The PDF builder will parse your submitted PDF file by looking for a students Student Id. The PDF Builder will look for the following text: "StudentID:". StudentID: must be all one word, all together and is case-sensitive. Be sure to follow this with a colon (:). If you do not want the StudentID:Student_Number visible to parents, you can change the font color to match the background of the report. It is recommended that you add this ID to the template's header on the right as in the example below.
Steps to Send Out a PDF Builder Alert
1. Generate the report for the student(s) desired. Reports may be run for individual students, groups of students, the entire school or an entire grade.
Note: Some users like to practice this process by choosing a staff member’s child or using a test student.
2.Choose PDF Builder (Parse PDFs) from the main menu screen
3. From the PDF Builder Wizard screen, enter in the report title and the report description
Although optional, it is highly recommend that you include a .pdf password for protection of your report. Use the Password Protection field drop-down to select either None, Date of Birth (MM/DD/YYYY), or Student Number for the file’s password.
Within the Expiration (days) field, type in the days you would like to keep the file available for download from the parent portal. Please note that the link to download this report will expire once that expiration date has passed.
4. Click on Choose File and select the saved .pdf on your computer, from your earlier report run.
5. Click Upload
6. On the Preview and confirm proper report data screen, you will be informed if the upload was successful or had errors. If successful, you may preview the first three student report .pdfs for accuracy. If everything looks correct, click Next. However, if you need to adjust any items from your developed report, click on the Back button and revise.
7. On the Inform student contacts of new PDF reports via Email? screen, you can determine if you wish to email the student contacts informing them that this new .pdf document is available on the parent portal.
You may also leave this box unchecked, if you would like. By leaving the box unchecked, the report will post to the parent portal without notification of its availability.
To do so, place a check mark into the box titled, "Yes, alert the contacts by email" box.
You will then be prompted to fill in the alert type, email subject and the body of the email. For sample content to consider in your message body, based on chosen password protection, please click here.
The editing toolbar gives you a lot of flexibility in developing your message. You can change the font type, size and color; add bullet points, tables and more.
If you would like to include an image from your email stationery library, click the Image icon from the message content box. Then, select the Link tab, followed by Browse Server. Select the image you would like to include in the message content, and click OK. If you would like to learn more about the email content entry box, please click here to review a relevant knowledge base article.
8. Click Next.
9. On the Confirm options and generate reports? screen, you must attest that you have previewed the resulting report files in the prior screen and that you have read informational screens. This must be done before you will be allowed to press Done.
10. Once you are satisfied with your developed report send, press Done.
You have now successfully launched parsed .pdf documents to student families using SwiftK12’s PDF Builder! You may review the results of your send via the View History and Reports option on the main menu.
Tip! PDF Builder can be used for much more than just report cards! This application can be used to send virtually any PDF that contains StudentID: Student_Number. The reports do not have to come from PowerSchool.
Tips to Help Streamline this Process:
1. Don’t Wait Until Friday to Send
This is a peak time for most users, and because every email is a unique process, it can take longer to receive confirmations.
2. Send in Small Batches Throughout the Day
We do not remove duplicate emails for parsed pdf report sends due to siblings. Some email providers may block a second email to the same address if sent within a tight timeframe. Try batch sending report cards by grade with slightly different send times.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. Only a few students have valid contact information or none at all. Why is that?
Review the PowerSchool email field(s) that you have data entered in. Confirm that students have valid contact information in those fields.
2. My report shows the status of ‘Error’. Why is that?
This status is most often due to the PDF not having the StudentID: Student_Number in the correct format. Please ensure that StudentID is all together as one word with the S-I-D capitalized. Review the PDF to ensure there is no space between Student and ID. Please retry and if the issue persists, submit a ticket to Support at k12support@alertsolutions.com for assistance. You may also select initiate a chat session with a member of our Support team if you are experiencing issues during the available times of online assistance.
3. How does the PDF Builder choose the students that it sends to? Can I use Current Selection to narrow this down?
The report file is used to determine the recipient list. For each unique Student_Number found, a contact is considered. If you wish to narrow down the number of students' contact records the reporting is being sent to, you may choose to run the report for a smaller selection of students using PowerSchool's search option prior to running the report.