Special Programs 26.6.0.0

Improved Error Messages in Data Connectivity Tool (DCT)

Previously, when importing or exporting data through the Data Connectivity Tool, certain server-related errors — such as an upload exceeding the server's size limit or a request timing out — could produce cryptic, unhelpful error messages. This made it difficult to understand what went wrong and how to resolve the issue.

With this update, these errors now display a clear, user-friendly message explaining the likely cause and suggesting next steps, such as splitting the upload into smaller batches and retrying. This improvement applies across all DCT workflows, including web-based imports, command-line (unattended) operations, and GUI-based data transfers.

All other error handling remains unchanged.

Duplicate Record Detection for Student Profiles

When viewing a student's profile, the system checks for other student records that share the same date of birth and a matching first or last name. If potential duplicates are found, a prominent alert banner appears at the top of the profile page with links to each matching record.

How It Works

• The system compares student records across both the Students and General Ed Students tables.

• A match requires an exact date of birth and at least one matching name (first or last). Name matching is case-insensitive.

• Each potential duplicate is displayed as a clickable link (formatted as First Last (StudentID)) that opens the matching profile in a new tab.

• If duplicates exist in both categories, General Ed Student matches are listed first, followed by Student matches.

• The alert banner only appears when potential duplicates are found — if no duplicates exist, no banner is shown.

• The feature automatically adapts to your workspace's date of birth field configuration (e.g., "BirthDate", "DOB", or "DateOfBirth").

Who Can See It
The duplicate record alert is visible to all user roles, including administrators, consultants, and staff users.

SSO Login Status Change Warning

When managing user accounts, administrators will now see a warning message if they change a user's Login Status from "Activated (external SSO)" to another option. The warning — "Changing this value may break SSO for this user." — helps prevent accidental changes that could disrupt Single Sign-On access. This is an informational alert only and does not change any existing login status functionality. The warning is also fully accessible to screen readers.

Search Ed-Fi Now Displays Student Contacts

The Search Ed-Fi tab has been enhanced to display student contact information alongside student records. When searching for a student, administrators can now view a Contacts section that includes:

• Contact name

• Relationship to the student

• Email address (if available)

• Legal designee status (Yes/No)

This improvement helps administrators quickly identify who is connected to a student and verify legal designee information — without needing to navigate to a separate screen. If a student has no contacts on file, a clear "No contacts found" message is displayed.

Digital Signature Processing Performance Improvements

Issue: Documents submitted for digital signature could remain in a "Processing" status for an extended period before being sent to recipients, causing delays in the signature workflow.

Resolution: We made several improvements to the digital signature background processing to significantly reduce the time it takes for documents to move from "Processing" to "Sent" status:

• Signature request emails now receive dedicated processing time, preventing delays caused by other background tasks.

• Documents are now processed in the order they were submitted (first in, first out), ensuring older requests are handled before newer ones.

• Resolved an issue where concurrent background operations could cause timeouts that temporarily blocked digital signature processing for affected workspaces.

• Reduced unnecessary processing steps in the signed-document notification path for faster completion.

Transfer Request Message Now Visible on Send Transfer Screen

The Send Transfer screen now displays the transfer request message, making it easier to reference student numbers and names when adding students to a transfer request.

Bypass Summer Session Calendar Flag During Rollover

What's New

A new "Bypass Summer Calendar Days During Rollover" setting has been added to the Globals Profile, giving administrators control over whether weekdays from June 16 through August 31 are automatically marked as "Summer Session" during the End-of-Year (EOY) rollover process.

Why This Matters

Previously, the EOY rollover automatically flagged all weekdays between June 16 and August 31 as Summer Session days for every district. This default behavior could cause calendar dates to incorrectly display as "Summer Session," impacting calendar accuracy and downstream reporting.

What Changed

• New Globals Profile field: A new configurable option allows districts to bypass the automatic Summer Session flag during rollover. When enabled, weekdays from June 16–August 31 are created as standard in-session days instead of Summer Session days.

• Historical data correction: Existing calendar records for affected tenants have been corrected so that previously flagged Summer Session dates now reflect standard in-session status.

• No impact to other districts: Districts that rely on the existing Summer Session behavior are unaffected. If the new setting is not configured, the system continues to operate as before.

Who Is Affected

• Districts using the new setting: The bypass option is available in the Globals Profile. Once enabled, calendar dates will display correctly without the Summer Session label.

• All other districts: No changes to current behavior.

Action Required

No action is required. Administrators who wish to use the new setting can enable it in the Globals Profile. To verify the updated calendar behavior, review dates between June 16 and August 31 in the Calendar view — these should display as standard in-session days.

Digital signature auto-acceptance report

A report lists auto-accepted documents, adheres to district-level digital signature auto-acceptance settings, includes relevant document details, ensures alignment with audit logs, and incorporates historical data for documents processed under previous settings.

S|R Module: Digital signature settings configuration update

Digital Signature Settings configured at the controller level are now automatically pushed down to all tenants and locked for editing. This ensures consistent digital signature behavior across your organization.

