How to enable Family Syncing in ClassLink

Seesaw supports students by providing an authentic audience for their work - including family members! Connecting families and getting them engaged on Seesaw is now even easier. Streamline family engagement by turning on Family Sync. During your rostering sync, Seesaw pulls in family members from Classlink and sends an invitation to connect.

Enabling Family Syncing

1. Inform your Seesaw Account Manager if you'd like to participate in our Family Syncing soft launch.

2. Family data will need to be pre-populated in the parent and guardian role types. Ensure the right sharing settings are configured so that Seesaw can access the data.

Note: While allowing access to these fields is a required sharing permission, Seesaw only requires an email address OR a phone number for family members. Districts can determine whether they would like to input data into both the email and phone fields in their SIS.

If a family member account is already created in Seesaw with both an email address and phone number, then both fields are required in the SIS for the sync to recognize and connect the account.

District admin cannot change any data on a family account. If the email or phone number in ClassLink does not match in Seesaw, only the family member can update their account. 

1. Classlink: https://rosterconsole.classlink.com/apps/rule-based-permissions/edit/3
   Minimum permissions: District, email OR phone, name, Sourced_id, students, type, useragents, other agents.
2. Seesaw will automatically pull in relevant family members (specifically those listed in Classlink as parent or guardians) to be invited to Seesaw through the nightly roster sync. Or, you can elect to run a manual sync. 
3. Synced families will show on the Org Dashboard in the Families tab. 

Family Syncing for Single School or Segment

We understand that you might not want to sync all families within your district or would like to test this feature with one school before syncing your entire district. At this time, Seesaw provides options to sync by either whole district or specific schools. We currently do not support the ability to sync on other segments, such as by specific grade within a school or district. 

To activate Classlink Family Syncing at either the district or single segment level, please reach out to our Support team and they will be able to assist you with getting this set up.

Family Member Experience

There are NO changes to the existing parent/family experience with this feature. The user flow is exactly the same.

Once a family member's information has been synced from Classlink, Seesaw will email the family member. The family member will the be directed to:

1. Create a Seesaw account if they don't have one already.

2. Claim the student connection that's been made by the sync. 

FAQs

1. If a parent is connected using this method but then they need to be disconnected due to legal reasons, will that happen automatically when they are taken out of their Classlink account, or will they need to do this manually?
   
   This can be done automatically, depending on what settings the customer chooses (i.e - there is a flag that would need to be turned on to remove family members so that Classlink is the source of truth).
   
   
2. If a family gets the invite but thinks it is spam and deletes it, will they have to manually invite them again or will they continue to get invites as part of the sync until they connect?
   
   We don't keep sending, since there is no way for us to know if they've deleted the invite or if they're just ignoring it. They would have to be added manually through the org dashboard.
   
   
3.  If a family member has both their email and phone number in Classlink, which method of communication will be the default for the Seesaw invitation?
   
   Email is the default.
   
   
4.  What happens if Family Access is turned off by the teacher or school?
   
   If Family Access is disabled by the teacher/school, the family will remain connected to their student, but they will not see any classes or student work.
   
   
5. When will the invitation be sent to the family members? 
   
   Invitations will be sent at the time of your Nightly Sync. If you would like invitations to be sent at a specific time, please submit a Help Center ticket.