settings page and I can choose ALL to checkmark all schools. The issue is when I checkmark it, it still shows up in the parent portal when a parent logs in. Any help would be appreciated even if I need to pay for help. I desperately need this to work before next week.

Please help. It is not working now. We opened online enrollment and now it won't let me turn on the demographic update. Need help ASAP.

Gwen Gordon

Nevermind I got it working.

I see what coding needs to be added to the admin/home page by the notes above, but where should it be placed on the page?

Nevermind I got it working again. Pushed the panic button too soon.

I would like to put a flag on the admin page to signal when a parent has made a change on the demographic update page. Will someone share the code and where to put it.
Thanks,
Susie Black

A parent pointed this out to me today...

When the 'Graduation Progress' icon is clicked, the planselect.html page displays. There are no options to select (which I find odd to begin with), so we just click the submit button. The page then refreshes to /guardian/academicplanner-pkg/planprogress.html.action?nav=gh Of course, that page does not exist, so we get a 404 error.

If memory serves me correctly, last year the planselect.html page on the guardian side did not display any selectable options, but when the submit button was clicked, it did display the correct plan progress page.

Any suggestions on how to correct this?

We are on PS 7.8 and use the EPP. Have there been any upgrades to it? We are trying to use the SSO feature with Pearson and Schoolnet Plus. I've modified the guardian_header.txt and guardian_header_yui.txt files to have the link to Pearson Courses but it won't work right. If we turn off customizations the Pearson link works. I was checking the differences between the pages (original and custom) and they are huge. Any suggestions appreciated. Thank you, judi carlson

Hi - did you ever figure this out? We just went to 7.10 and the Schoolnet link will not show no matter what I do...THank you!!

thanks for the Grade History in parent portal. but when I click the grades from previous year. it's said " Score Information Not Available". how could we see all assignment form the grades

Is there a way to report attendance on a transcript for each year a student was in High School?

Something like the following will give you the results for each year on a single line. I use this on my transcripts (object reports):
2013/2014 School Year:~(*dabs;8/1/10;6/30/11;format=##0.0;true)
2012/2013 School Year:~(*dabs;8/1/11;6/30/12;format=##0.0;true)
2011/2012 School Year:~(*dabs;8/1/12;6/30/13;format=##0.0;true)
2010/2011 School Year:~(*dabs;8/1/13;6/30/14;format=##0.0;true)

Of course you can edit the actual dates used on each line to correspond with the school year you want to use in your report.
I have it labeled

Karen Jardel
Student Information System Coordinator
Ocean Schools

Has anyone else upgraded to 7.8.2 yet?
I did it over the weekend and now the EPP doesn't work correctly.
I am unable to use the System->Portal to turn icons on/off.
I am unable to use the Demographics part of the EPP.

UGH.... wish I could go back to earlier version!

I have tried what I know to do, but since upgrading to 7.8.2 I cannot get the icons to show on the Parent Portal anymore.
They are set at the default and I cannot change them using the Page at School->Parent Portal Settings.
Anyone else having this issue?

Did you reinstall the customization?

Has anyone figured out how to attach a report card to the parent portal? Ideally it would be a link to a pdf. Could it be something like the way photos work? I guess one of the problems is splitting a report card run into individual pdfs with student number. Any suggestions appreciated.

Hi Karian...

What I have done is to use PDF pro to split the PDF generated into individuals, renaming them to the student_number.pdf, after that I put these file on the server in the custom folder /images/pdf
Then putting a link on the home.html page to the pdf file by using this link.
Download report card

Hope this helps.

Vinit Pathela

Vinit, would you be willing to write up some instructions on how do this? I would be very interested in this as my Superintendent is pushing for something like this.

Thanks
Debbie Sanford

I too would like to learn how to link to a student-specific PDF inside the parent portal.

However....there are companies that offer an email solution, where it will email any report you want out of PowerSchool (i.e. a report card) in PDF format. Example that I saw one PowerSchool district using: http://powerschool.alertsolutions.com/applications/

Hello everyone
Is there a way to add a SchoolNet link into the public area of the Enhanced Parent Portal customization?
Thank you in advance
Oscar

Hi - I need this also...did you figure it out? Thank you!

I upgraded to PS 7.8.0 over the summer, now the bulletin in the parent portal isn't working. I'm not sure if this is the cause, but it seems likely. Is this happening to anyone else, and if so, do you have a fix? Also, the label of the page that shows on the tab on Chrome, and perhaps up on top of other browsers, says "String key not found!"...

