Establishing Login Expectations for Your School Community
How to set clear, consistent expectations around platform access for parents and students - and how to use login data to understand and improve community engagement across Faria platforms.
Sending welcome emails is the beginning of community onboarding, not the end of it. Whether parents and students actually log in, how often, and whether they find the experience useful depends on the expectations your school sets - and whether those expectations are communicated clearly before access is opened.
This article covers the decisions schools should make before opening community access to Faria platforms, and how to use the tools available to monitor and improve engagement over time. It applies across ManageBac+, OpenApply, SchoolsBuddy, and Atlas.
From the Faria team: Schools that see consistently high parent engagement rates share one thing in common - they told parents explicitly what to do on the platform, how often to do it, and why it matters for their child. Engagement does not happen by default. It happens when it is expected, explained, and easy.
Deciding on Uniform Access Before Opening Accounts
Before sending welcome emails to parents, it is worth considering how you want family access to be structured. This is particularly relevant for ManageBac+ and SchoolsBuddy, where a student may have two parents or guardians who could each have separate accounts.
Two questions to decide upfront:
How many accounts per family?
Rather than importing all available parents and guardians automatically, consider whether your school wants one account per family or one per parent. A single shared family login is simpler for many families and produces more accurate engagement data - login analytics for a platform where two parents each have an account but only ever log in from one device will show one account as active and one as entirely unused, which can misrepresent your actual community engagement.
Conversely, separate parent accounts allow for personalised communications and clearer audit trails, which may be important for schools where parents are separated or where communications need to reach individuals rather than households. Neither approach is universally right - the key is to decide deliberately rather than accept the default.
Do parents need their own accounts at all?
For some schools, particularly those that will not be using parent-specific features like a parent association or direct messaging, it may make more sense to have parents access the platform through their child's account. This involves the child in viewing their own progress, removes the problem of unused parent accounts skewing engagement data, and simplifies account management. If your school takes this approach, document it clearly in your parent handbook so families understand why they are not receiving separate login credentials.
Setting and Communicating Login Expectations
Once you have decided on your access structure, communicate your expectations clearly before parents and students receive their login credentials. Expectations to define and share include:
| Expectation | Example guidance to communicate |
|---|---|
| Login frequency | "We ask parents to log in at least once per week during term time to check their child's attendance and upcoming assessments" |
| Notification settings | "You will receive an email notification when a new assessment is published or when a teacher posts a message. You can adjust notification frequency in your account settings" |
| What parents are expected to act on | "If you see an unexplained absence, please contact the school office directly. If you have a question about an assessment grade, please contact the class teacher" |
| What students are responsible for | "Students are expected to check ManageBac+ daily for new tasks and deadlines, and to submit all coursework through the platform by the published due date" |
Include these expectations in your parent and student handbook, in your welcome email, and in any orientation session materials. Expectations that exist only in the admin team's understanding will not reach your community.
Using Login Data to Monitor Engagement
Faria platforms provide admins with tools to understand how actively the community is engaging with their accounts. Using these regularly helps identify families who may need a nudge, and gives school leadership meaningful data on platform adoption.
Last Accessed audit log in ManageBac+
Each parent profile in ManageBac+ records the date the account was last accessed. Admins can view this from the parent's profile directly, or get a broader overview by navigating to Settings, then School Directory, and filtering by Last Accessed date in descending order to see the most recently active accounts - and identify those that have not been accessed recently.
For a spreadsheet view of all parent accounts with last accessed dates, use the Export Students and Parents Information option from the right navigation panel. This is useful for sharing engagement data with school leadership or identifying families to follow up with at the start of a new term.
Note: the Last Accessed date reflects your school's configured timezone under School Settings, not the individual user's local timezone.
Engagement signals across other Faria platforms
In OpenApply, application and portal activity can be tracked at the individual applicant level - useful for identifying families who have started but not completed applications, or who have not viewed communications sent through the platform. In SchoolsBuddy, activity registration and consent response rates provide indirect engagement signals at the family level.
Use these data points as the starting point for follow-up - a family that has not logged in since the welcome email was sent may simply need a reminder, a direct phone call, or a different login method.
Practical Steps to Improve Low Engagement
If login data shows a significant portion of your parent community is not engaging, the issue is rarely unwillingness. It is usually one of three things: the login process was too confusing at the start, the school has not communicated a compelling reason to log in regularly, or the platform is not accessible enough from the family's usual touchpoints.
- Resurface the login link at the start of each term - not just at the beginning of the year; families who reset their login routine each September often need a reminder in January and April too
- Connect platform activity to things parents care about - frame ManageBac+ check-ins around upcoming assessments and report release dates, frame SchoolsBuddy logins around activity booking windows; families engage with platforms when there is something specific and timely to act on
- Offer a brief re-onboarding session for persistently disengaged families - a 10-minute one-on-one walkthrough with a parent who has never successfully logged in is more effective than a third reminder email
- Check for technical barriers before assuming disengagement - some families may have never received their welcome email (check spam, verify the email address on file), or may have tried to log in and encountered an error that was never reported
In Summary
- Decide on your access structure - accounts per family and whether parents need their own accounts - before opening access, not after.
- Set and communicate explicit login expectations: frequency, what to act on, and what notifications to expect.
- Use the Last Accessed audit log in ManageBac+ and equivalent engagement signals in other platforms to identify and follow up with disengaged families.
- Low engagement is usually a communication or access barrier, not unwillingness - address the root cause rather than sending more reminder emails.
Clear login expectations and active engagement monitoring are what turn community access to ManageBac+, SchoolsBuddy, and OpenApply from a feature into a genuine school-home communication channel. Speak to your FariaSupport contact for guidance on configuring parent access and engagement reporting for your school's context.