001Welcome folks to this week's weekly webinar back to school online registration work session. My name is Jake Vanskow. I'm the head of training here at JMC uh prior to uh joining JMC as a trainer. Uh I worked in a public school in Northeast Iowa for oh about 16 years or so. And the last few years that I worked um at East Buchanan, I helped their I helped them uh transfer uh everything from a back to school online registration for I'm sorry, back to school registration process to online. So, uh I was I think one of the first to go through this process when we were when we did this as a school when JMC rolled it out a few years ago. So, uh, I've learned a lot along the way and I have, um, been,
002uh, on the ground floor for all of the the updates and the new features that they've added to this process. And today I'm joined by Rachel Cox. Ra, you want to say hi? Hello everyone. I'm Rachel Cox. I am on the support to training team. Um, I lead the resources team. So, a lot of those how-to articles that help walk you through different features in JMC. Um, I write and update a lot of those. Um, I come to JMC after about 12 years teaching college writing and then I spent a few years as a elementary administrator. Um, I think a lot of you joined me last week as we talked about setting up your online registration. So, I'm happy to join today and answer any questions. Wonderful. Thank you very much. So, as a beautiful
003segue and um just to kind of level set everybody that has not been a part of a work session before, um this is actually a companion piece to our uh back to school registration office setup and data collection uh webinar that we ran last week. So um if you did not attend or were not able to attend the full session last week um I invite you to head to YouTube take a search of our JMC training channel and uh 5 days ago we had this uploaded uh back to school registration office setup. This goes through the how-tos and the step by steps of each of the things that we uh are going to talk about. But uh today this session is yours. So, uh, what we're going to do today is ask a few prompting
004questions and as you have been working through this online registration process. We're going to review a few of the key components and if you have any questions or anything that your school's uh, experienced. Um, we'd invite you to share your experiences. This is uh, a shared learning opportunity. So, uh, any wisdom that you can bring to the table uh, might help out somebody else. So, um, feel free to use that Q&A feature built right into Ring Central, and we'll talk through these as we go. Oh, and Rachel put, uh, the link to last week's webinar right there in the Q&A chat. So, um, you can go ahead and grab that link if you'd like. And let's get ready to rock here. So, ready to put your back to school online registration plans into action? This
005work session is a hands-on collaborative webinar designed to help you fine-tune your setup, troubleshoot challenges, and get expert answers in real time. Uh, join JMC specialists and fellow users as we walk through key tasks, share best practices, and make sure that you're ready for a smooth and successful registration season. So, um, many of you are probably thinking, I just need to get through this school year. U, absolutely. uh I if you're at that point where you can have an eye on next school year um and and probably next August would be when many of you are pulling this off or maybe in July uh for some of you. Um but we'll start uh with the custom portal messaging for your families. So, um, the first prompt here, has your school disabled online registration for last
006year or provided custom messaging to alert families about the transition to the new school year? And I'm going to take a live look at this one real quick. Um, this is a an important piece of the puzzle here, and I just want to point this out to everybody. uh when you log into JMC, many of you are probably used to uh this purple uh uh 2024 2025 year that's showing up. Uh when you're actually working on online registration, you're probably working on it for the 2526 school year. So these are year dependent. Um, a couple things that, uh, you're going to want to do eventually, and maybe not as of right now, but when your school year ends, um, you're going to want to, uh, probably shut off registration for the 2425 school year and
007then, uh, turn it on for the 2526 when you're ready, um, for that. So, I'm going to show you a couple different pages here. um wonder file online settings I'm going to go to family access and actually I'm going to be at a building level to do so and we can disable online registration altogether so your families will not see it at all um many of you are probably used to doing this for uh schedules you know uh as you working on your schedules you might not want your families to see schedules until you're complete so um you might disabling this al together. Actually, I just now realized that I think I went to the wrong spot. We're off to a flying start here. Um, see here. Is this a district setting or am I
008in the wrong place all together? You'll head down. Actually, you go to JMC family J. Yeah, there it is. Yep. It's uh online registration setup. It's in the configuration options. And we are at the building level. Um the the district settings. So the uh family permission is really what you're what you're after here. And this top check box here, it says allow parents contacts to use all registration controls. If you remove that check mark, um your your families are not even going to see the online registration uh tab in the menu tree. So, um, when you are ready for that, and you might be already, um, ready to do that in the current school year, as long as you don't want your families to go in and update any of this information, you can simply
009shut this off in the current school year and probably shut it off in the next school year, too, right here, until you have um, everything configured properly. Um the other best practice would be um on our see district login message. So this is under JMC family. It's district login message. We got to be at the district level for this. And I would toggle this back to 2425. and give them a prompt um to let them know that uh your families might need to change to that 2526 school year. Um it's it's a nice thing to do. You know, you might not be at this point just yet because your families are still going to be using the family portal to uh log in and uh maybe make lunch payments to to close out the year
