The ZIS Parents Portal is a central resource for the parents and guardians, bringing information from a variety of sources into one place.

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1 Parents Portal The ZIS Parents Portal is a central resource for the parents and guardians, bringing information from a variety of sources into one place. On the home page there are some of the most frequently used sources of information, such the school s weekly e-newsletter ZISLinks. To the left, the tabs lead to information from different sections of the school. The tabs at the top (About Us, Admissions, etc..) go to those sections of the public website, This user s guide will show you how to login and use the basic capabilities of the ZIS Parents Portal, such as maintaining your personal profile, scheduling reminders of upcoming events and using the Faculty Directory to contact teachers and other school staff. Our new Portal allows us to easily expand the information and services available to our parents. Please contact us with your comments and suggestions at ecom@zis.ch. 1. How do I login to the Parents Portal? 2. How do I change my password? 3. What information should be in my profile, and how do I change it? 4. Some events are missing from the calendar what do I do? 5. How do I set reminders? 6. How do I contact my child s teachers, or a staff member, such as the Athletic Director? 7. Where are the PA Pulse, Classifieds, and the PA website? 8. My child s friend is not in the directory how can I contact the friend? 9. How can I add blogs, announcements, or external websites to my portal homepage? 10. Why is my child s photo and schedule not included? 11. What happens if I have a new , home address or telephone number?

2 1. How do I log in to the Parents Portal? From the home page of the ZIS website, click on the Community Login button. You ll be prompted to enter a username and password. Your personal username and password will have been ed to you when the new Parents Portal went live. Please note that unlike the old Portal, where logins were shared by families, each parent/guardian may have their own login. The username is your first initial and surname. Should you forget your username or password, click on the link below the login button, enter your address and your user name and password will be sent to your account. 2. How do I change my password? Once you have logged in, you will see a screen similar to this. In the circled area, there is a link to Change your password. Click on this link and a new screen will appear which allows you to change the password. Similarly, you can update the information in your profile (name, address, address, etc.) and your subscriptions (event reminders, mailing lists, etc.)

3 3. What information should be in my profile, and how should I change it? You can change the information in your profile, by selecting the Update my Profile link in the My Account element on the main page of the portal (see the circled area in the picture). The information from each profile is used to populate the Parents Directory. Initially, the only information included in your profile will be your name, address and home telephone number. You can easily put more information in here, such as your child/ren s name/s (under relationships), home address, mobile telephone number. Many parents do not want their peronal information displayed for privacy concerns. The system has therefore been set up to allow each parent to control which information is available. The directory is searchable by parents names. f you are looking for a child, put their name in keywords and it will come up if the parent has listed that child s name. The information entered in the Parents Portal is stored separately from the information in Powerschool, our new Student Information System. The information in Powerschool is restricted to staff and administration of the school. Powerschool will also be the vehicle used to access student schedules and when it becomes available it will be linked from the Parents Portal.

4 4. Some events are missing from the calendar what do I do? On the right side of the Portal is a calendar. By clicking on the clipboard icon at the top of the calendar (see arrow), you can customize the type of events you see. By default, all of the calendars are selected, but if you change the selection, the Portal remembers the setting the next time you log in. If an event is missing, check to be sure you are viewing all calendars. If it is still not there, please contact the administrative assistant at the appropriate campus. 5. How do I set reminders? Reminders are s that are automatically sent to you about a particular event. Reminders can be set from the full calendar, which can be accessed by clicking on the calendar icon at the top of the element in the Portal. In the calendar, upcoming events will have a bell icon next to them. Click on this icon, and you can set a reminder , which can be delivered to any listed in your profile. You can also select how far in advance you want the reminder, from 30 minutes before to 1 week before the event. You can manage the reminders you create from the My Account element on the Portal page by clicking on Update my Subscriptions.

5 6. How do I contact my child s teacher or a staff member? You can use the Parents Portal to look up teacher and staff addresses, using the Faculty and Staff Directory, which can be found in the menu on the left side of the Portal. The Faculty and Staff Directory allows you to search by location (campus), by department, by name or keyword. To send an to an individual, click on the letter icon next to their name, or open the profile and copy and paste the address to your system. 7. Where are ZISLinks, the PA Pulse, the Classifieds and PA Advertisements? ZISLinks and the PA Pulse, Classifieds and advertisements are linked from the front page of the Portal. Parents will still be sent a reminder that ZISLinks has been published each Thursday. Detailed information about the PA is included in the Parents Association tab on the left. 8. My child s friend is not in the directory how can we contact them? In the past, the school has published a directory of all families currently enrolled at ZIS, including children s names, addresses and phone numbers. Parents who did not want their information included had to request that their names be withheld from the directory. Many parents have voiced their concern about the security of the information and privacy issues. Understanding these concerns, ZIS has decided to allow each individual to decide what and how much informatin they would like in the directory. The only information initially loaded for each user is name, address and home phone number. Please see the What information should be in my profile to see how to change your Parent Directory entries either to delete this information or to add to it. The Parents Portal and the Parents Directory within is only available to parents and guardians of students currently enrolled, as well as faculty and staff at the school. Class lists for the ECC, LS and ZIS Baden are included under the Campus sections, so that parents can check the last name of the children in their class, and check the Directory. If you are unable to find a child s classmate, it is likely the parents of the child have chosen not to include their child s name in the directory. Other options would be to send a note through your child or your child s teacher (in the communications book) to ask the other parents to contact you.

6 9. How can I add blogs, announcements, or external websites to my portal homepage? Many blogs and websites support RSS feeds (Really Simple Syndication) to allow you to pull a summary of articles from one website to a central location. The tool used by ZIS for blogs supports RSS feeds. The Parents Portal has a RSS element, which you can add to the Portal. To add an element, click on Add new element on the right side of the Portal. A dropdown menu will appear. Select RSS. A new window will open, where you can enter the URL for the RSS feed. To find the URL, go to the blog (linked from the campus page, open the blog and copy the URL). You can also add RSS elements with links to sites outside of ZIS, such as news and sports sites. Look for the RSS symbol on the website: and then copy and paste the URL (highlight the address, simultaneously press the Ctrl button and then the c button to copy; and then the Ctrl button and v button to paste). 10. Why is my child s photo and schedule not included? This information will be included in the school s new student database Powerschool, which will be launched this school year and will be linked through the Parents Portal. In the mean time the teacher s name is included in the ECC, LS and ZIS Baden class lists on the Campus page and students in the MS and US should be able to tell you their teachers names. 11. What happens if I have a new , home address or telephone number? As well as updating your Profile with those details you want to share with other parents with the directory, please send an to addresses@zis.ch so that the school s database is updated with your details.