I have added this to the subs.home page to show the room number and the red/green dot. Sometimes the page works just fine...other times they get the HTTP Status 500 error for "arrayindexoutofbounds". Any help would be appreciated. I added this right after the course name.

~([sections]room)
~(cachedteacher.recordlink)

Thanks!!

Julie Payne
Falmouth Public Schools

We upgraded to 7.8.2 and applied the EPP 3.3.2 and now the "show detail" on grades won't work. Anyone else having this problem?

Update on this - I applied the scores.html file from the previous version and it works. When I did a differences on the files the only thing I saw was in the 3.3.2 version they use the ABS value of the termid and also on line 105 in my editor in the current version it reads, '||to_char(B,'~[datetext:mmddyyyy')||' and the old version was, '||to_char(B,'MM/DD/YYYY')||'

Any way you can Exclude a course from the Parent Portal like Excluding from Report Cards?

Thank You,
Margie Olinger

We are on PS 7.9.1. Does anyone have an update on whether or not the EPP is working? I read a couple comments about it being broken at 7.8

I'm hesitant to install it without knowing if it will break the portal.

Thanks!

We have not had an issue with the EPP and 7.8 or 7.9.

You were right. I just installed EPP and the only issue is that some of the icons don't display. I think I might need to add them manually. Otherwise, thanks for the heads up that it is working!

I'm trying to get request screens to work with customizations enabled. (They work with customizations disabled.)

Steps 1 and 2 have been completed.

When I try to do step 3, there isn't a field by that name (Sched_AllowRequests) to modify. Has the field name changed? If so, what is the new field name?

3) Under each student, there should be a checkbox that says "Allow student to submit requests" under the Scheduling Setup page for the student. This field must be checked. You can mass fill this by selecting all the kids in a school or selecting a specific grade, clicking on Student Field Value. The Field is Sched_AllowRequests. Turn turn it on set the field value to a 1. Turn turn it off clear the field value.

Marcia Philbrick

When I try to do the modification to the student field, sched_allowrequests, that field isn't there. I also can't find anything on the Student Scheduler Setup screen to check to allow students to submit requests.

The request screens work if I turn off customizations. They do not appear and the error message appears if the customizations are turned on.

Marcia Philbrick

sched_allowrequests is a custom field. You have to create it and populate on at least one student before it appears in field lists. Two ways to do that 1) submit a page with that field on it, 2) use Custom Fields and Screens / Student Fields.
BUT ... On 7.10 when we used choice 1), it created two fields: one with the name we expected and one with a name designed for the new custom field management that is coming.

Hi:

We've just installed this and for most part, are very happy (and impressed!). One small problem:

I can't get the parentdemographics.html page to display. The link doesn't appear in the menu, nor will the page load if I try to enter it directly in the browser address line. I just get the Information Not Available error message.

Any suggestions?

I'm having the same issue.
Anyone could assist?

Thanks!

Is there any way to have just S1 and/or S2 list? I have Q1,Q2,Q3,Q4,S1,S2 list.
If I could choose which to list, that would be ideal. I am guessing I may be able to add to the code to make that happen but it is beyond what I have figured out.

Has anyone migrated their server to the newest version and upgraded their custom fields? I am wondering if this will break things?

We currently have an outside fee service called Acorn from Rycor. They installed a link on our parent portal that takes parents to their site. When I installed the EPP it removed this link. The IT people at Rycor cannot figure out how to make it work with EPP. They are telling me just to remove this customization - but I don't really want to. I love the EPP. Any suggestions?

~kdunford

I have no clue how the Acorn software put the link in place, but here are a couple guesses assuming you are using a current version of PowerSchool. EPP uses modified pages for the guardian_header.txt and guardian_header_yui.txt files. These files are based on older versions of PowerSchool and the newer pages might have some code needed by the Acorn software. If they used the leftnav.footer insertion point to add the link:

<div id="cust-leftnav-footer">~[cust.insertion_point:leftnav.footer]</div>

you could add that in the modified EPP pages without hurting the functionality of the EPP. It would go just after the </li> and before the ~[if.isguardian][else] near the bottom of the page. Also, the current "Original Page" has plugin related code just above that same </li> tag:

~[if.isstudent]~[pluginnavlinks:student.left_nav][/if]
~[if.isguardianAndSSOEnabled]~[pluginnavlinks:guardian.left_nav][/if]

that may be what you need if they installed it as a plugin. I don't think the above additions will hurt anything, and they just might solve the problem. If adding the the code does not solve the problem, you could insert the link yourself using the insertion point once you have it on the page.

Greg Myers
Trinity School of Durham and Chapel Hill

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