010or they might be looking at um uh grades and report cards and printing um transcripts and stuff like that. So, you still want to give them that access. Um, but when the time comes, maybe sometime in mid June, uh, you want to enter uh a prompt that lets them uh know that, hey, we're transitioning to the 2526 school year. Um, choose the 2526 school year. Uh, from that drop- down list on the uh, login page so that you are um, registering in the proper school year. So, if I go to JMC family here, I'm going to in my demo site go to JMC family. This is the drop-own list that we're talking about. Um, it's defaulted to the current school year. Eventually, we're going to kick over to the 2526 school year. Um, it is
011a point of emphasis, but something that you could um easily steer your families to the right page by disabling online registration. and then um also uh giving them a little message there when they log in. So, Ra, do you have anything to add about that or are there any questions about um disabling those settings or providing the custom messaging? Um I would just say that's a good uh troubleshooting thing to keep in the back of your mind. Um I know we would have families say, "Well, how come I'm getting emails that I haven't registered? I know I went through and did the registration process." ah they did it in last year because they're used to logging in in that particular year and until they log out, select that new year and log back in, then
012they're they're not working in the upcoming school year. So if you start getting questions about it, that's just one thing to kind of keep in the back of your mind is that your families might be working in the wrong school year. Yeah. So then I'd go back and disable it and then uh you know, make sure that it's ready to roll for the current school year. So if there aren't any user questions, we'll go on to the next question. have you utilize the formatting tools to add a little pizzazz to your family portal message. So, um, with this, I would just point out that, um, at our summer conference, uh, June 18th, if you're in Minnesota, June 20th, if you're in Iowa, by the way, plug, if you haven't signed up for the summer conference,
013please make sure you do so. Um, we are going to have a maker space session where um you can not only have some time to work with um our our experts, probably Rachel or herself will be there um to to format these messages, but you might even get some tips um from what other schools are doing. Get to see um maybe what uh other schools are including in this message, but also how to utilize some of the features in here. So, um, we've got, uh, these toolbars available, um, in a few different spots in the program, but especially in online registration, uh, that allows you to, um, do things like add some color to help draw some attention to, uh, wording. You've got some different font options. You can attach links in here which can
014be especially helpful if you want to link them to um an external web page perhaps or um maybe even uh uh your school's website, your handbook on your school's website, whatever it is that you might want to do. Um so take a look at those formatting options. Uh play around with it. See how you can make your your uh login message look all snazzy. Jake, one thing I would add is I believe you can even link right in to pages in JMC Family. Um, and it has families log into their own portal, but then once they log in, it takes them right to that page in JMC Family that you're trying to direct them to. Yeah, absolutely. I think uh what you're referring to there is if I can show some folks. All right. So,
015if I go to um let's Oh, I've disabled. Oh, there we go. Register for 2425. So, this is the actual page that you're going to go to. If you copy that whole link after you've logged into JMC family, you can include that link right here. And then when your families click that link, it's going to take them directly to this page. So, um they they should already be logged in if they're seeing this district message. They should already be logged into the family portal, but this will take them to the exact spot on the menu tree. All right. So, any questions coming on uh about utilizing formatting options? No questions so far. All right. If not, let's talk about customizing your online registration settings. So at the district and building level, uh have you enabled
016options like editing emergency contacts or adding new students during registration? Um so RA, I'm going to ask you uh in your experiences um if you have allowed uh your families to add new students at this time or do you have like a a kindergarten roundup that you do uh sometime in February by chance? I'll give you a chance to think about that while we go to our uh online I'm sorry not online payments JMC family online registration setup pages our configuration options I'm going to bounce to our building here our all of our district settings and all of our building level settings um top to bottom uh it starts with the start instructions so you can let families know what it is how how to go through the process how to work through all those
017things. Um, but really the permissions is what we're after here. And we've got a number of options here. Uh, you can allow parents um to access the registration controls. You know, if this is disabled, like I said earlier, u they will not even see this on their their site. So, what I would do is disallow uh click save because I'm in the 2425 school year. Now, when my families log in, I'm gonna have to log out and log back in to show you how that plays out. Oops. Close. Now, we can click the they will see the item on the menu tree, but if they try to go to that, they're going to see the registration controls have been disabled by your district. um please reach out with any questions. Um so that's going to
018be that disabled so you're sure not to get that information. You might get a few questions from families like hey I log into here and it's it's giving me this um this message that says reach out to uh the district with any questions what's going on. Uh if you go to the homepage you can alert them like hey um make sure you're logging into the 2526 school year from the login page. Okay, I understand. Now I have to go to the login page. I have to change to the current school year and then I can log in. Now I can access my um Jake I'd maybe differentiate a little bit between the turning off the controls and just turning off the registration process. Um, so the other thing though is like your school may have
