Instant Family Reps

Last Update
09/06/2024

One of my favorite t-sirts exclaims "Go away or I will replace you with a very small shell script". This is how I feel about the family_rep field in PowerSchool. Does anyone really keep it up to date properly? And if you don't, aren't families at risk of missing that important mailing?
This plugin eliminates the need to manually maintain family reps.

How Does it work?
When in the DISTRICT OFFICE a link "Select District Family Reps" appears under the search box on the admin homepage. This links to a familyreps.html page that picks the youngest student at each household for the entire district BASED ON HOME PHONE NUMBER. The family reps become the current selection and you are redirected back to the start page.
When you're in a SCHOOL the link changes to "Select [school abbreviation] Family Reps" and finds the family reps at each household just within the school.
There is also an added option to select family reps from within your current selection of students in the group functions popup.
The SQL query does take into account students who are checkmarked as a family_rep on the Modify Info screen. Those checked always get included in the student selection. This is to account for those rare instances where two or more students have the same home phone but still need individual copies of all school mailings.
Twins and triplets are taken into account when selecting family reps. Students with blank home phone numbers are also included automatically.

THIS PLUGIN IS NOT FOR EVERYONE. BEFORE DEPLOYING PLEASE NOTE:
- Your school may have different way of determining student family representatives. This will only be a replacement for schools that group households by home phone.
- If you plan on using this customization in production you should clear the family_rep field for every student EXCEPT for students who are not the youngest of the household but still need a copy of mailers (as noted earlier).

Now includes an optional "siblings alert" for the admin portal!
Enable the sibling alert at District Management > District Setup > Additional System Preferences. 
This will display in the student header on the admin portal when a student is found to have one or more sibling based on home_phone:  
Clicking the icon brings up a list of siblings who are either active or pre-registered in the district.
Sibling names can be clicked to open in a new tab if you are in the District Office.

Version History

6.2.1 - Fixed a small bug in the display of the sibling alert that would happen on some student pages due to a conflict with an Illinois state reporting page fragment.
6.2 - Optional sibling alert for the admin portal. Now fully compatible with PowerSchool's localization functions. 
6.1 - Made it so all non-numeric characters are stripped out of home_phone for purposes of grouping families. This way you don't have to worry about phone#s being formatted uniformly. Corrected a bug that would sometimes cause a student from outside the current school you are under being included in the selection. Corrected minor display issues. Changed the plugin name from "Select Family Reps" to "Instant Family Reps" meaning that if you had a previous version installed, you will have to DELETE that plugin before installing version 6.1.
6.0 - Support for the "Enhanced Navigation" in PS 23.5. Backward compatible still with earlier versions of PS.
5.1.1 - Added a title attribute to the family rep links.
5.1 - Changed function names to something less generic (hence less conflicty).
5.0 - Updated for the "New Experience" on PS v20 (yes I finally switched). Also change the redirect so you are taken back to the start page rather than the group functions page. I think it is less confusing for end users.
4.3 - Removed a problematic [if] tag on the admin home page fragment.
4.2 - Refined the SQL query because once again sometimes oldest sibling was selected rather than youngest! Gees Nick get it together!
4.1 - Added the option to select family reps from within your current student selection. Fixed a problem where the oldest student was selected family rep instead of the youngest. Converted to a plugin for installation. SQL query now pulls family_rep field from "studentcorefields" table.
4.0 - Converted home page link to page fragment and therefore PS version 8 ready.
3.3 - Minor update to accommodate changes in PS version 7.8.2.
3.2 - Fixed a screw up that broke the district family rep function.
3.1 - Minor update to accommodate changed in PS version 7.8.
3.0 - Moved the sql onto it's own page to avoid the admin home page having to run the script on load. Altered the selection proccess to take twins/triplets into account. Family reps now include any student with a blank home_phone field.
2.2 - Updated for PowerSchool version 7.2.x.
2.1 - Updated for PowerSchool version 7.1 admin homepage changes.  Corrected a CSS glitch. Corrected a SQL glitch that would not select the correct school. Corrected the zip file structure to work properly when imported via CPM.
1.0 - Initial release

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instant_family_reps_6_2_1.zip 11.51 KB