This article contains the following:
1. Overview
2. Video: Rolling out the Clever Family Portal
3. Invite parents/guardians
• Bulk invite via email
• Bulk invite via text message
• Single invites
• Teacher invites
4. Parent/guardian experience
Overview
Clever is excited to empower families to help their students learn virtually from anywhere! With the Family Portal, districts can provide parents and guardians secure access to their students' login information (including Clever Badges), teacher messaging, and easy access to helpful resources. This article will walk through how Clever district administrators can configure who receives access to the tool and what resources will be available to them.
Video: Rolling out the Clever Family Portal
Invite parents/guardians
CAUTION: Please be careful to only select parents/guardians who should have access to their child’s account. With the family account, the parent/guardian will have complete access to all of a student's Clever resources. If you would like assistance with getting accurate contact data into Clever, please reach out to our support team.
Bulk invite via email
This section describes inviting parents/guardians via email. When this process is used, parents/guardians will receive an email from Clever, prompting them to sign up for a Family Portal account.
- In the district dashboard, navigate to Family Portal
- Under Send Invites, select Email
- Review the message that will be included in the invitation sent by Clever to the parent/guardian. Please feel free to customize!
- Select if you would like to send a reminder email to parents to accept their Family Portal account invites. Parent/guardians will receive a reminder email to set up their account on the last day before their invite expires. Just as with the initial invites, admins can customize their reminder email! Simply select: Edit Message
- Next, select whether you would like to use existing contact data in Clever or if you would like to manually upload a CSV to send invites.
Use existing parent/guardian emails in Clever
If you already have quality parent/guardian phone numbers in Clever, this option is for you! This option will authorize Clever to use the email addresses for contacts that already being sent to us from your student information system (SIS).
Please double check that the correct amount of contacts are being imported and Clever has their correct email addresses. Select Quick Check to review the number of contacts and their relationship to students. Clever does NOT recommend Use existing parent/guardian emails in Clever if you are syncing contacts other than parent/guardian.
If the existing parent/guardian data in Clever is accurate, select who you would like to invite. Parents/guardians can be filtered based on contact type or contact relationship, grade, and school.
Select Save new choices and proceed to Step 6. If the button is grey, proceed to Step 6.
You can go through this flow as many times as desired! As such, feel free to pilot this feature with a subset of parents/guardians and send additional rounds of invites afterward.
Upload a .csv file of parent/guardian emails
If you do not have accurate parent/guardian email addresses in Clever, we provide the ability to upload a manual CSV. ONce you have selected Upload a .csv file of parent/guardian emails, Clever will surface both a web upload tool and a downloadable template for your file. Once you have uploaded your CSV file, proceed to Step 6.
Please note, only student_sis_id and guardian_email are required. All other fields are optional.
Multiple students can be associated with the same parent/guardian and multiple parents/guardians can be associated with the same student. Each row in the CSV should indicate a unique student + parent/guardian pair. For guardians with multiple students, please ensure that except for student_sis_id, the guardian's information should be exactly the same for each line entry. Mismatches will result in duplicate guardian accounts in Clever.
When the file is successfully uploaded, the cloud will turn green.
This parent/guardian data will NOT be stored by Clever or shared with applications. The data will only be used for the purpose of sending this round of email invites for the Family Portal.
You can go through this flow as many times as desired! As such, feel free to pilot this feature with a subset of parents/guardians and send additional rounds of invites afterward. - Select Send email invites. The email invites will immediately go to the selected parents/guardians.
As noted above, you can go through the invite flow as many times as desired. As such, feel free to pilot this feature with a subset of parents/guardians and send additional rounds of invites afterward!
To view the parent/guardian experience, click here.
Bulk invite via text message
This section describes inviting parents/guardians via text message. When this process is used, parents/guardians will receive a text message from Clever, prompting them to sign up for a Family Portal account.
- In the district dashboard, navigate to Family Portal
- Under Send Invites, select Text message
- There are two messages that parents/guardians will encounter in the signup flow. First, they will receive a text message with the default message below. This message is not customizable.
Once they click on the invite link, they will be presented with a second message. You can keep the default text or customize the content for your district.
- Next, select whether you would like to use existing contact data in Clever or if you would like to manually upload a CSV to send invites.
Use existing parent/guardian phone numbers in Clever
If you already have quality parent/guardian phone numbers in Clever, this option is for you! This option will authorize Clever to use the phone numbers for contacts that already being sent to us from your student information system (SIS).
Please double check that the correct amount of contacts are being imported and Clever has their correct phone numbers. Select Quick Check to review the number of contacts and their relationship to students. Clever does NOT recommend Use existing parent/guardian phone numbers in Clever if you are syncing contacts other than parent/guardian.
If the existing parent/guardian data in Clever is accurate, select who you would like to invite. Parents/guardians can be filtered based on contact type or contact relationship, grade, and school.
Select Save new choices and proceed to Step 5. If the button is grey, proceed to Step 5.
You can go through this flow as many times as desired! As such, feel free to pilot this feature with a subset of parents/guardians and send additional rounds of invites afterward.
Upload a .csv file of parent/guadian phone numbers
If you do not have accurate parent/guardian phone numbers in Clever, we provide the ability to upload a manual CSV. Clever has provided a downloadable template at the bottom of this article. Once you have uploaded your CSV file, proceed to Step 5.
Please note, only student_sis_id and guardian_phone are required. All other fields are optional. Multiple students can be associated with the same parent/guardian and multiple parents/guardians can be associated with the same student. Each row in the csv should indicate a unique student + parent/guardian pair. When the file is successfully uploaded, the cloud will turn green.
You can go through this flow as many times as desired! As such, feel free to pilot this feature with a subset of parents/guardians and send additional rounds of invites afterward. - Select Send text message invites. The text message invite will immediately go to the selected parents/guardians.
As noted above, you can go through the invite flow as many times as desired. As such, feel free to pilot this feature with a subset of parents/guardians and send additional rounds of invites afterward!
Single Invites
Clever recommends using the bulk invite processes outlined above for creating family portal accounts. If a parent/guardian's email or phone number is already in Clever, they can also be invited individually. To send a single invite, follow these directions:
- Search for the student to locate their user profile
- Click on the Guardians tab
- Locate the parent/guardian and select Send invitation
- Select whether you would like to send the invitation by email or text message. These specific options will only be available to you if they have email and/or phone number populated.
- (Optional) Customize the welcome message content
- Select Send invitation
Teacher Invites
Coming in 2021, teachers will be able to invite guardians to create Family Portal accounts via Messages. To enable this feature for teachers, navigate to Family Portal > Settings. 
Parent/Guardian experience
To view the parent/guardian experience, please click here.