019downloadable content that's available under that register spot on your menu tree and you might want them to still have um access to that. So you can you can just turn off the registration process but allow them to still have access to those signable forms and downloadable content but they just can't like reregister their kids if they've already done the registration process. Absolutely. That's that's a great point. So, um it it is by design. Uh you have the ability to pick and choose the items that you would want to control. Um I think you know when you're first doing this registration for the first time, it's probably common to have all of these checked once you're ready to roll. Um, you know, it after maybe your first round of registration, maybe after August or September, after
020your registration closes, um, then, you know, you might come in here and shut off certain items that you might not want your families to to do multiple times, like you might not want them to submit digital equity information, for example. Um, so that's a great point. Um, getting into some of the building level settings. Uh, I'm going to go to the family access settings. And this is where I was, uh, referring to earlier about the allow new student additions. So, uh, RA, have you had time to ponder my my question of should we allow this at the start or shouldn't we allow this at the start? Um, my experience was more that we did not. Um, I would find that sometimes, especially at the back to school time, parents would get a little bit confused
021and sometimes parents would would like re-enter a kid that was already in our system and then we would have to watch for duplicate um, students or duplicate contact information. Like sometimes it would just get a little bit confusing for parents. So during the registration time, we would typically leave that part turned off. um we would just want a little bit more um notice and control over when new students were getting added at at that time. But if we were doing our kindergarten roundup, our kindergarten te in March of the year before, well then that would be a time where if we had brand new families to our district, we would give them a link to our new family enrollment. And then when we had families that already had kids in in our in our school,
022we can turn that on. they can add the students and then um go back through the process to register those new kiddos. You bring up a good point, Ra. Um new family enrollment uh we have a new fam enrollment portal here and uh we need to draw the distinction between registration and enrollment. So registration is a process that happens every year. um families that are already enrolled in your school go through that registration process. They have to be two completely separate steps and it might even by law they have to be two separate steps. Um the enrollment process uh this is just getting uh some of that basic demographic information into your student information system. So, uh, parent contacts, um, your students initial, uh, enrollment, um, once you once you've created enrollment records for your
023students, then you can do the back to school registration or the the school registration portion that takes care of um, the rest of those pieces like your digital equity, uh, like custom fields, questions, health, custom fields, that sort of stuff. Um, so I would agree with Rachel. Um, typically we would shut off new student edition uh when we do our back- toschool registration because that's not the time that we're enrolling kindergarteners or that's not the time we're bringing in new kindergarteners um to our school. You know, some some families might have um an addition, you know, maybe they adopted a student um or there's a foreign exchange student. Um you would want your families to work with somebody in the front office to get those kids into the system. And if you want to allow
024them uh to enter that information uh themselves through that registration process, you would place a check mark in this check box. Um you know, a lot of times um I I see schools that have like a kindergarten roundup. They do this maybe in February. And for some in some cases they're new families and some in other cases they're families that have already been in the system. um that they might provide instruction for adding um both. You know, here you use the new family enrollment portal, you guys log in and and register your students and add new students that way. So, um thanks for your insight there. That's one setting that you're going to want to take a look at. Um, we're going to talk about custom fields and health custom fields here in just a
025minute, but um, general student data. Uh, if you want to allow families to change some student data, most of this, um, is not editable. Um, it would be a view only access. Um, or you can hide it from view. I don't know why you would ever want to hide names and things like that. Um, but, uh, there are some pieces on here that that they can edit. for example, last school attended. Um, you've got uh any of the um ethnicity information is is editable um by default. Uh we want I think the states for the most part want their families to be able to edit their own um ethnicity information uh through their student information system. So, a lot of that's editable. But um if you click the download or the the drop-own list there
026you can see what is you know the the options there. It's either hide, view only or view and edit. Um application for educational benefits. It's a district level setting. Um this would be for um your free and reduced lunch u benefits. Um, for the most part, I think most states this doesn't become available in the updated version until after July 1st. Um, so my recommendation would be to get everything set up and configured properly and then come back and and enable the application for education benefits as they become available. And that's just a a check mark right at the top there. Uh Rachel, any questions coming in about uh any of the configuration options? No questions. Pretty quiet so far. All right. Means you did a great job teaching it last time, so everybody kind
