Creating Parent Accounts: Understanding Your Options (Enterprise)

This article outlines the different methods available to System Administrators when creating parent accounts in a district's Schoology Enterprise account.

You can opt to distribute Parent Access Codes so that parents may create their own account that will allow them to view all of their child’s Schoology activity and courses. They will create their own username and passwords via app.schoology.com. This may be a good solution if you do not currently have all of your district's parent data in a centralized directory or SIS.

Alternatively, the System Administrator can create parent accounts and link the accounts to their students at the system level. This is an appropriate solution if you already have parent data in your SIS or another local directory, and/or if parents are already accustomed to logging into a central online portal using school credentials.

Enable Parent Access Codes

Each student account has a corresponding Parent Access Code in the format: XXXX-XXXX-XXXX

Parents can use this single access code to register for their own account that will be associated with their child's account and allows them to view their child’s Schoology activity. Multiple parents and/or guardians can use the same Parent Access Code to set up their individual parent accounts. Parents of multiple children can use one child's access code to create an account, then use the Add Child option to associate their account with additional children.

If you plan to distribute Parent Access Codes either at the district level or the course level, you will need to enable registration via access codes in the System Settings of your System Admin account.

Click Tools.
Select School Management.
In System Settings, check Enable Parent Access Codes.
Set the default role for a new parent. If you only have one (default) role for parents, select Parent. If you have created custom roles, you may select another option for parents in this drop-down menu.

Distribution of Parent Access Codes (District Level)

Click Tools in the header.
Select User Management.
In Manage Users, click the Parents/Advisors tab.
Click the Options button.
Select Download All under Parent Access Codes.
In Select Role, choose Student.
Click Download.

Open the spreadsheet to find each child’s Parent Access Code. Once parents register for Schoology using the code, their account will automatically be associated with their child’s account. Parents will be able to view all of their child’s activities, courses, groups, calendars, updates, attendance, and grades, depending on the permissions and privacy settings you put in place as the System Admin.

If incorrect Parent Access Codes have been distributed, you can reset the codes and redistribute new codes. Distribution of Parent Access Codes (Course Level)

Parents only need a single access code to view all of their child’s Schoology activities and courses. Many schools find it best to streamline the distribution of access codes by having the homeroom teacher, or another individual in a similar role, distribute the codes to parents. Multiple parents and/or guardians can use the same access code to set up individual parent accounts.

Download a List of Parent Access Codes

Within a course, click Members.
On the right side of the Members area, click Parent Access Codes.
Click Download to automatically download a CSV file containing the students' names and the corresponding Parent Access Codes for the instructor to distribute accordingly.
Once parents register for Schoology using the code, their account will automatically be associated with their child’s account. Parents will be able to view all of their child’s activities, courses, groups, calendars, updates, attendance, and grades, depending on the permissions and privacy settings you put in place as the System Admin.

Create Parent Accounts at the System Level

Manually Associate Existing Parent and Student Accounts

If the students and their parent/guardians already have Schoology accounts within your organization, you can manually associate Parent/Child pairings with the following steps:

In User Management, click Manage Users.
Select the Parent/Advisors tab.
Search for the student by entering the first name or last name in the search field.
Click Parent next to the student’s name.
Enter the name of the existing parent/guardian account in your organization to associate with the student.
Click Save Changes.

Import Parent Accounts

If you want to ensure that every parent has an account with a login and password, you have the option to create their accounts on their behalf, and then provide them with their login information. Through this process, you can also associate the parent/guardian with the child or children.

Create an XLS or CSV file with parent data that contains at least the following information:

First Name
Last Name
An identifier that is unique district-wide (this will be their Unique ID)
A username or email address
Role is a required column if you select Use Import File in the Roles drop-down menu.
School is a required column if you select Use Import File in the Schools drop-down menu, and if you are importing a file that contains parent accounts for multiple schools/buildings within your district).

Click Tools.
Select School Management.
Click Import on the navigation menu.
In the Users tab, upload the XLS or CSV file from Step 1.
Select Parent from the Roles drop-down menu.
Make sure to assign the parents to a particular school or choose Use Import File to match buildings within Schoology to buildings in your file. Enter the values from your import file that represent each school in the fields in the CSV Value column.
Check Don't update existing records and Don't allow duplicates. Check the box to Send activation email if you would like to notify parents that their account has been created.
Click Continue.

Once the import is complete, the parent accounts are created in your Enterprise system. Next, you can create an association between the parent accounts and their respective children.

Import Parent-Child Associations

A two-column XLS or CSV file that matches the Unique ID of the parent to the Unique ID of their child is required. Each row denotes a parent/child pair.

To import parent/student associations:

Click Tools.
Select User Management.
In Manage Users, select the Parents/Advisors tab.
Click Options.
Select Import under Associations.
Select type of import: Select Parent from the drop-down menu.
Select File: Click Choose File and select your parent/student association file. If Clear parent associations for specified students is checked, the current parent/student associations designated in the file will be cleared and replaced by those in your import file. This can be helpful with updating multiple parent/child associations at the beginning of the school year.
Match Columns: Check First row contains headers if your file contains headers. Select the correct columns in your file from the drop-down menu so that the parents' Unique IDs and students' Unique IDs are mapped accordingly.
Click Preview to review the associations prior to running the import.
When you are ready to import the parent/student associations, click Confirm.

Creating Parent Accounts via SIS Sync

If you are using eSchoolPLUS, Skyward, Aeries, or Infinite Campus as your Student Information System, you can create parent accounts in Schoology via the sync in your SIS app.

If you are using Skyward, Aeries, Infinite Campus, or PowerSchool parent accounts and their associations to their children are automatically created via the sync as long as you have already associated your students with their guardians in the SIS.

If you are using eSchoolPLUS, the parent accounts will be created via the sync but will not be automatically associated with their children. After the accounts are created via the sync, you can import the associations manually, or you can distribute Parent Access Codes.

Refer to the SIS product provisioning guides for more information on how to set up your parent accounts to sync automatically to Schoology.