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

I am having the same error as parchmank and am on version 8.2.1. It works with customizations off.

Make sure the field Sched_AllowRequests=1
If you have this field equal to True or Y or Yes you will get the message "There are no course requests for this student.
Hope this helps.

Currently going through the notions on our test server, deleting the old Enhanced parent portal and installing the updated plugin version. If I bring up a student who has parent_verify set to 1, "Demographic's Verify" appears on the left side over and over again under the Information section. you can view it here. https://imageshack.us/i/ey0PXhVUp

I've narrowed the issue down to more2.epp.leftnav.footer.txt but have a feeling theres no issue with that file, maybe a out of date jquery file or script? Any help would be appreciated, thanks.

Adam

The 4.0.2 version had that issue. I left off the command to stop once it found it's spot. The 4.0.4 version has it and I've verified its working. Not sure if you already had downloaded the 4.0.2 version as I posted the 4.0.4 version just a few minutes before your comment.

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

I'll update our system with 4.0.4, thanks!

I used the more2.epp.leftnav.footer.txt from version 4.0.0 and no longer have the issue.

Thanks

Was curious if anybody else has noticed that when trying to print pages from the EPP, it doesn't fit it all in a concise single page like it did before I put on the customization. Is there a fix for this or is it just something that our parents have to deal with? I understand that you can change some settings on your own machine/browser to make it small enough to print on a single page, but somehow this wasn't an issue until I put on the EPP.

Like it says in the subject, it's not a huge issue, the functionality of it definitely outweighs the printing issues, but if it's an easy fix, it's something I would like to do for the couple parents we've had call in and voice concerns.

figured it out

Good morning,
I have added the EPP using the Plugin and it is working.

I was under the impression that when we used Standards Grades that parents could click on the grade and it would link to the assignments that were used to assess that grade...is this true? And if so...how do I get that to work.

Thanks you for your time and efforts creating this feature and keeping it updated...it is really great!

Bobbi Pineau
bpineau@cesd73.ca

I have installed EPP and am on PS version 8.2. My HS would like to restrict honor roll in parent portal to show only the current year. Is there a way to do that?

Since upgrading to 8.2.1 the icons for EPP no longer show when a student logs in to the public portal. They do show up when a parent logs in but not a student. I did notice that Pearson changed the guardian header wildcards in 8.2.1 but I cannot see the issue. Any ideas?

Linda

Linda,

Check my post earlier for a possible fix. http://www.powerdatasolutions.org/comment/2016#comment-2016

Thank you! That seems to have fixed the issue. Not sure why it worked prior to the upgrade but it is working now. Again, thank you.

Can you add other custom fields to the parent demographic update change page - for example - we added marital status for parents - can that be on the parent portal change page?

Tara Jean Quaadman

Hi,
I downloaded 4.04 and not seeing the documentation.

Ken Clay - Clearwater Schools USD 264

IMPORTANT - PowerSchool no longer allows students to edit their own student record.

What about guardians? Is there a way around it?
We created a custom page for the parents to put in information, similiar to the Demographic Update, but without the verify feature but we cannot get it to work due to a block on guardian accounts or the portal itself.

Yes, you can have parents/guardians submit data from the Parent Portal.

Here is some info on the hidden handshake required:

Forms can be submitted to any valid page in PowerSchool. Records will not be saved unless a hidden input
value is included in the web form...
Admin Portal: input name=”ac” value=”prim” type=”hidden” /
PowerTeacher Portal: input name=”ac” value=”webasmt” type=”hidden” /

My class registration page comes up as "There are no course requests for this student". I have turned off customizations to ensure that things are set up correctly on the scheduling side, and it works perfectly. I also took a suggestion about turning it to Edit x1 and Full with no luck. Any help would be appreciated!

I am currently having the same issue. I have the latest version.

We are having the same problem - "There are no course requests for this student". Turning customization off, everything works.

You have to do a mass field change on Sched_allowrequests to 1. Typically is it located under each student on the scheduling set up page. My box was missing so I had to add it back in.
For those of you wondering, in CPM under Admin/Students/Schedulesetup.html, I added the following line to get the box back:

~[text:psx.htmlc.admin_students.schedulesetup.allow_student_to_submit_requests1]

Of course we converted our custom fields so that is why is says U_Students....etc.

Another work around.....after selecting Class Registrations, change the URL to say /requestform/ instead of /requests/ and it should take you too the form page to make the selections and seems to save correctly from there.

JJ

Only when I have turned off customizations will the Requests link show. If I change the URL as @jatkings states, screen renders just fine. When refreshing screen, the Request link flashes quickly and disappears. Can't have hundreds of 8th graders doing that. Any recommendation? Using 8.2.1 and EPP 4_0_5.