027of has an idea of what we're doing. Well, thank you. Uh question number two, did you import your custom fields and health questions from last year or will you be creating new ones for this registration season? So, custom fields, health custom fields, um these are all of those qu if you're brand new to registration, if you're brand new to online registration, um what we're really asking folks is, uh rethink that registration process as a whole. And I know many schools have um parents fill out form after form after form after form and it just kind of requires a a signature and maybe a name and a date and you know, some of that stuff. And you know, is there any way that we can we can take care of that information to make it uh
028a little bit more streamlined for our families and a little bit easier for us on the back end uh who are receiving all those forms so we don't have to find a file cabinet to keep all these and then try to remember where we put all this stuff um when we're accessing it later. uh custom fields and health custom fields are two tools that will help you organize some of that information and and make it more accessible for your families. So, um custom fields and and if you're on that registration page, online registration setup, the configuration options on the right hand side, there are quick links to to go directly to the spot in the program to define either of those custom fields or health custom fields. Uh we'll start at custom fields. And these
029custom fields questions, this this is available under file define custom fields. These um allow you to ask questions to your families and allow them to answer in a couple different formats. Um you can answer uh text, numeric, uh date, or yes and no. So, uh, if you have a yes no question such as, do you, um, are you is your student going to drive a car to school? Well, that's yes, no. Um, we can provide a drop-down list that is yes or no. So, all families have to do is select. So, you don't have to worry about people misspelling yes or no. Um, we also have some conditional questioning that you can skip questions. So, for example, is your school is is your student going to drive a car to school? Well, the next question,
030if yes, might be, what's the license plate of the vehicle that the student is going to drive? Uh, if no, we don't need them to answer that question. So, that's where the if the answer is no, we'll skip on down to two questions later or whatever whatever it might be on your list. Um, if you're if you're brand new to online registration, you're probably going to be creating these custom fields questions from scratch to start. Um, the nice thing about this is once you've created one set, um, you can import them from one year to the next. So you might have a little setup um for online registration this year, but then next year you can pull those questions over one full year and uh you can just pick up where you left off. And
031um all of these questions can u there is a permanence that you can set for those. For example, is this a year specific question meaning families answer this question every year so it kind of wipes the slate clean. or is this year independent? Meaning that the family will answer uh the the family's answer from the previous year will show up and all they have to do is, you know, skip through that question if they if they agree with the answer that they gave the previous year. Um so that's a way to speed up the process for your families. Um the the import helps you get all of those questions that you may have used in the past onto your list. You can reorganize as you need to. You can delete out questions. But then going
032back to the online registration page, GMC family online registrations. You can use a quick link to get back there, Jake. Well, I could do that, but now I'm already here. So, um, when I go to the custom field settings, um, I can include these questions. I can exclude some of these questions. I can make them required and I can make them required for specific grade levels. So, there are a lot of different checkboxes on this page that will allow you to enable a question, disable a question. Might be questions that you only ask every other year. I don't know what those would be. I don't even have a good example of it. But if we used it last year, we're not going to use it this year, but we're going to use it next year,
033I would just disable that question. removing the checkbox or removing the check mark. Place it if I'm going to use it. And if this question only applies to high school students, I can disable it for all grade levels because my kindergarters are probably not going to go to prom this year. Um, any questions on custom fields? There are not any questions. Um, there's maybe a couple things that I would add if you don't mind. Go for it. Um, one thing that I really liked about custom fields, um, is that they are very easy to like recall that data, retrieve it. Um, if you go to the view student data page, you can see a particular students um, questions or answers to those custom fields. But the other thing that I found super useful is if
034you go to attendance student lists, you can create reports based on these on the answers to these questions as well. So a question that we always asked at our school um is what are your students after school plans? And we would want to know like is your student a bus rider? Is your student a walker? Do they get picked up or will they be going to after school care? And then I could I would have those lists ready for each grade level. And then the teachers would know what like what line to get which kid into until you know you you fall into that pattern of the school year. But it was very useful for those first couple of weeks when you're trying to figure out where everybody goes. So, I think that when your
035data is all in your database like this, you're likely to use it in more efficient ways because you don't have to go through everybody's handwritten sheet to find out what their after school plans are. Heck of a lot easier than a filing cabinet, isn't it, with a with extra paper. And and I'll I'll point out too that these custom fields uh questions and this report actually the the student list report is available in JMC Teacher. So, um, if you're sick of your teachers asking you who rides the bus and who doesn't ride the bus, have them create their their own report on their custom fields questions for their kids, um, save the report as my bus list or um, who has internet access and and you can, um, you can add every custom fields question.
