Family Portal

How to set up the Family Portal

There is nothing to build: a family's Portal is ready the moment they have access. They get it in one of two ways. They book in the Enrollment Portal, which gives them access as part of checkout, or you switch it on for them: open the family, click the contact and press Enable Portal Access. Access is per contact, so each parent or guardian signs in with their own email, always with a code and never a password. Family access and sign-in covers the invite, resending it and what to do when it does not arrive.

Everything a family sees comes from the records your staff already keep: their students' classes and lessons, the invoices and payments in Billing, the documents you send for signature, the makeup credits they have earned. So the Family Portal never needs updating by hand, and it never disagrees with what your staff see. What you decide is the look, which comes from your branding in Portal Studio, and which messages go out and on which channels, in Admin, Notifications.

To check what a family sees, an Admin can open the Portal as them: View Portal as, next to Portal Access on the contact, or As a family member under Preview in Portal Studio. It opens a separate tab for 30 minutes, and anything you change there is recorded as you.

alinaflow has four portals, each for a different reader. The Enrollment Portal is your public online store, for people who are not with you yet. The Family Portal is where the families you teach sign in. The Teacher Portal is where your teachers run their day. The Developer Portal is for connecting other software and AI agents to your school. The first three share one link: a visitor sees your store, and a family or a teacher who signs in sees their own Portal.

Home, schedule and progress

A signed-in family lands on Home, the page the Portal link opens for them. It shows their upcoming lessons for today and tomorrow, the balance due with their open invoices and View and pay, a To do list of what is waiting for them, such as a document to sign, and Your students. Schedule lists every upcoming lesson for all the students on the account, day by day, with a button to join when a lesson is online. Progress lists the students, and each one opens their own page: current and past classes, upcoming lessons, attendance with the teacher's note and the homework, their level and skills, evaluation results, certificates to download as a PDF, and makeup credits. Registration holds the onboarding forms you assign them; when a template is set to be assigned on Portal access, a new family completes it before anything else opens. On a phone, Home, Schedule, Book and Pay sit in a bar along the bottom, with everything else under More. Nothing here is updated by hand: enroll a student, take attendance or issue an invoice, and the family sees it.

Family access and sign-in

Families and teachers never have a password for the Portal. They sign in at https://yourschool.alinaflow.com/portal/login with Email me a sign-in code: alinaflow emails them a 6-digit code, which works for 15 minutes, and a link that signs them in with one tap. A family gets Portal access in one of two ways: they book in the Portal, which gives them access as part of checkout, or you give it to them. To do that, open the family, click the contact, and under Portal Access press Enable Portal Access; teachers have the same button on their own record. That sends an invite email with a one-time sign-in link, and also a text or WhatsApp message when those channels are switched on for the Portal invite in Admin, Notifications. The invite link works once, for 7 days. If you enabled portal access but the family never got an email, first check the contact's email address for a typo, because that is where the invite went. Then press Resend invite, which sits next to Portal Access for as long as the contact shows Invited, meaning invited but not signed in yet. If the invite could not be delivered at all, alinaflow says so and offers Copy invite link, so you can send it to them yourself. And whatever happened to the invite, the family can always go to the Portal link, choose Sign in, type their email and ask for a fresh code; if that email has Portal access the code arrives by email, so ask them to look in their spam folder too. A link that has expired or was already used offers Send me a new code. If an onboarding template is set to be assigned automatically when someone gets Portal access, the family is taken to their onboarding the first time they sign in and finishes it before anything else in the Portal opens.

Messages and announcements

Families do not miss what you send them. Every message you send a family, from an invoice reminder to a note about a cancelled lesson or an announcement, also shows up in their Portal, behind the bell at the top, even if they turned off email, text messages and WhatsApp. The bell counts what is unread, the list runs newest first with Today and Yesterday grouped, and Mark all as read clears it. Notes from teachers reach families the same way: when a teacher finishes a lesson, the note for the family and the homework appear on the student's page in the Portal. You decide which messages go out and on which channels in Admin, Notifications, and each person chooses among the channels you offer in their own Notification preferences.

Family invoices and payments

Families see and settle what they owe in the Portal, without calling the front desk. Invoices lists every invoice on the family's account; opening one shows the items, any discount and tax, what has been paid and the balance due, with Pay to settle it online and Download PDF for their records. Payments lists what they have paid, and each one opens as a receipt showing the amount, the date, the method and which invoices it was applied to, with Download receipt. Statement is the family's account statement: every invoice and payment in a period (this month, the last 3 months, this year or custom dates) with the running balance after each one, the balance at the start and at the end, and the balance today, or In credit when they are ahead. Payment method lets a family save a card, replace it or remove it, and switch on Autopay so the saved card is charged automatically for each new invoice. Depending on how you set it up, turning Autopay on either also charges what they owe today or only applies to new invoices, and the confirmation says which before they agree. Saving a card needs online card payments connected; until then families can still pay each invoice from its own page. Every amount is the same one your staff see, so a family's Portal and their account in Families never disagree.