Other issues: (related or helpful clues?)
District Parent Portal Settings link also not showing, but individual schools are...
I have two MySchedule screens on student guardian screen.
Next Year's schedule displays whether checked or not in Parent Portal Settings

Kent
--
Kent Sweigart

This did not work for me, but turning off the EPP plugin did work.

The main function for us of using the EPP is to turn off/on access to some page so I am simply using a page fragment with the following script to do that for now by commenting out the pages I want to show.

<!-- Begin Navigation Modification Fragment Insertion -->
<script>
//Remove unwanted navigation from guardian pages
$j(document).ready(function(){
$j('#btn-gradesAttendance').remove();
$j('#btn-gradesHistory').remove();
// $j('#btn-attendanceHistory').remove();
$j('#btn-emailNotification').remove();
$j('#btn-teacherComments').remove();
$j('#btn-schoolBulletin').remove();
// $j('#btn-classRegistration').remove();
$j('#btn-myCalendars').remove();
// $j('#btn-schoolInformation').remove();
});
</script>
<!-- End Navigation Modification Page Fragment Insertion -->

Greg Myers
Trinity School of Durham and Chapel Hill

Following our move to the EPPv4.0.5 plug-in in our new PS8 environment we have been experiencing trouble with extreme slowness when we navigate around in the District Office screens. Speed returns to normal when you select a school.

Pearson has identified the "admin_nav_menu_left_css.epp.leftnav.footer.txt" file in the EPP customization as the culprit. For now I have removed the file and the amount of time to navigate screens returns to normal.

Has anyone else experienced this? Any help you can offer with repairing that file would be greatly appreciated.

It is that script (admin_nav_menu_left_css.epp.leftnav.footer.txt) that checks the parent_verify field - at district level it has to run through all the students to check their field value to see if any demo changes have been requested. At a school level it runs through a much smaller number of students and isn't noticeable.

I removed that file and created a new file in the admin folder called:

home.epp.content.footer.txt

I placed the code below into that file which will display a notice by the search box on the home page if at a school level, not district. Works fine now.

~[if#isSchoolIf.is.a.school]
<script>
$j("[href^='/admin/storedselections/home.html?table=1&selection=adminhome']").after('~[tlist_sql;select CASE WHEN sum(ps_customfields.getstudentscf(id,'parent_verify'))> 0 THEN '<strong><a href="students/home.html?selectstudent=parent_verify=1"><font color="#FF0000">&nbsp;&nbsp;*** Demographic Updates Requested ***</font></a></strong>' END alink from students where schoolid=~(curschoolid)]~(alink;t)[/tlist_sql]');
</script>
[/if#isSchoolIf]

Has this been fixed in the download? I removed admin_nav_menu_left_css.epp.leftnav.footer.txt too and it's better. We don't use the demo change so I didn't do anything else.

I got rid of admin_nav_menu_left_css.epp.leftnav.footer.txt and did "Rebuild custom page links" and I still have the district start page loading slowly the FIRST time you go there each day. Am I missing something???

Julie Payne
Falmouth Public Schools

I just installed the EPP, but demo update does not display as an option in the parent portal. I saw some mention that it must be enabled for students as well as parents, but I cannot for the life of me figure out where to do that. Thanks for any clues.

Turns out I needed to run
Special Operations > Rebuild Custom Page Links
before I was able to see the custom demographics screen in the admin tool. (Thank you, Jason!)

The guide I downloaded did not include a complete map of where to find the student level enable settings. I found them by opening a student, click "custom screens" in the left pane, then clicking "Custom Demo Page"

Thx PDS - you guys are awesome!!!!!!!

Thanks,
Hoyt Whittington
hoytw@consolidaterartsllc.com

I have installed EPP 4.0.5. Most everything seems to be working now with the exception of the Balance Icon and screen. Any thoughts where I should look? I deleted any lunchbal.html file that was customized. Thank you Judi

Is there any way to show the cummulative info screen in EPP? Or is there a way to only show the current year Honor Roll status in EPP as opposed to all years?

When I log onto my parent portal account to see my children's information (I am in Google Chrome or Firefox) and I click on the Term Grade, the page that renders shows the Class Score Detail and Assignment Scores. However, in the live portal, the words "Class Score Details," "Teacher Comments" (and the actual comments), "Section Description," "Special Weighting" and some other items underneath, all seem to show up vertically. I am not sure where to correct that.
Strangely enough, when I view my parent portal in my test server, it renders correctly. Can you advise as to where I can look and perhaps what my correction should be?
Thanks a bunch.

The Demographic Update is not showing up in the parent portal...Can someone tell me if I am missing a step?