036You can add, uh, you know, one or two custom fields questions. Um, there's a lot of utility um, for custom fields. We mention it during online registration because uh that's you know when a lot of families are directed to this spot um and that's when they supply those answers and um you can get this information all in one shot. that if you think of a utility for a custom field down the road, um you know, down the school year, something something's happened where, oh, we need to be able to to run a report to find all students that um fit this profile that that need to do X, Y, or Z. Uh you can create a custom field question and you don't necessarily have to include it in online registration. Um but you can most
037definitely run reports on it after you've gotten that information in JMC. So, um, yeah, and I would say the same is true of the health custom field questions, too. Um, I don't know that you would have access to that in JMC teacher, the health ones, right? Um, but you can create the student lists using the health custom fields as well. Yeah. And and that is exactly why they are two separate things. And that's a a great segue there, Rachel. um you know health requires um some different permissions levels and maybe there are some things that u belong in health that general folks size shouldn't be on. Um you know there there are laws there's there's HIPPA there are uh protections that um you might need to supply and right now you can you can maintain
038permission for only um certain individuals for those health modules. So, um that's something that uh you would utilize in those cases, those uh health custom fields questions. Um again, if I'm on the All right, we'll use your quick link this time. If I'm on my health custom fields page, again, I can include it in registration. I can make it required. Um or I can, you know, add custom fields questions, health custom fields questions from this page. And there are some slightly different um options for how your families might answer. Um for example, we have an allergy table and a medications table. Um so if you're asking, does your student take any medications? and you wanted to include that medications table, uh your families can can interact with it that way as opposed to having to
039try to type out um the specific medications that they're they're giving. So, um any questions or anything to add about those health custom fields questions? Um, no, no, no questions. But I would add, um, if your school is lucky enough to have a school nurse, um, when you're coming up with those health custom questions, that is a great time to seek out advice from your school nurse. Um, there are some things that they might want to know to have on hand at the beginning of the school year and um, some questions that they might want to ask that can kind of prompt them to follow up with certain parents. So that is a great place to collaborate with um with a school nurse to get the information that's going to be the most helpful to
040them. And again, your um your health professionals can also run reports on these health fields too. So, similarly to how you were running um uh attendance student lists, your family or your your health pro can run these reports for individuals um and have this information right there at their fingertips, too. Very powerful tool. Moving right along. Are there any new questions like technology needs or consent questions you want families to answer during registration? Again, this would be um kind of a part of that auditing process as you are renewing online registration for the next year. If you've done it before, you might have some new questions that you'd like to to ask. If this is something that you've been doing for the last few years, online registration that is this might just be um a
041matter of uh saying, "Yep, we're we're good with all these questions and moving right along." Now, to adding signable forms and downloadable content. Um, as I mentioned before, some of those signable forms you might be able to take care of in yes, no questions, or there might be some custom fields or health custom fields questions that you um would like families to answer. Uh, the signable forms, if you need signable forms, like handbooks, for example, or device agreements, um, you want families to be able to sign, you can absolutely upload those into JMC. Um, you might want to double check to make sure that the most current version of your forms are uploaded. Uh, I'm going to head back to JMC family online registration setup configuration. I'm sorry. Now I'm going to go to upload
042forms and just a few pieces from this page. So, uh, these are two PDFs that I have um, uploaded. But when you add a new form, you choose the file from your computer. Uh this pulls that file into uh JMC and it will give you a few additional instructions. Um you can give some instructions about the form or give some information about the form in here as well. Using those those formatting tools, you can decide who has access to this form and then you can decide if a signature is required. So, we've got a few different options. The contact signature required. That's a primary contact. The contact single signature would allow you to um uh allow a family that has maybe four students to only sign one form if the content applies to all four
043students. So, um that's that's another way that you can streamline this process for families. I know when I was going through this process, um, paper pencil by hand, you know, I had two kids, I'd have to fill out the same form and duplicate for both kids, even though it's kind of asking the same question. Um, that's a way to avoid that. And you can also require student signatures. So, for things like um conduct policies, uh, you want your students to read and and sign and acknowledge those forms as well, you can require those signatures, too. Uh, Ra, anything to add about um signable forms? Um, just that it's it's really just an acknowledgement. Um, you know, they're not signing on a particular form. So, if you had some type of some type of document that,
