Parent Data Entry for Emergency Form

[Kristen Kozloski]

Hi Everyone! I am wondering if anyone out there is having parents do data entry through the parent portal for their emergency form. If so, can you tell me how. We are hoping to get this going by August of 2009. I am trying to figure out if that is too lofty of a goal. We would also like to have some type of validation before the information populates the database. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!!

[Kevin M. Finnegan]

What a coincidence! Today I started investigating using MS Word to create a form that would be read by MS Excel. The problem I'm having is that Word saves the form data as a text-delimited file, and when I open it in Excel the data field names (last name, first name, DOB, etc) end up all in column A and the data all ends up in column B.

In order to be imported into PowerSchool the data field names have to be listed from left to right in row 1 and each data field put in the row beneath it.

Haven't figured it out yet. The instructions on the various internet sites I've found say that Excel will put the field names in row 1, but it's not happening.

Try a search engine and use the words "Microsoft Word, form, Excel" and you'll get a few pages of hits. Let me know if you have better luck than I am!

[Roger Mathews]

Personally I wouldn't be too comfortable having parents do this online. The quality of the data would be questionable. Someone would have to scrub the data before using it in production. Even if validation has been programmed into the form, some people just don't understand those types of web-forms, the validation error messages, etc. I can see the technology department taking a hit in increased helpdesk calls from parents because they don't understand the form or validation.

Security is another issue, especially in broken homes. Just relying on the login credentials for security isn't enough in my opinion.

I wish it was doable and if you are having success with this project can you let us know how things are going?