I have EPP version 4 installed. I'd like to go to plugin version 4.02 or greater. My parent demo change.html in students and parent demographics.html in guardian are highly customized. If I install a plugin, it will overwrite the pages? How do I re-install the my 2 customized pages? Maybe I don't understand plugins--I'm assuming that I can't customize a page installed as a plugin.
Thanks,
Susie

After enabling the plugin on PS 8.2.1, I don't have a checkbox for COMMENTS on the Parent Portal Settings page (or for that matter a row for it either: instead of seeing rows for Attendance, Email, Comments as in the documentation, I see Attendance, Email, Bulletin (with a blue line around it).

Everything else appears to be working fine.

We would like to change the fields parents are allowed to update on the 'Demographic Update' page. I have created the new student fields (hidden). What other pages will need modified to keep the 'links' accurate for all pages?
Thanks,
Jessie

Hi,

I disable and removed the enhanced parent portal but my home screen for guardians is not showing the lunch balance. How do I fix this?

Cheryl

Does anyone have a problem with parents who say when they click on the Grades and attendance the screen says there is no information available at this time but, if the parent selects any of the other screens (attendance, announcements...) then goes back to grades and attendance the information is there?

I'm dealing with something similar. EPP 4.0.5 on PS 8.3.

Parent Portal Settings set to not display Grades and Attendance, but the parents can still see the Quick Lookup under Grades and Attendance(even though it's not in the Left Menu) by clicking on the PowerSchool Branding logo at the top left. It takes them to it. It's almost as if the code for checking if the preferences are set to allow Grades and Attendance are simply being ignored.

I resorted to using an older version of the webroot\guardian\home.html to make it work. This breaks the ability to click on the School Bulletin link, but that's the lesser of two evils for me as the Administration likes to have Grades disabled while teachers work on them for final grade storage.

*figured it out. Thank you.

I can't get lunch balances OR fees to appear in the portal. What did you fix?

Thanks,

-- MB

I have an odd situation where the Demographic Change button will not show for the parents of students in certain grades. It will show for Grade 3, but not PreK-2...all in the same school. I have tried all the suggestions in previous posts. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Will this work with PS version 9?

Dave Brubaker

Yes, does anyone currently have EPP running on version 9 and would like to comment on its performance? I do not have EPP yet and am running version 8 and want to know the best order to roll the two out. I want to do both this summer, if possible.

We encountered a BIG slowdown in accessing our admin pages after installing this plugin.
We finally determined that this was due to the tlist_sql that determines if the "Address Verify" link should be enabled or not -- it was reading through EVERY student record to make the determination. This was especially an issue at the District Office level where it was taking nearly a minute to display the home page.

To fix it, we added a check for ENROLL_STATUS = 0 (since we're really interested only in the active students for this link) to the WHERE clause of the SQL Select statement in "/wildcards/admin_nav_menu_left_css.epp.leftnav.footer.txt":

OLD CODE:

enable = ~[tlist_sql;select CASE WHEN sum(ps_customfields.getstudentscf(id,'parent_verify'))>0 THEN 1 else 0 END alink from students where schoolid LIKE CASE WHEN ~(curschoolid) = 0 THEN '%' ELSE to_char(~(curschoolid)) END]~(alink;l)[/tlist_sql];

NEW CODE (even faster than my original post [7/16/2015]):

enable = ~[tlist_sql;select case when exists(select null from students s1 where s1.enroll_status = 0 and (~(curschoolid) = 0 or s1.schoolid = ~(curschoolid)) and ps_customfields.getstudentscf(s1.id,'parent_verify')=1) then 1 else 0 end alink from students s where rownum = 1 and (~(curschoolid) = 0 or s.schoolid = ~(curschoolid))]~(alink;l)[/tlist_sql];

Has there been any thought given to this? I'm curious because I'd love to be able to easily add fields to the Parent Demographics Update and Confirmation pages. I need to have this exact customization up and running in one week for enrollment and my district requires quite a few additional fields be available for updating.

(Yes, this project was dropped in my lap by an administrator who knew perfectly-well that my summer project schedule was already too full!)

Has anyone tackled this or are you folks at PDS looking into it? Love this package; you guys saved my bacon many times...I knew I could slip the word "bacon" into my post!

Randy Rowe
Sr. Applications Analyst
Topeka Public Schools
rrowe@tps501.org

We currently have EPP installed but are not utilizing the Demo Update. We are interested in limiting the fields that parents can update via Parent Portal. Can this be done through coding in the current setup. If so, how would I go about doing that?
Thank you!

Answered my own question. Took away input boxes on the parentdemographic.html page and added **Address Changes can only be made at your school site with a valid proof of residence.** in their place.
Thanks,

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