044you know, you needed to have a parent sign on that form, that might still have to go home. But something like this um where you've got a technology agreement, what you're doing is you're having the parents just sign acknowledgement that they have read through the agreement and they they agree to the content that's in it. Yeah. And and those signatures are stored in JMC there. You can easily reference those. Um here are my permission forms. I can see the date that it was signed and also um if there were conscientious objectors. So, we do provide the the option of no, it's a a refusal to sign or I'm not going to sign, but at least you would have that on record that it's not a matter of them forgetting to sign. It's a matter of
045them refusing to sign, which um I suppose is uh something that that legal folks would um be more interested in than I. But um you see an example of what a filled out signature would look like. Um again, here's the date. Here's the family signature made nice and nice and easy through JMC family. So, any questions coming through about either of those? Um, downloadable documents kind of work very similarly. Downloadable documents to share policies or other helpful resources with families. um you know the the slight difference here being um let's go to downloadable content. These could be you know larger PDFs, handbooks, things like that. It's just stuff that you want your families to be able to access, but might not necessarily require a signature or anything like that. So you've got uploadable forms for
046signing. You've got downloadable content um just for sharing information with your families. Yeah, I would maybe add on that downloadable content. Um, one thing that we would use it for that was super helpful are forms that some families need, but not everybody. So, when we were doing paper and pencil uh registration packets, everyone got a medical authorization use form. Everyone got a like special dietary need form when there was maybe only a handful of kids that needed them and we were printing these things just to put them in the recycling bin. So, this is a place where you can put those forms so the families who need them can find them, but you're not wasting like time and resources and printing out stuff for everybody. And then, like Jake said, larger PDFs like your handbook.
047Well, this is where that handbook can live. So, parents can sign off on their signable forms and acknowledge that they have access to the handbook because there it is in the downloadable forms. Yeah. So, if there are any I'm sorry, not downloadable, downloadable content. Now, if there are any administrators listening, that's money that you're saving from not printing the paper. That's money in paper, money in printer ink. And it's also the time that somebody would have to take going through and grabbing six pieces of paper, stapling them all together and and throwing them in a packet that eventually gets either ignored or recycled or, you know, thrown away or something like that. So, yeah. And I would say, Jake, when we moved at our school, when we moved from paper pencil into online registration, there
048were some concerns like, you know, families might really still want a paper handbook. So, we did offer a custom field question that said, "Would you like a paper version of the handbook?" And I think we only ever had two parents take us up on it, and I don't think they actually picked them up. So, it is a pretty easy transition to, "I'm used to having all these things in paper, like what what will our families do?" They take to it really quickly. Yeah. And and in general, I've heard, you know, um a a lot of schools that use that back- to-school registration time as a a time to connect with families. You know, hey, we have back to school night. We have folks come in, they fill out all their papers. It's just a good
049time to say hi to everybody. We don't want everybody just to do this at home. Hey, that's great. Have your back to school night. Set up some kiosks with some computers. So, at least on the back end, you're reaping all of the benefits of online submission. you still get to make those touch points with your families and then maybe design that time um uh to be a little bit more purposeful in um your your communion or uh community building uh your relationship building. You know, set up some games and things like that and make it a fun night as opposed to a night where uh somebody's wrist gets sore from writing out all of these answers to these questions. So, um next question. Do you have any questions about requiring signatures or enabling single signatures
050uh for any of the documents? I think we've gone over that. Um once it gets to the and I realize we're probably a few months away from this and um we do have uh another webinar coming up um in June that's going to talk about um putting the finishing touches on online registration. So, um you're you're probably at the early stages of setting up online regge. Once you get your kids out the door for summer, uh you might come back and visit this um in in more earnest detail. Um we do what one of the things that we would recommend would be to um enable this and if especially if this is the first time that you've done this um enable it in early June and have somebody go through the process um so that
