How to Elicit Updates to Parent Spouse Profiles?

John Ronan

My president wants us to get every family who will be reenrolling for next year to review and update profile info. about the parents. Specifically, he wants, for each family, to have a parent go through and verify that that parent, and the other parent [if applicable] has current employment info.

He wants us to track this and ensure that every family actually does it.

I've thought of a couple options, but none does it completely. I put them [and their inadequacies] out below and I would appreciate any input as I might be missing something obvious. ?

Opt. 1: The Reenrollment Form - good for determining who's planning to return, but can't elicit profile change info.

Opt. 2: A Profile Update School Form - This would work, but for many of our families, only one parent actually interacts with BEM. Often, the other parent doesn't even have a login. It's not possible for, say, an active mother to update the Business section of her husband's profile from within the form.

Opt. 3: Allow Spouses to Update Each other's profiles - we actually already allow this. The problem is, there is no way to explicitly ask [or require] the family to do the review and update.
The closest we could come, it seems, is to assign a simple form to both parents and track their completion of it. It would simply have a statement in there that says something like, “I confirm that I have kept my information and that of my child's other parent's information up to date”.

Opt. 4: [this is a stretch] Introduce an Application for Next Year for all (Returning) Current Students.
I'm still investigating this one. I'm remembering that the application is the one place where a parent can enter/update info about a spouse. Still looking into this, but wanted to get this out to you all.
I'm hoping while processing the applications, any changes will be put into the records.

Thanks for any input.

Scott Chrysler

John -

I had been having a bear of a time getting our parents to approve their child's course requests for next year. So I started playing hardball and used the Hold feature to lock them out of seeing grade reports until they approved courses. As soon as we published 3rd quarter grade reports, 100% of the students' courses were approved.

You could set up a Hold feature for families that do not update their data. You can check who has and who has not by having them complete the Profile Update form you mentioned.

Just a thought.

Scott

Kathy Hannon

I have only played with it - but did you test the Profile Validation? You are still limited to parent only doing their own profile. It's a sign in feature - I think there is a report to see who completed and who didn't.

John Ronan

Thanks, Scott. Interesting idea.

The only problem with this is the case where the father, e.g., never has and never will log in. We can't force him to do a form if he doesn't log in….

John Ronan

Thanks Kathy. But again, we can't really expect both parents to sign in and we really need the info updated on both parents. That's why I thought an application might do it….crazy as it seems.

Susan Ott

I use the Profile update form and am able to get the spouse info updated. I tested it extensively before starting to use it a few years ago. I pull over the User Profile block (and name it Parent 1). I then pull over the Household Profile Update block (and name it Spouse of Parent 1). It includes the home address and business info for both and allows editing.

John Ronan

Susan,

Thank you for your input.

This is almost exactly what I have been looking for!

Anita Pinkerton

Susan, I am trying to build the form you suggested with the User Profile Update for Parent 1 and the Household block for Spouse of Parent 1, but the household block is not prepopulating with anything about the spouse. I don't want it to create duplicate records. How do you get this to work?

Susan Ott

@Anita Pinkerton do you have the household block set to “Show Spouse of User”?