Options for Student Filters: Using Contacts

Just like the options for how to contact a parent/guardian, you may also choose how to get data to contact the student directly. Options for legacy fields and contacts are available. The more common (for now) method is to use legacy phone/email sources. When using contacts for students you will need to determine which relationship type indicates "this is a student contact, not a parent or other". When you do this the queries will use that relationship when you request a student record but ignore contacts with that relationship type when requesting parent/guardian contacts.

Just like parent/guardian contacts you will want to select which phones and emails it should use when it finds a student contact record.

Section 1: Select the source of your data

The top part is where you select where your data is coming from.

• Where should the student contacts come from:
  Here you select if your data is coming from the contacts module or legacy fields. There are 4 options:
  • Legacy Phone/Email Fields : Stock query using legacy phone / email fields. No custom plugin needed for this
    • If using this method see: Options for Student Filters: Using Legacy fields
  • Custom Query using Legacy : Custom query using legacy phone / email fields. Often used when there are custom phone fields or custom email fields or if there is a custom language field to be used.
    • If using this method see: Options for Student Filters: Using Legacy fields
  • Contacts : Stock query using contacts for phone / emails.
  • Custom Query using Contacts : Custom query using contacts but for some special situation such as a custom language field or custom filter
• Use Custom Language Field (requires custom plugin):
  If you have a custom language field that should be used you can label that here. This is the language used when contacting the student, not the student's parent/guardians. Most schools do not necessarily contact every student in the parent's language. For information on the language options see What are the language options in the filter settings
• Language Field (Informational only):
  If you do use a custom language field you can enter where it comes from here. This field doesn't do anything other than serve as a reminder of where the language is coming from. This is often a question that gets asked as people forget or weren't told and this  serves as a place to enter a reminder.

Section 2: Who to Contact

Most contacts are going to be for Parent/Guardians. There should only be 1 contact to represent the student themselves and you'll want to have a relationship that indicates that this contact IS the student. The most common are "Self" and "Student" but whatever you use will work. Select the relationship type that indicates the contact is the student in the drop down. Once this is done the parent/guardian exports will ignore this relationship type during exports and the student exports will ONLY use this relationship type.

• What is the relationship type for student contacts:
  Drop down will populate with all of the relationship types on your server. Select the relationship type that indicates the contact IS the student. Whatever is selected will be used in student exports and excluded from parent exports.

Section 3: How to contact

Once you've said where the data is coming from and selected which contacts (if necessary) to use the next step is to determine which phones and emails to include. The options change based on if you're using legacy fields or if you are using contacts. For legacy fields there are 2 built in options which you can choose to exclude and the exports will obey

• Exclude legacy cell phone field from this plugin:
  This field is set to be included by default. Set to exclude to not include data in the cell phone field that comes with our plugins. 
• Exclude legacy built in student email field:
  This field is set to be included by default. Set to exclude to not include data stored in the student email field that comes with PowerSchool and is located on the Student Email page in a student's record