051you're sure that all of your questions are clear. You know you can use some faculty members that have um students that go to your school. Uh, I used to like to find the squeakiest wheels, the people that I knew I was going to hear from anyway. I brought them into the process and say, "Hey, can uh, you know, we're going to this online format for registration. Can you help us out, go through this, give us feedback? What what can we do better?" First off, those squeaky wheels love that. It gives them their their chance to hear get their voices heard, but it also gives you valuable feedback so that before you roll this out to everybody in your district. Um, you can you can have a chance to see this in play yourself and maybe
052make some of those adjustments. Um, uh, questions regarding reviewing student, parent or emergency contact information before accepting or rejecting it. Um, I I think going into next year, uh, the the two big things is, um, you know, you have these alerts, and I I would take the time to mention this to everybody in the front office that that might come in contact with this page. You know, you receive these alerts, whether they're contact submissions like I'm seeing right here, um, or student submissions or possibly health custom field question submissions. um you know you click these and you can then review any of the changes accept or reject these and then those uh those alerts go away. So the goal on this homepage would not necessarily be have 15 alerts up here. It would be to
053address them as they come in. So um these links will take you directly to the spot in the program that require your attention. For example, merge contact submissions. I can come in here and like, oh, yep, no change. Sure. I don't know why somebody went through the process and didn't make any changes, but we can accept that. And that's going to that's going to come off of the alert page. I have five pending contact submission or student submissions. Um, all right. No change there. So, accept. No changes there. Accept. Accept. Accept. Accept. And we're good. And now those alerts. Oops. Those alerts go away. So, pay attention to those alerts. Use the links to head to wherever you're supposed to go in the program to address those and then address them individually as they come
054in. Help keep that area nice and tidy. And uh you you'll be all set for any of your um your reporting or uh registration once it comes. Um, last thing to review. Oh, let's go to our progress dashboard here. So, under JMC family online registration progress dashboard, um, we've got a few Can I can I add I'm sorry. Can I add one thing about merging data before we move on to the to the dashboard? Sure. So, I I would agree with Jake like I I used those alerts on my home screen to see, you know, who had submitted their information. But one thing to note is that emergency contacts come in in a slightly different way. So you want to make sure that you go to that JMC family online registration merge data and merge
055those emergency contacts because uh when you do have an emergency, you're going to want to make sure that you have emergency contacts associated with your students. So if you're only relying on those alerts, you might miss that step to get those emergency contacts merged with the the students that they're intended for. That's a a very good point. And the last thing that you want in a state of emergency is to not have updated emergency contacts. So yeah, it wouldn't be a bad idea as you go through this process to to go through each of these online registration, merge data, go through each of these tabs to make sure everything is is up to date and and make sure there are no new or modified um contacts that need your attention. I think this next question
056leads me into uh utilizing the filters on the progress dashboard to identify families who have or have not yet completed the registration process. Um where I was heading there under online registration progress dashboard. Um each of these filters is going to allow you to uh keep tabs on who has completed the registration process, who has yet to complete those and um email those families. So, you can email the filtered families, which is a nice option. You can email those that have not finished and email those that have finished. So, um, one of the things that I like to do is come in here and maybe go grade level. Let's see here. Are all my freshmen ready? I can pull up my freshmen and I can see maybe, um, forms that are not done, not filled
057out, or that the registration is not yet finished. So, if I filter that, I've got my list of all families that have not yet finished. Um, I could even, let's see here, maybe they've gone through the process, but they still have a negative lunch balance. You know, if I had families, I'm just going to go all pull all families that have a negative lunch balance, and I'm going to email those families. So, if there were any listed here, I could email those filtered families and say, "Hey, go ahead and pay your negative lunch balance. I I see you've finished the the registration process. Um, now go back and pay your online reg or your uh lunch balance as well." And then I could supply a link that would take them directly to um the spot
058in JMC Family that they would have to um give us their online payment, for example. So, several different filtering options. Um, you know, you can pull up information from an individual family. Um, you can pull up information from an individual student as well. Um, you can maybe grab, let's say, grouped by advisory groups. You want to see um if Mr. V's advisory group is has completed their online registration and pull this up. Well, here are all of them. And no, they have not done this yet. Um, what forms are we waiting for? Uh, are there any students that still need to sign forms? Okay, it looks like we have a couple kids that need to sign forms. Did they apply for free and reduced applications? No, they did not. Um, so a lot of handy
