6 Questions Everyone's Asking About Paperless Referrals

The 2018-19 school year is here! Last spring we released a new set of features in paperless referral entry and workflows. We didn’t know how quickly the setting would catch on. Boy, do we know now! We’re only a few weeks in to the new school year and so far 512 schools have enabled paperless referral settings in their SWIS accounts. SWIS Admins are inviting referral entry only users by the hundreds. It’s exciting to see.

There are lots of resources available on our website to help guide you through setting up paperless referral workflows and inviting referral entry only users. Here's a rundown of the articles and videos to check out if you haven't already:

Tutorials

• How to enable paperless referral workflows
  
• How to set up Referral Entry Only users
  
• How to enter and manage referrals if you're a Referral Entry Only user
  

News Articles

• Overview of Paperless Referral Features
  
• Strategies to Roll Out Paperless Referrals
  
• Find Out What Happened: Find a Referral for Referral Entry Only Users
  

Updated User's Manual

The SWIS user's Manual has all of the step-by-step instructions for enabling paperless referral settings and inviting Referral Entry Only users. Check it out in SWIS Resources here.

Frequently Asked Questions

With greater use, we’ve seen new questions come up around these settings. New answers to some frequently asked questions have been added to the support section of our website. The fastest way to view them all is to go to Support and type PRE in the search bar. Every question we have related to paperless referrals, workflows, and referral entry only users will come up right there.

Paperless Referral Entry FAQs

There are a handful of questions we hear almost every day. These are the top six frequently asked paperless referral entry questions for the beginning of the 2018-19 school year:

1. Can I add more than one default reviewer to our referral workflow?

No. However, you can set up more than one reviewer for your account…just not more than one default reviewer. Users entering referrals can select from the list of multiple reviewers who they want to send the referral to for review. Additionally, anyone assigned a referral can reassign that referral to another reviewer.

To send a referral to a reviewer other than the default, simply uncheck the box labeled Send to Default Reviewer and select a specific reviewer from the Send for Review drop-down list.

2. I get an error when I try to accept my referral entry only access invitation.

When you need referral entry only access to multiple schools, it’s important to get your initial username and password set before getting invitations to the additional schools. If you have received invitations to multiple schools before you’ve established your username and password, you will get an error that says: “Could not extract the user form from invitation token. Error code: INV116”

To get access to additional schools, ask the SWIS admins at the schools you need to access to resend their invitations. The new invitations you receive will simply let you know those schools are added to your login information.

3. How do I invite a referral entry only user to have access to multiple schools?

If a user needs referral entry only access to more than one SWIS school, there is a specific method you will need to follow when sending your invitations.

1. Ask the SWIS Admin at one school to send an invitation to the user to set up their referral entry only login information.
   
2. The user receives the email and sets up their username and password.
   
3. Once these steps are complete, the SWIS Admins at the other schools may send their invitations.
   
4. The user will receive emails letting them know they can now access these additional schools when logging in to SWIS.
   

If this process isn’t followed, it’s possible the user will receive an error message. Check this article for the solution to the error.

4. I never received my referral entry only access invitation. Where did it go?

The email is most likely blocked by your school or district’s SPAM filter. There are a couple of ways to resolve this issue:

• Ask an IT person to add do-not-reply@pbisapps.org as a safe sender.
  
• Some filters require an IP address to be added as a safe sender, instead of an email address. If that’s the case, our emails are routed through MailChimp. Their IP addresses are the ones to whitelist. Please click here for a list of their delivering IP addresses.
  

5. What’s the easiest way to add all staff as referral entry only users at my school?

In two words: Person Import.

Every SWIS account comes with the option to import student and staff records from a .CSV file. You can use it to your advantage when it comes to using paperless referral workflow settings. To access Person Import head to Tools and select Person Import from the menu.

If you plan to upload staff records to invite them to be referral entry only users, make sure you include an email address for each person. If you’ve never used Person Import before, be sure the district id numbers you’ve added for each staff member in your SWIS account match the district id numbers in your file. That helps avoid creating duplicate records in your SWIS account.

Once you have all the staff records uploaded, you’re ready to send your invitations.

1. Click Tools.
   
2. Click User Management.
   
3. Click the Invite Referral Entry Only Users button in the upper left-hand corner of the window.
   
4. To mass-select everyone on this list, check the box labeled Status at the top of the columns.
   
5. To select individual records, check the box next to the staff you want to invite.
   

1. To deselect individual records, uncheck the box next to the staff you want to remove from the invitation.
2. Click the Send Invitation button.

1. Click Send Invitation to send emailed invitations to every checked record. Click Cancel to return to the Staff List.
   

For more information on how to use Person Import, check out our how-to video here.

6. SAMI says this user has no access to SWIS, but I can’t change it. Help!

In SAMI, if a user has referral entry only access, they will appear as though they have no access to the school’s SWIS account when you view the user in SAMI. If you try to update their access in SAMI, you get an error saying “An unexpected error occurred. Please contact SWIS support.

Referral entry only is an access level managed within a school’s account, not in SAMI. If someone really should have referral entry only access, leave them as they are in SAMI. If they should have a different access level, you’ll need to log in to the SWIS account and remove the user’s referral entry only access first. From the school’s SWIS account:

1. Click Tools.
   
2. Click User Management.
   
3. Click to select the user’s name on the list.
   
4. Click Remove Referral Entry Only Access.
   
5. Click Remove to remove the user’s access level or Cancel to return to the menu.
   

Once you’ve removed their access in SWIS, head to your SAMI account where you can assign a new access level. For more information about how to update a user’s access in SAMI, check out this FAQ or this tutorial video.