Special Programs 26.7.0.0

Digital Signature Support for Custom Document Templates

District Administrators can now enable digital signatures on custom document templates created from templatized document templates. A new "Enable Digital Signature" toggle in the template settings allows admins to activate digital signing and define required signer roles (e.g., Parent, Case Manager, LEA Representative). Once configured, documents automatically trigger the digital signature workflow for staff and parents.

Digital Signature: Audit Log Now Captures "Send Reminder" Actions

Summary: The Digital Signature audit log now records an entry each time a user sends a reminder to pending signers.

What's Changed:
Previously, "Send Reminder" actions were not captured in the audit log. Now, each reminder generates its own log entry — including timestamp, user, recipient, and document details — providing a complete audit trail of reminder activity.

S|R Module: Automatic Student Transfers

Overview

PowerSchool Special Programs now supports Automated Student Transfers for S|R module implementations.

When a student moves from one district to another, the system can automatically transfer the student's profile and associated documents to the receiving district — eliminating manual transfer envelope requests and significantly reducing delays in accessing student records.

What's New

Automatic Transfer Processing
The system now monitors student enrollment records to detect when a student has moved to a new district. When a valid transfer is identified, the student's profile and documents are automatically transferred to the receiving tenant without requiring staff intervention.

Built-In Transfer Validations
To ensure data integrity, the automated process includes safety checks before initiating a transfer:

• If the receiving district already has the student with newer documents, the transfer is flagged for manual handling

• If the source district does not have the student profile, the transfer is not attempted

• Enrollment date sequence issues are detected and flagged

Duplicate Prevention with Automatic Archiving
When a student transfers back to a district where they were previously enrolled, the system automatically archives the prior student record before importing the new transfer. This prevents duplicate profiles and ensures the student is not double-counted for state reporting purposes.

Enrollment Record Exclusions
Administrators can mark specific enrollment records for exclusion from automatic transfer processing (e.g., concurrent enrollments or other non-transfer scenarios). The transfer process will ignore these records entirely.

Improved Transfer History Report
The Transfer History Report now consolidates related transfer entries into a single row per transfer event, summarized by document history year and document count. Previously, each document year showed as a separate row, making it difficult to identify distinct transfer events.

Transfer Status Tracking
Each enrollment record now tracks its transfer status, providing visibility into the outcome of the automated process. Status values include: Not Needed, Pending, Processing, Completed, Failed, Partial, and Manual Transfer. Transfer notes provide additional context when a transfer cannot be completed automatically.

How It Works

1. Detection — The system evaluates student enrollment records to identify when a student's district of enrollment has changed.

2. Validation — Transfer candidates are checked against safety rules to confirm the transfer can proceed automatically.

3. Transfer — The student profile is moved to the receiving district, and documents are queued for transfer by history year to ensure reliability.

4. Completion — Once all documents are transferred, the enrollment record is updated with the transfer result and timestamp.

Important Notes

• Enrollment data accuracy is required. Automated transfers depend on accurate enrollment history maintained through your SIS integration or operational processes. The transfer system does not modify core enrollment fields (start date, end date, exit reason).

• Student Archives must be enabled in all tenants for automated transfers to function.

• Existing systems are unaffected. A preparation step ensures that enabling automated transfers does not trigger a backlog of unnecessary transfers on existing data.

• This feature is designed as a generic, core-model-based framework applicable across state implementations.

• To enable this feature, please contact Support.

PowerBuddy: Removal of Allotment Feature

Summary: The Allotment feature has been removed from the PowerSchool Special Programs platform. PowerBuddy AI tools continue to function normally across all other areas of the application.

What Changed: The Allotment section and its associated UI elements have been retired from PSSP. This legacy feature is no longer available in the interface.

PowerBuddy Impact:

• PowerBuddy tools remain fully operational at the banner, field, and section levels.

• Content generation and all other PowerBuddy-assisted workflows are unaffected by this change.

• No changes to how PowerBuddy launches or generates content.

Duplicate User Help Resource Names Are Now Prevented

Previously, User Help resources with the same name could be created even when they differed in "Under Configuration Management" status, causing CMT sync failures.

The system now enforces unique resource names regardless of configuration management settings and displays an error if a duplicate is detected.

Message Forwarding Settings No Longer Reset to "None"

Issue: Email notification settings configured under Administration > Configuration > Message Settings were automatically reverting to "None" after being saved. This caused users to stop receiving email notifications about incoming messages and student transfer requests, requiring them to reconfigure their preferences repeatedly.

Resolution: Message forwarding settings are now saved and retained as expected. Changes made to the "Action when message is received" setting will persist across sessions and will no longer be overwritten. Users will reliably receive email notifications based on their selected preferences.

Digital Signature: PDF Generation After Signing Process Completed

Fixed an issue where the signed PDF failed to generate after the Digital Signature signing process was completed on an IEP document.

Previously, in rare cases, a timing issue could prevent the signed PDF from being generated after all signers had completed the Digital Signature process. This resulted in the document showing a completed signing status but no corresponding signed PDF being available.

With this fix, the PDF generation process now reliably completes after the signing process is finished, ensuring that signed PDF documents are available as expected.

Digital Signature: IEP Response Section Signature Now Recorded Correctly

Issue: When parents signed an IEP document digitally, the signing process could complete before all required sections were signed. This resulted in the parent's signature and consent selections being missing from the Response Section, even though the signer completed the workflow.

Resolution: The digital signature workflow now ensures all required sections — including the Response Section — are fully signed before the process completes. Signatures and consent selections are correctly recorded across all applicable sections of the IEP document.

Speak Text: Punctuation Now Recognized During Dictation

Previously, when using the Speak Text (speech-to-text) feature in document sections such as Present Levels, speaking punctuation commands like "period," "comma," or "question mark" would insert the literal word instead of the corresponding punctuation mark.

Now, the Speak Text feature correctly converts spoken punctuation into symbols.

For example:

• Saying "period" inserts.

• Saying "comma" inserts,and

• Saying "question mark" inserts ?.

This applies to all document sections where the Speak Text feature is available.