Parent PIN Function
- Zaac Totonjian (Unlicensed)
- Yolande (Deactivated)
- Educonnex Support
Parent PINs are a great way to make sure that parents have consented to their child's selections, without requiring signed paperwork to be returned to the school.
In this page, we'll look at what you need to do to set this up.
Where using Parent PINs is appropriate
Firstly, it's important to remember that SSO is a student-centric system. This means that the completion of the Selection Process is designed so that the Student logs in to SSO, and makes choices based on what they're interested in, then Parents can concur with the Selections that have been made.
If you've chosen to use the Parents' email addresses in the field marked as the StudentEmail in your Student Data, or you've given the login and password details directly to the Parents, then ParentPIN functionality will be redundant.
If you've used the Students' email addresses in the field marked as the StudentEmail in your Student Data, or you've given the login and password details to the students, then ParentPIN will be suitable, and you may decide to use this instead of, or in addition to, getting a Selections Report signed and returned to the school.
How it works
When the Student is completing the Selection Process and they come to this function, the system will ask for a Parent PIN to be entered.
It is then required that a matching code be entered (which you have uploaded in your Student Data) then click ‘Validate' to check it matches the Parent PIN what you have in the system.
If you have a Parent PIN function in the Selection Process, it forms part of the minimum requirements for completion of the Student’s Selections.
Even if all other requirements have been met, SSO will not consider the Student compliant with minimum requirements if the Parent PIN has not been successfully validated.
If the Parent PIN is correctly validated, the display will confirm validation.
If an incorrect PIN is entered more than 9 times, the PIN will need to be reset by a Staff member with the appropriate access (Co-ordinator or Home Teacher).
Parent PINs (if utilised) are considered to be a final sign off, so if anything at all is changed in the Selection (whether it's adding/removing a Selection, entering/removing text, or even changing the Preference order of the Selections), the Parent PIN will drop out, and will need to be re-entered once the changes are completed.
Getting the Parent PIN into SSO
Go to Checklist > Year X > Students
Parents do not have their own profiles (like students have) - it is an adjunct of the Student's profile.
If you're uploading it, it should be in a column titled 'ParentPIN' and should be on the same row as the student that it relates to.
When you upload the information into SSO, it will not show the PIN you've uploaded - this is for security purposes. Parents cannot retrieve their ParentPIN from the login page like students can. For this reason, it is the responsibility of the school to distribute these PINs to the parents and is best done by using a mail merge (Tip: Include the parent email address on the spreadsheet with the student information. SSO will discard it as long as you don't use one of the recognised column headings for it, and you'll be able to use that same spreadsheet, including that field, for a mail merge).
For more information regarding generating random PINs, refer to Students in this help documentation.
Remember that if you are using the RANDBETWEEN function in Excel to generate random PINs, it is really important that you remember to copy and paste values (not just paste), otherwise your random PINs will keep changing, meaning your parents will have PINs that are wrong (and you know you'll be hearing from them).
If you want to add a ParentPIN to an existing individual entry:
Go to: Checklist > Year X > Students
Find the entry you want to update with a ParentPIN. Depending on the size of the other fields, you may need to scroll right to see the Edit/View button, which you need to select.
Type into the field what you would like to add. If you're overwriting an existing entry, you will see Specified displayed in the field, which you can type over the top of. When you've finished, select Save.
Inserting the function into the selection process
Go to Checklist > Year X > Selection Process
Entering a Parent PIN is essentially a final sign-off on the selections that the student has chosen and as such, should be the last thing that a student does before generating their Selection Report and/or Payment Report. Much like Display Results and Appointments, Parent PIN is a function that is set up like an Instruction in your Selection Process.
Choose the dropdown on the right of the Section you want to add the Parent PIN function to, then click the Add Instruction button, and give it a report name (Parent PIN will be fine). Don't fill anything in for the Text/Images area, as this will be deleted when the function is set up. Click the Settings tab at the top, then in on the right side, choose Parent PIN from the dropdown. You can only use the Parent PIN once in each selection process.
The layout of this function is pre-defined for the most part, so there is only one field that you can edit (if you feel the need to put additional text in) as shown here.
Once you've saved the Instruction, you've completed all work required.