Family documents and contracts

Families find every contract and form you send them under Documents in the Portal. To sign lists what is waiting for them, with Sign now, and each card shows when it was sent and, where it applies, how long it stays valid. Once signed it moves to Signed and closed, with the date, and Download signed copy gives them the signed file whenever they need it, so nobody has to ask you for a copy. A document you chose to sign on paper says so, and you collect it at the desk. The Portal home also reminds a family when they have documents to sign. The contracts that go out after a Portal booking are chosen in Portal Studio, Settings, under Contracts after booking, and every signature, sent from the Portal or from the app, is tracked in the same document records your staff already use.

Booking, makeups and private lessons

Signed-in families book from the same catalog visitors see. Book online opens it, or Book in the bar on a phone, and checkout skips straight to choosing which student the booking is for. Private lessons shows only your appointment offerings, with the family's own bookings on top, so the next private lesson is a couple of taps away. Makeup credits lists the credits a student has earned, from an absence or a lesson you cancelled, each with its Use by date and status: Available, Used, Expired or Refunded. Redeem lists the lessons that credit can be used for, marks any that are Full, and picking one books the makeup; a student's own page offers Book a makeup too. Which lessons qualify and how long a credit lasts follow your makeup rules. Room bookings lets a family ask for a practice room: they pick the student, the room, the date, the start time and how long, and the request waits for your staff to approve it. Rentals lists what they have on loan from you, active and returned, and Tickets holds their tickets for your shows and events, each with a QR code to show at the door.

Leave requests

A leave lets a student stay enrolled and keep their place while they are away for a while, such as a long trip or an injury. Families ask for one themselves: in the Portal they choose Request leave, pick the student, the start and end dates and, if they like, a reason, and press Send request. Your requests shows each one and where it stands (Waiting for approval, Approved, Not approved or Withdrawn), and a request still waiting can be withdrawn. If you set a yearly limit, the form also shows how many months of leave that student has left this year. On your side, every request creates a task, and it also appears on the student's page, where you Approve or Decline it; when you decline, you can add a note for the family. The family is told either way, and an approved leave shows on their schedule in the Portal as On leave. A request that would go over the yearly limit says so, and Approve anyway lets you allow it on purpose; it is then marked Over the yearly limit. Staff can still schedule a leave directly from the student's page too. What a student pays while on leave is set once in Admin, Your business rules, Lifecycle, under Approved leave: full price, a percentage of the price, a fixed amount per billing period (never more than the normal price), or free, where the invoice is still issued, at 0. The leave price applies to invoices generated after the leave is approved, never to ones already issued, and discounts then apply to the reduced price. Every line priced for a leave carries a note with the leave dates, so the family can see why. For a leave that covers only part of a billing period you choose one of three rules: Prorate like tuition (only the days or lessons on leave get the leave price, measured the way your tuition proration is set), Only whole periods, or Any day on leave (one day is enough for the whole period). Max months on leave per year caps leave per student per calendar year; leave it empty for no limit. Packages and one-off lessons are not affected by leave pricing.

Photo and video gallery

Gallery is where families see the photos and videos your teachers share from their lessons and shows, newest first. A teacher adds them on the lesson screen in the teacher Portal and chooses who can see each one: Families or Staff only. Only the ones marked for families ever reach the Gallery. A family with more than one student can use Show photos of to see one child at a time, or Everyone. Teachers have a Gallery too, showing what they shared from the lessons and shows they teach.

Study materials in the Portal

Study materials in the Portal shows families the files you share for the courses their students take: sheet music, worksheets, reading lists, practice videos. Each family only sees the materials for their own students' courses, and Show materials for narrows it to one student. Families open or download the files right there. You add and organise materials in Study materials in the app, per course and, if you like, per level. A material saved with no file yet shows No files attached yet, so attach the file before you tell families it is there.

Family details

My info is where a family keeps their own details up to date, so your records stay right without anyone retyping them. They can edit the household address and the phone numbers and emails of the people on their account. Each person who signs in to the Portal owns their own sign-in details: their email is how they sign in, so it is changed by your staff, not by them, and anyone else on the account who has their own Portal access keeps their own details up to date. When a phone number is changed, alinaflow sends a security notice, so the person knows if someone else made the change. Teachers have My info as well, for their own photo and details.

Notification preferences

Everyone with Portal access chooses how you reach them: email, text message (SMS) or WhatsApp, in Notifications in the Portal. They keep at least one way on. Text and WhatsApp need a phone number, so someone with no phone is reached by email until they add one in My info. A few things always arrive whatever they choose: sign-in codes and Portal invites. And the messages that matter most, invoices, contracts to sign, bookings and leave decisions, always reach them on at least one channel, so nobody misses an invoice because they switched everything off. You still decide which messages go out and on which channels in Admin, Notifications; each person then picks among the channels you offer.