059filters that you can apply to view students and families that are at various points in the online registration process. Anything to add, Ra? Uh I would say uh what you were talking about earlier if you have like a back to school night and you don't want to use that as a registration night instead that's more you know teachers getting in contact with students and more of a fun evening using this dashboard like say the day before run a report of the families who haven't finished the registration process. As they walk through the door you can say hey I I noticed you haven't finished your online registration. We've got a few computers set up over here. let's take a couple minutes and get that done and then we'll get you in the classroom to talk to
060your teacher. So, it's a it's a handy tool that way that you can use it to your advantage. Yet another way to avoid the blanket email. Everybody hates receiving the blanket email. Um it's even sloppier sending the blanket email. So, you know, rather than emailing everybody in your school, hey, it's time to register. Well, I've already registered. I've already done that. Don't waste my time, please, by sending me emails that I don't need. Okay, here's a way that we can get targeted with the the emails and the communications that we send. Uh, has your school reviewed your options in JMC for communicating with families at various stages of the back to school registration process? We just talked about a few of those. Um, one of the the the pieces that I would recommend um within
061the message center, sending messages um maybe a text message and email uh at the same time whenever you are ready to open up the online registration process. This is a handy tool for letting folks know that, hey, this is where you go to do it. This is what you need to do. Please remember to um add money to your students lunch accounts, all that sort of stuff. So, we've got the message center uh for sending messages um about when it's open. Uh under online payments, online I keep going to online payments. JMC family under JMC family uh online registration under that progress dashboard, you can also use the quick links to uh email those families to keep them in the loop as to where you are with with online registration. Ra, anything to add overall
062about online registration or are there any questions or comments or concerns that have Um, I would I would just say it it it does take a little bit of setup. You know, if you're if you're brand new to using it, it takes a little bit of time. Um, I know there's always a little bit of anxiety about changing the way you've done something and and will families be able to follow along. I would like to add that um in JMC here, we've created resources that you can share with your families. So, if you're doing this for the first time and you're thinking, "How are we going to teach families how to use this? How are we going to communicate this with families?" Uh, we have resources for families on our YouTube training channel, our help
063center where Jake is going right now. They are written, the resources there are written with families as the intended audience. So, in some instances, you can just open these articles up, you can copy, and you can paste that into an email to your families walking them through how to do this. So you don't have to come up with the content to share with those families. We do that for you and make that make that step a little bit easier in rolling this out as as something new to your families. Yeah, copy that link and include that right there. And here are your your steps for going through that online registration process. So good call on that, Rage. I think that's a a good spot to end on then. So, with that, JMC news and upcoming
064events. Tickets now available for the JMC Summer Conference here the 18th of June in Minnesota, the 20th in Iowa. We've got a lot of great stuff planned for you. Please register today. Um, we've got these QR codes available. If you scan either of those, it'll take you to our humanitics registration pages. Um, whoever brings the most attendees, whatever school brings the most attendees, you'll win a pizza party for your building. So, register your full team. There's going to be a little something for everybody. So, we're going to have stuff for new users. We're going to have stuff for um veteran users. We're going to have the departments of education from both Iowa and Minnesota available as well. Want to test drive JMC's general store and experience how the portal can lighten the load of managing
065school merch, ticketing, and fundraising, all without paying a dime for the portal, training, and support? Please then email sales with your request to test general store when our soft launch uh our our launch in June. Um, it's almost time to turn on JMC's online registration. Tune in for our May 14th or check out actually or get a time machine. can go back to May 14th. Um, if you get that time machine, let me know. Uh, but we have our our May 14th full session available on our YouTube channel. Uh, you joined us today for our work session. This will also be available after the fact on YouTube. U, we do have another upcoming uh, registration um, on the 12th of June as well. So, tune in to that one, too. Um, do you know a
066school staff member who's retiring or and knows our software like the back of their hand? they might be the perfect client services specialist at JMC where they'll get to provide one-to-one care to customers just like you. So feel free to share the job description with them and let them know and that could possibly be you as well. So uh fill out that application, let us know that you're interested. Uh for Rachel Cox, I thank you for joining us today u for this weekly webinar. Thank you for choosing JMC and we'll catch you on the flip side.