Student Contacts - Readiness Check List

 Student Contacts - Readiness Check List

If your school is thinking of moving over to PowerSchool Student Contacts. Below is a Readiness check list (see bullet points below) that we recommend to be reviewed.

We want to ensure you have the right information in the right place to be prepared for a successful move over.

Student Contacts in PowerSchool

Contacts in PowerSchool has a new way to look at student contacts. Students can now have an unlimited number of contacts.  This allows parents and staff to add all contacts that a student will need. Another feature of contacts is that one contact can belong to multiple students, allowing for the changes to happen across all student records. Each contact can have an unlimited number of phone numbers and email address.

• Keep a duplicate system or back up file of custom and legacy field data.  If any glitches occur, you will have a back up to switch over to.
• If there is data in legacy fields, please do not delete until transitioned.  This allows us to match the existing contact preferences.
• Clean up duplicates in Contacts.  If there are more than 20% of duplicates SwiftK12 will not be able to be moved over to unlimited contacts.
• Move primary contacts to the top of the contact list (critical for the default opt-in we provide as a courtesy for students with no current parent preferences for messaging)
• Enable data access for the primary contacts so that they can update their contact information and messaging preferences in the parent portal
• Enable SMS for primary contacts' phone numbers in Contacts tab (critical to allow parents to get text messages in SwiftK12 without relying on individuals to update this setting through the parent portal in a timely manner)
• Create a "self" contact for students if you want to message student cell phones or emails, and use a flag that is not being used if you want to message students separately. Available flag are lives with, has custody, emergency contact, and school pickup.
  

Once your school is ready to move over, our support team will run a one-time preference migration for your parents previous messaging preferences.

We will enter all the messaging preferences for your parents in the field system and match them to the identical contact information you now have in your new contacts.

You will be starting off with messaging preferences that was in the previous contact data.  Parents will not be required to re-do any information.

For new students without any messaging preferences - we do a default opt-in of the first contact for each of those students, this is done on the back end. Until a contact goes in and changes the information, it will remain as is.

Note: In order to move over to PowerSchool contacts, your school should currently be on SwiftK12 and not Alert Solutions 2.0.

If you have questions regarding if your school is ready to move over to unlimited contacts, please contact our support team at [e-mail]