Parents Accounts
Click a title to jump to that section
- What are parent accounts
- How to enable parent accounts
- Importing parents and children
- How to link parent and child accounts
- Parent/Child email addresses and notifications
What are "Parent Accounts"?
Are you running a children's choir?
Do you have children in your chorus and their parents would like to have access to their account as well?
Our "Parents" feature allows you to have parent and child accounts that link children with their parents.
This allows several children to all have separate user accounts that can be invoiced, invited to events, and invited to learn specific songs, while parents can have their own account that allows then to login and "masquerade" as each child to perform updates and pay invoices.
If you are running a children's choir and don't have this feature enabled already, follow the instructions below to enable the parent accounts feature.
How to Enable Parent Accounts
Navigate to the feature selection page
Go to: Settings & Admin > Feature selection
Enable parent accounts
Checkmark the box next to "Parent accounts" and save the page. This will add thhe appropriate fields and import options to user profiles to allow you to link accounts.
Pro tip:
While on this screen, you may also wish to disable "Spouse fields".
Importing Parent and Child Accounts
The parents and child importing options will become available one the parent module is enabled (jump to the section).
You'll want to import the parent accounts, then the children. This will allow you to automatically link children to their parents without having to manually do so.
Detailed importing instructions for importing parents and children can be found here.
If you need to manually link the accounts you can scroll to the next section to see how to do so.
How to: Link a parent and child account
Adding a link between a user marked as a Parent and another user (usually a member) allows the account with the Parent role to "masquerade" as that member.
If you're just setting up your site and will therefore be uploading several users, you'll probably want to use the importing feature (Jump to the section).
To associate a parent and a child:
First, make sure that the user who is the parent has the Parent role.
You can view their profile and look for the role. If they don't have it, edit their profile and add it. You'll want to add it in the roles field.
Next, you need to locate the child's account on the Members page, and go to their edit profile page.
On this page, select the correct parent in the Parent field (it's below the contact and birth date fields). If you begin typing the last name, it will suggest options (it will only suggest users who have the role of "parent" assigned to their account).
Select the right name, and then press save.
Parents can then login and masquerade as their child/children. The option will appear in the account menu under their name on the right hand side.
Parent accounts: Email addresses and notifications
Every user account requires a unique email address. For parents and children, this can be problematic if your child doesn't have their own email address.
There are a few options:
- Create a free email address for your child
Setting up an email address is quick and easy. You can event set it up to forward all emails to your own email address.
- Create a "fake" email that will still send to your account
Some email clients allow you to create alternate email addresses that look different, but will still go to your regular inbox. Gmail (for example) will let you use various email addresses using the + symbol
Original email: [email protected]
You can create an account for the child with: [email protected]
and all emails will still go to: [email protected]
There are also more method for using multiple versions of your email listed on this site.
Yahoo has a similar process but it requires more set-up.
- Use a "dummy" email address
Example: [email protected]
If you use a dummy email address that account will not receive any email notifications, nor any emails associated with mailing lists.
A note about notifications
Notifications for the singers will always be sent to the child's email address - unless you choose to send email notifications to the associated parent account (on the edit tab for the child's account).
If you're using a dummy email address and have not elected to send the email notifications to the parent, website notifications will still be available under the child's account.
The child will not receive mailing list emails with a non-functional email address, and they will not be automatically forwarded to the parent account. However, this can be accounted for if the parents are added as recipients on the mailing list.