What's changing:

• When a controller administrator saves Digital Signature Settings, those settings are automatically applied to all associated tenants.

• Tenant-level administrators will see these controller-managed fields as read-only, with a clear visual indication that they are locked.

• The Signer Help Contact Email Address remains fully editable at the tenant level and is not affected by controller updates. Each tenant can continue to set and manage its own contact email independently.

Digital signature auto-void activity report

A report has been added to provide historical records of auto-voided documents, including trigger dates, auto-void timestamps, district settings at the time of processing, and audit reference. Filters for date range, document type, student, and school are available to users with relevant district-level permissions.

Error column added for PDF exports

When exporting documents via the Document Conversion Tool (DCT) with PDF generation enabled, PDF conversion failures were previously lost silently, leaving users with no way to identify which rows had failed. This was particularly impactful in merge mode, where multiple reports are exported to a single file, and errors were completely invisible.

With this update, an error column (#PDFHtmlContent#ERROR) has been added to the export log file. If a PDF conversion fails, the specific failure details are now captured inline for the affected row. When all conversions succeed, the column remains present but empty, making it easy to scan for issues at a glance.

Key details:

• Applies to all export modes: single export, multiple separate files, and merge to a single file.

• Only affects document exports with PDF generation enabled — plain list exports remain unchanged.

• Supported in both attended (UI) and unattended (CLI/batch) export paths.

Integration Dashboard Overview Page

What's New

A new Integration Dashboard has been added to provide administrators with a high-level overview of their integration health at a glance. Previously, the integration view was limited to individual import layouts, requiring users to drill into each one to assess status. The new dashboard consolidates key information into a single, easy-to-read summary.

Key Features

• Overall Integration Status — A health grade for your integration, showing whether the system is operating normally, experiencing warnings, or encountering errors. Includes the last import time and the next expected import.

• Areas of Concern — Automatically surfaces the most critical issues ranked by importance, including:

  • Row errors (failed data imports)

  • Keyword/translation mismatches and invalid values

  • Stalled imports caused by failing child imports

  • Export errors and warnings

• Runtime Statistics — Provides valuable operational metrics, including total cycle time, number of integrated locations and students, ignored locations, and time distribution across layouts over a 48-hour rolling window.

Supported Integrations

• PS SIS — Displays cycle time, school-by-school import progress, and per-layout time distribution.

• eSchoolPLUS — Shows delta-based import statistics and per-layout performance data.

Who Benefits

District administrators and PowerSchool consultants need quick visibility into integration performance without navigating through individual import layout screens.

Digital Signature: Document Status Incorrectly Displays as an Error After Successful Signing

Issue: In certain scenarios involving the "Accept Signatures" workflow, a digitally signed document — such as an Individualized Education Program (IEP) — could display a status of "Error" even though all signatures were completed and the PDF was generated correctly. This occurred when a document was force-completed while an opted-out signer was still pending, causing a background processing conflict that set the document status to Error.

Resolution: This issue has been resolved. The system now correctly handles concurrent document processing during the Accept Signatures workflow, ensuring that completed documents retain their proper status. Documents will no longer incorrectly display an Error status after successful signing.

Section security dropdown duplication resolved

The dropdown for Section Security displays only active sections, preventing duplication and conflicts with security privileges. This issue is now resolved.

Digital Signature: Fixed "Insufficient Privileges" Error When Signing Documents from Message Inbox

Issue:
Staff users who access students through My Caseload, My Class, or Alt Location were unable to sign documents when opening them from the notification link in their Special Programs message inbox (Communication > Messages). Affected users encountered an "Insufficient Privileges" error message. Additionally, clicking "Sign Later" to exit the signing wizard displayed an error page instead of returning the user to their previous screen.

Resolution:
The signing wizard now correctly recognizes the staff user's access method when a document is opened from the message inbox. Staff users with caseload-based or class-based access can now sign documents directly from their inbox notifications without encountering privilege errors. The "Sign Later" option has also been corrected to return users to their previous page as expected. A related fix was applied to the Digital Signature Documents grid to ensure the "Sign Document" and "View Status" actions use the correct access context.

Resolved: Intermittent Server Error When Logging In

Issue: Users could intermittently encounter a server error when attempting to log in to Special Programs, particularly when accessing the application via a browser bookmark or after a period of inactivity.

Root Cause: When a user's session expired on the server but remained cached in the browser, subsequent requests using the stale session triggered a server error instead of redirecting the user to the login page.

Resolution: Added proper handling for expired sessions so that users are no longer presented with a server error. Users with expired sessions will now be gracefully redirected to log in again.

Password Reset: Resolved Misleading Warning During First-Time Login

When new users logged into PSSP with a temporary password and were prompted to reset it, a warning message incorrectly displayed "Check your old password," — even though the password was entered correctly and the reset completed successfully. This confused the onboarding experience.

What changed: The password reset process now completes seamlessly. After setting a new password, users are redirected directly to the home page without any erroneous warning messages.