With the completion of PWS, FAM and SchoolForms Online (SFO, formerly known as RWS), we now have integrated accounts. This means a family will have access to all of these services within a single login/account (depending, of course, upon which web services your school utilizes). iRCOMMON can also integrate Single Sign-On (SSO) with your school web site.
The move to iRCOMMON: How it affects Families
Families will log in to one account and have the ability to view grades, schedules, attendance, and the searchable Family Directory—and also start an application for a sibling, write a recommendation requested of them by another applicant to the school, or complete contracts, re-enrollment deposits and school forms for the next year.
All of your web services will appear as navigation links at the top left of the online account screen. In this example, we are looking at the Family Access Module (FAM) as a family would see it.
The move to iRCOMMON: How it affects iR solution Administrators
iRCOMMON is an online services account manager, where accounts for all online services can be managed in one central location.
With the implementation of iRCOMMON, account data are stored online as a separate file from the iRCOMMON engine itself. This means that, moving forward, an updated iRCOMMON file can be easily swapped in without the need for migrating data.
To gain this new efficiency, upon implementation of iRCOMMON, accounts for FAM and SchoolForms Online are all-new. Therefore, if you are upgrading from FAM 1, you will need to re-notify all families that they have new accounts, with the new url and login information. iRCOMMON makes this process simple.
The functionality of iRCOMMON
For the most part, you will continue to do most of your account management work inside the web services modules utilized by your particular office. Now, when working on your accounts in FAM or SFO, your interface will be pointed to the central accounts manager iRCOMMON and filtered to show the accounts for the web service you are in.
The following account-related tasks will continue to be managed primarily within your individual web services:
- Sync accounts.
- Enable accounts.
- Remove access to an account.
- Notify accounts.
The following tasks can be performed inside the individual web services, but may also be managed in iRCOMMON:
- Resolve conflicts and troubleshoot account problems.
- Manage test accounts.
The following are tasks that can be accomplished ONLY in iRCOMMON:
- Disable accounts – Turn off access to an account and all its roles.
- Reset accounts – Reset account to its pre-activation state so account holder can login as if for the first time.
- Create ad hoc accounts – Use iRCOMMON to create test accounts for a central accounts administrator, or an administrative assistant who will be working with accounts.
- Create a Staff account – Create one staff account to be used by all staff. Add a FAM role for the purpose of seeing the searchable directory and the bulletin board.
- Manage the Account Creation Notification email and the Account Reminder Notification email for all web services in one location.