Creating Schoology Parent User Accounts from PowerSchool SIS

[softedahllc]

I am struggling to create a PowerSchool data export with enough information to set up Schoology Parent Accounts.  I am one year into my role and have not mastered DDE exports by any means.  I need to look for the unique contact user ID and email address, but they are buried in all of the tables.

Has anyone created an export from PowerSchool to run regularly to upload to Schoology for creating and updating parent user accounts?  I am avoiding using the access codes and having parents enroll themselves at all costs.  Managing Schoology is a very small part of my role and I am willing to do extra work to eliminate the requests I would get to walk parents through that process.

First Name
Last Name
An identifier that is unique district-wide (this will be their Unique ID)
A username or email address

If you know a way to associate students and parents with some number in PowerSchool, I have been looking for that, too.  FamilyID is no longer supported I am told, but there must be a way PS associates contacts and students.

Thank you.

[JyotishkaB]

Hi @softedahllc

You can export most student data using Quick export. Using the Data Export Manager, you can export contact information from PowerSchool by choosing PowerSchool Data Sets from the Category pop-up menu, and then Contacts from the Export From the pop-up menu. You can use these Student-Contact-DAT-code-Examples 

You can refer to this article to Import Parent Accounts and this section: Import Parent-Child Associations will give the way to associate students and parents.

[csanchez12]

Hello! I am having the same difficulty and the instructions online do not really explain it the best, is there a way to get a video tutorial of importing parents-student associations?

What am I having the most issues with is how exactly am i organizing the csv file and what unique ID am I supposed to use for both parents and students so that the system can link them all together. Thank you!

[softedahllc]

Sorry, I wasn't clear.

The association needs to be a manual upload, but you can do that.

Here is the article for creating the file to associate each student with parent, and how to upload it to Schoology.

https://uc.powerschool-docs.com/en/schoology/latest/update-parents-school-building-association-enter...

[csanchez12]

Could this also be applied to creating new parent accounts and linking them with their students? And how would I go about this?

[softedahllc]

I am not sure how big your school or district is, but my district has about 2000 students.  I may get a few new students each month, rarely more.  There is a much simpler method of adding new parents and associating them with students individually.

I start by creating a new user in Tools/User Management/Create Users.  I set the school to match their child, assign the parent role, select the radio button "Create account with Username" and complete the boxes.  You can do up to 10 new user accounts at a time, but all will get the same school and role when you create them this way.  You have the option to email the parent their login information as part of creating the users this way, too.  For the Unique ID, I use the PowerSchool DCID assigned the parent and prepend it with "3_".  The 3 indicates the parent role (vs. 2 for teachers and 1 for students).

Once the parent account is created, you can associated the new parent with the student from Tools/Manage Users/ParentsAdvisors (tab).  Filter for the student by entering their last name.  Once you found them, click the Parent button to the right and start typing the full name of the parent you want to associate with them.  A popup will list those users you can associated as a parent with that student.  You can associated more than one parent with them as well.  Some families prefer to have two separate parent accounts created in Schoology and both can be associated with the student in this way.  Make sure and click Save Changes before navigating away from this window.  

As soon as the parent is signed into Schoology and you have associated the parent with the child, they should have access to the student's profile in Schoology.

One additional discovery I have had.  Make sure and look up the four letter District Code and provide this to parents.  Some, but not all, get a prompt to enter this code as they set up the Schoology mobile app on their phone as they associate themselves with your Schoology domain.  In most cases, parents have a pretty easy time of getting it set up, though.

Scott O.

[softedahllc]

At this time, PowerSchool still isn't supporting automatic rostering of parents.  I am creating roster files manually and uploading them in August, then I manually add individual parents of new students to the District for the remainder of the year.  It doesn't make sense that Schoology can be rostered by other SISs but not by its own parent company.  

I upvoted the feature request with the subject "Create parent accounts in PowerSchool SIS Sync" and have asked why this is labeled with "Already Exists" when that is not the case.  If you want to upvote it as well, that would be appreciated.

[csanchez12]

So there is no way to import parent - students associations in Schoology?