Setting Up Report Emailing

This section is intended to help assist you to set up report emailing from PowerSchool through BrightArrow. Object reports, report card reports, and any other pdf report that shows up in the Report Queue (System) can be emailed to parents and students using BrightArrow. When properly set up the system will allow users to run reports for multiple students at once and email only the appropriate pages to each individual student. Often referred to as Report Card Emailing, this feature can be used with any report in the queue. Some examples are:

  • Report Cards
  • Progress Reports
  • Student Schedules
  • Letters (attendance, discipline, balance, etc)
  • Parent Portal key information
  • Annual demographics verification form

Setting up Report Emailing

In order to properly establish the report emailing feature both BrightArrow and PowerSchool have to be set up. Breaking up a report with 100 student letters into 100 separate student letters requires the system to know when 1 student’s report ends and the next student’s begins. It also requires an identifier to be passed connecting the stored emails in BrightArrow to be connected with the individual student report so it knows which report goes to which email(s). To do that we’ll set up both the BrightArrow account and the reports to be emailed.

BrightArrow Setup

Create a linked list dedicated to report emailing. This list will have separate settings that allow it to know that reports should be broken up by student so it should not be a list used for any other reason. Keep in mind that each group/school can only see the students from that building so you may need multiple lists setup to allow each school to perform this task. 

  1. Check the box next to the list you would like to copy as the source for your report emailing list. Start with a district wide list such as All Students or All Parents.
  2. In the dropdown at the top choose “Copy a list” from the options
  3. Give the list a new name such as “All Students for Report Emailing”
    1. The name is completely up to you however including the source list in the name will help identify where the list is linked
    2. Since the list will only be used for 1 purpose you may want to get it out of the way. You can force it to the bottom by adding “z” or “zz” in front of the name since lists sort alphabetically.
  4. The other checkboxes can be left alone. They are:
    1. Keep linked... -> This is the checkbox that keeps the new list updated as the original list gets updated. Leave this checked so your data doesn’t become stale.
    2. Derived list’s... -> Check this box if you want the enabled/disabled status from the original list to be passed down to the report emailing list. Generally its not necessary as you simply wouldn’t run a report for students you didn’t want to send the email to.
  5. Click “OK” to create your list.
  6. Click on the name of your new list
  7. Click “Settings/Schedule” to go to the list’s specific settings
  8. Scroll all the way to the bottom of the options.
    1. Check the box “Disable deleting this list”. This will prevent users from accidentally removing this list so you don’t have to recreate it later.
    2. Check the box “Attach Reports to Emails” - This option is a special option to break a large file into individual student files. It is not to be used for normal lists.
  9. Click “OK” to save your settings

Now that you’ve established a list for district wide use you may want to have lists that school level users can use as well. If so perform the following for each school. Note that the steps are exactly the same as the district wide lists with 1 additional step.

  1. Repeat the district list steps (above) using a school level list as the source (above step 1) rather than the All Students list
  2. When editing the list settings (above step 8) be sure to assign the list to the appropriate school by choosing it in the List Management and Protections area. This is the same area where 8.a. “Disable deleting this list” will be. This allows users assigned to that building to use this list as well.

Turn on the feature in the report queue

By default the feature does not show up in the report queue unless you want it to. To turn it on:

  1. Switch to District Office (LEA)
  2. Click on System from the left side menu
  3. Click on BrightArrow Settings
  4. Turn on Report Emailing at the district level
  5. Turn on Report Emailing at any school you want to use it
  6. Click SubmitSetting up reports to work with BrightArrow

Setting up reports to work with BrightArrow

In order to know how to break a big report into individual students we will use the student number as the identifier. Each report you want to be able to email to parents will need to be set up correctly so that the system knows how to break it apart and who should get each individual report.

  1. Navigate to the report setup area (Reports > Setup)
  2. Select the report you want to be able to email. This may be a Form Letter, Object Report or Report Card report. Report name can not have a period (.) character, otherwise it will fail to transfer.
    Note: Currently does not work with ReportWorks
  3. Establish the identifying phrase. This can be white text on a white background if you want to hide it from users actually seeing it. Reports can have many numbers on them so it needs to know that you are identifying the number as the student number. The following phrases work, though if you need more please let us know:
    1. Student Number: ~([01]student_number)
    2. Student Number : ~([01]student_number)
    3. Student_Number: ~([01]student_number)
    4. StudentNumber: ~([01]student_number)
    5. Student #: ~([01]student_number)
    6. Student # : ~([01]student_number)
    7. Student ID: ~([01]student_number)
    8. StudentID: ~([01]student_number)
    9. ASN: ~([01]student_number)
    10. MET #: ~([01]student_number)
    11. SASID: ~([01]student_number)
    12. State ID: ~([01]student_number)
    13. ID: ~([01]student_number) *Only if none of the above are found first. Always prefer the methods above.

**In all instances you can replace student_number with state_studentnumber if that is your identifier of choice. Please make sure BrightArrow knows so we are sure to pull the correct field to match on.

A note on object reports

Object reports are tricky to get right because of layers and exact alignment. One way to make sure it works correctly is to put the label (Student Number: ) and value ( ~(student_number) ) in the same object. This ensures that layers and alignment don’t come into play during the parsing procedure and cause it to fail. You may put the label in a separate object from the student number if you like but if you are finding that you are getting errors this method tends to resolve them.

With Object reports you may also hide the key (ex Student Number: ~(student_number) ) if you like by setting the Color to White. That will make the font white and printing white on white will not show for users though our report parsing mechanism will still see it. Form letters and report card reports do not obey this unfortunately. Only Object reports can have white text. PowerSchool does not obey the html tags to make the font white in other formats.

Testing the report

Once you have a report setup to work with BrightArrow Report Emailing you’ll want to make sure it works. Here is how you can test it:

  1. Navigate to a student’s record
  2. Click “Print A Report” from the left side menu
  3. In the drop down select the report you just worked on
  4. Click “Submit”
  5. Once the report completes the “Send” column should have an icon to click. This icon will show for all reports, even if they are not properly set up so it is not an indicator that the report will work yet. Click this button.
  6. If the report is successful you’ll be taken to either:
    1. The create message page (this indicates that you only have 1 list setup for report emailing that you have access to)
    2. A page asking you to choose which list to use as the source. This happens when you have access to more than 1 report emailing list (district wide users who have access to each school’s report emailing list as well as the district wide list). In this case choose which report emailing list to use and click “OK”. You’ll be take to the create message page.
    3. Note: the number of contacts will be the list size, not the number of individual student reports it found. Even though it may say 100 it will only be able to email the report to the contacts who have a report with a matching student number. If there is no report to send they will not receive an email.
  7. If the report fails you’ll be taken back to the “My Lists” page and a note will appear (for a few moments) at the top stating “Report card feature not operable”. This indicates there is a problem somewhere in the setup. Possible reasons:
    1. No report emailing list is established or at least none that this user has access to
    2. The “Student Number: 1234” pattern is not in the report
    3. The “Student Number: 1234” pattern is in the report but not on the same layer (some object report tools put each object on different layers causing this problem)

Note 2: The preview button will not send you a sample report. If you need to verify that it’ll send print a single student report, edit the list record for that student so that the email address is you instead of the real emails, then send it for real. That will show you how it works, preview will not attach any reports.

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