Nov. 24th, 2015
Background
When Edsby is deployed in school districts it almost always sources information about parents, guardians and contacts and the students they are “connected” to from the district’s Student Information System (SIS). This automates the generation of parent/guardian accounts, and these accounts provide a very convenient and effective way for parents and guardians to follow their child’s progress at school.
In some circumstances a school board may wish to connect additional people in to follow a specific child’s progress just as if they were a legal parent/guardian. This person may be a social worker, education monitor, or some similar non-board employee responsible for tracking a child’s progress. In Edsby the closest role to describe this is “Guardian” so it will be used to provide this kind of access.
One way to accomplish this is to simply add the details for the Guardian into the SIS as an additional person with access to records for the child in question. Edsby will then create an account for the Guardian and establish the linkage to the student on the very next sync with the SIS.
If it isn’t feasible to add the Guardian into the SIS for privacy or security reasons then a “parent account” can be set up for the Guardian through a manual CSV import process. This Tech Note describes this process.
With either approach the special Guardian will appear just like a Parent or Guardian with access to records. They will be able to see a child’s classes, upcoming assessments, assessment results, homework, etc. Also, teachers will see them listed as a “parent/guardian” and communications to “all parents” of a class will include the special Guardian.
Technical Approach
Two CSV files are used to provide the pertinent information to Edsby. These files are:
StudentContactPersonal: This file provides a list of all the non SIS based “Guardians” and includes information such as their name, email address, physical address, phone number, etc.
StudentContactRelationship: This fie provides the information to govern the linkage between a Guardian and a particular student. It includes a reference to the Guardian, a reference to the student, and details about the relationship.
Details about each file are provided below, and sample files will be provided to districts that wish to use this approach. These files will be maintained by technical staff at the school district. The very first import of these files should be performed by Edsby support staff who will inspect the data format and verify the import is working correctly. Subsequent imports could be performed by district staff with an Edsby role of “District IT Administrator” or simply sent to Edsby support staff for them to import for the district.
StudentContactPersonal File
This file provides the personal information for the Guardian. Mandatory fields have their ID in bold text and are italicized. Fields available are listed below.
Note that you have the option to provide an initial password in this file, however if you do that you need to remember to blank that field out for a specific person the next time you run this file otherwise the provided password field will overwrite whatever new password the person created for themselves. In general it is “safer” to set the password once using the Edsby user interface so that a file import doesn’t reset a password.
GUID: Globally Unique ID (usually set to the individual’s email address but could be any unique string)
Prefix: Designation such as “Mr.” or “Ms.”
FirstName: “Frank”
MiddleName: “C.” or “Christopher”
LastName: “Jones”
Suffix: “III”
PreferredName: “Frankie”
StreetAddress: “10 Pleasant St.”
City: “Toronto”
StateProv: “ON”
Country: “Canada”
PostalCode: “M4L 1C1”
Email: “frankcjones@mymail.com”
Telephone: “416.555.3232”
WorkPhone: “416.555.4433”
MobilePhone: “416.555.6677”
FaxNumber: “416.555.7788”
SchoolID: (optional; can be set by StudentContactRelationship file; nice to have here as well if available)
StudentGUID: (leave blank since this will be set by StudentContactRelationship file)
UserID: “frankcjones@mymail.com” (generally this is set to the person’s email address)
Password: “xyz123” (this can be set via the Edsby admin interface).
NoSync: “1” (this means this record will not be synchronized with the SIS)
StudentContactRelationship File
This file provides the information linking a student (that must already exist in Edsby) to the Guardian. Mandatory fields have their ID in bold text and are italicized. Fields available are listed below.
ParentGUID: frankcjones@mymail.com (Globally Unique ID of the Guardian)
StudentGUID: “654321” (Globally Unique ID of the student)
SchoolID: “KPRAVCI” (the schoolID of the student as defined in your SIS)
Relation: “Guardian”
AccessToRecords: “Yes” (must be “Yes” for this person to be able to view student data)
ContactSequence: “3”
DisciplinaryContact: “Yes”
EmergencyContact: “Yes”
HasCustody: “No”
LegalGuardian: “No”
LivesWith: “No”
PickupRights: “No”
PrimaryCareProvider: “No”
Managing Accounts
Once these special “Guardian” accounts are set up they can be managed like any other parent account. If the account needs to be turned off that can easily be done at the school or district level by going to the Parent Details page for this user and pressing the “Suspend Account” button.
If over time there is a need to retain a Guardian account but drop a link to a specific student that can be done by Edsby support personnel. If this is a “high runner” activity then an interface to enable district IT administrators to do this can be provided.