You wish to provide parents with an RM Unify account so that they can access an app (such as Parent Portal, Satchel One, Earwig, Firefly, etc.) relating to parental engagement, homework, or the attainment and assessment, etc., data for their children.

It is recommended that you set up your app/s in advance of your parent accounts to ensure a smooth rollout.

You must have either:

• an RM Unify Premium licence and MIS Sync enabled for your establishment, as per the Other Useful Articles section at the bottom of this article:
   
  • TEC5690515 for Integris
  • DWN4153727 for SIMS, iSAMS by IRIS, WCBS, Bromcom, or Facility CMIS
  • TEC7707997 for Arbor
  • TEC9199494 for 'IRIS Ed:Gen'
  • TEC6949609 for Juniper Horizons
  • TEC5695459 for ScholarPack
    
• or a Parent Portal contract, which comes with MIS Sync for RM Unify enabled

Creating the parent accounts is a two step process. Once MIS Sync has been enabled, the user data has been processed and the data validated by an RM Unify admin, the next steps are:

1. To send an email to the parents to invite them to create an RM Unify account.
2. For those parents to confirm their identity and so allow the RM Unify account to be created.

Parent accounts in RM Unify are created from known parent records in your MIS, derived from the data held for each and every student in your school.
Important: RM Unify creates accounts (and sends invites) using the parent email address stored in your school MIS. If a parent doesn't have an email address in MIS then they cannot be sent an invite and will be unable to create an RM Unify account. An invite is sent to a parent's email address and that email address will become the RM Unify username that they log in with.

You can find the Parent Management page from the link in the RM Unify Management Console, which will present the current status of all your parents, a useful search function, and a link in the top right corner to the four step Setup Guide (see below).

You must set your reply-to email address for the parent account invites. This will be the mailbox where any replies to parent invite emails will go. You should enter the email address of a mailbox that gets regularly checked by a member of staff.

RM Unify parent invitation emails will be sent to the email address stored for those parents in your MIS. The Parent Management and Setup Guide pages will display the number (if any) of parents who don't yet have an email address set, with the aim obviously being to have 0 parents with no email address in the MIS (example below). If any parents need email addresses added, once entered into the MIS they will be synced to RM Unify on the next overnight sync. For Integris, if you need the MIS changes synced to RM Unify sooner, you can trigger an immediate 'resync' from the RM Unify User Management Dashboard page.

The email address that the invite is sent to will become the login for the RM Unify parent account and so must be unique across the RM Unify database. Where an email address is already in use (or previously has been) then it will be 'disallowed' and will show in the 'Email address disallowed' filter (example below).

Disallowed email addresses can be resolved by the admin, most usually by setting a different email address for the parent in the MIS. Once addressed, invites can be sent to the parents and they can activate their RM Unify accounts. 

• Scenario 1 - two parents sharing an email address have already activated one parent RM Unify account.
  Solutions - either the two parents share the same RM Unify account, or a different email address is used for the second parent account in the MIS.
• Scenario 2 - the parent already has an RM Unify account using the email address in another school.
  Solution - set a different email address for the parent in the MIS.
• Scenario 3 - the parent's existing account was deleted, due to one of their children leaving the school. The parent remains in the MIS due to other children they have at the school, but the email address cannot be re-used.
  Solution - set a different email address for the parent record linked to a child remaining in school.

More detail about the potential issues and their solutions can be found in the flow chart (below) linked to on the Setup Guide page.

You can send invites out to individual parents, to all parents, or to parents of a selected year group.

At any time you can view your stats on the main Parent Management dashboard and take further actions, such as re-sending invites.

Parents should click the 'sign up here' link to begin the process of setting up their account. This link is unique to each user. After clicking the link, each parent will be taken to the page displayed below, where they will be asked to enter the date of birth for a child that their account is linked to. This confirms the link between parent and child.

Please note: Where a parent may have two or more children, RM Unify can only link to a single child account. The restraint is down to the MIS in question, with the matching being limited to a single parent email address per child.

Enter a date of birth for your child

The final step before confirming the account is to choose a password. As with all self-generated passwords in RM Unify, a strength meter applies. Passwords must achieve a minimum strength level before they are accepted.

A Password strength meter applies

Click Finish to create the account. Once the account is created, parents will be taken directly to the RM Unify login page. Parents in RM Unify do not need to enter a username scope (@schoolname) like other users in your school do when logging in to RM Unify; their username is simply their email address.

The first time a parent logs in, they will be requested to read and accept the terms and conditions for the use of RM Unify.

Which applications can parents use in RM Unify?
The RM Unify App Library contains a wide range of applications designed for education. Some applications have been designed for parents to access, providing information and services that improve home-school engagement. These applications incude:

• Parent Portal - pulls from the school's Integris MIS and shows parents the child's attendance figures, behaviour figures, timetable and reports.
• Satchel One - parents can monitor their child's homework.
• Earwig (Academic Timelines) - access to a timeline of a child's achievements.
• 3Fifteen - Safeguarding service to support school pick-up times.

You can get a full list by browsing to the App Library, scrolling down to the filter 'Apps great for' and ticking the Parents box.

The Parent Launch Pad
When parent users log in to RM Unify, they will be presented with the Parent Launch Pad and a default set of apps/tiles. As with all Launch Pads, the Parent Launch Pad can be edited by RM Unify admin users.

If a parent reports that they did not receive an invite which was sent and it is not in their spam or junk email folder, it maybe blocked by the user's email provider entirely. If it is suspected that the email is being treated as spam or junk mail, then it is advised to add fulfilment-do-not-reply@rmunify.com to the safe senders list of your email application/provider (this is the address used to mail out the invites). Adding the domains rm.com and rmunify.com is also advised.

Yes. By navigating to the Parent Management page and choosing the 'Sent an invite' filter, it is possible to click the 'Re-send Invite' button. Or for bulk resends, click the 'Send Invite to all' button and click OK at the confirmation pop-up.
Please note: Once an invite has been received and the RM Unify account creation process has completed, it is not possible to resend an invite.

This is expected behaviour if the parent has already accepted their RM Unify invite and created an RM Unify account.  During the acceptance, they will have entered the date of birth of one child to validate themselves.  This will be the only child that displays next to the parent in the Parent Management>Have RM Unify account page.  The parent will still be able to see all children in linked parental apps such as Parent Portal.

If the parent has not accepted their RM Unify invite, then all their children should display next to the parent in the Parent Management pages eg. Sent an invite. 

There are at least two valid scenarios where a parent user might see this message: