Parent Encounters Error Opening Form in Ecollect Forms

Summary

Parents reporting they cannot open one or more forms in the Parent Portal may be experiencing one of two issues. One of these can be resolved by manipulating data in the PowerSchool Database, while the other may require Support intervention.

The two most common causes of an error while opening a form are:

1. Data-related issues (apparent in all portals and to all users who have access to the form)
2. Saved response related issues (apparent to only a single parent/guardian or student user)

This article details how to determine which issue you are facing and, in the case of saved responses, how to resolve those without Support intervention.

Audience

This article is aimed at PowerSchool Admins who work with Ecollect and/or Enrollment Express Forms and who have had one or more parent report an issue with opening, not submitting, one or more forms.

Disclaimer

This article contains details on making changes using Data Export Manager. As with any operations in Data Export Manager, please take care to follow the instructions below carefully.

Details

To determine if your case requires Support intervention, you must first check to see if the issue is related to a saved response or a potential data issue.

If the form can be opened by another parent with data access, or by an admin, proceed to "Process" below.

Otherwise, please submit a Support ticket. While we would like to provide guidance in Community on data-related issues, they are generally wider in scope and may require additional investigation steps.

Process

To remove a saved response:

1. Search for the affected student in the Start Page
2. Locate their student ID (not student number) by either
   1. Loading Teacher Comments and locating the ID at the bottom of the page
   2. Loading the record in Direct Database Export (DDE) and finding it at the top of the record
3. Locate the form ID for the affected form, based on the "formid" argument in the URL in either
   1. Edit mode (i.e. /formbuilder/edit.html?formid=xxxxxx), or
   2. Response Report (/formbuilder/reports/reports.html?tabSel=responses&formid=xxxxxx)
4. Navigate to Data Export Manager
   1. Select Category - Database Extensions
   2. Export From - U_FB_FORM_RESPONSE_SAVED
   3. Select all fields except TDATA
   4. Select "Show Records"
   5. Filter the records by "subjectid" and enter the number from step 2 above
   6. You can further filter by "formid" and enter the number from step 3 above
5. The resulting record(s) are blocking the form loading - to remove the block:
   1. Select the pencil icon
   2. Change the fields formid, subjectid, and userid to their negative values (i.e. "xxxxxx" to "-xxxxxx")
   3. Submit the change

The user should now be able to access the form and submit a response.

Notes

Many of these errors are caused by parents saving a response to a form and returning later after the form owner has made significant changes or updates to form response options - if the product cannot validate the saved data with the current form, the error occurs. As a general rule, forms should be updated as little as possible after they go "live" to the end user.

As an added precaution, whenever possible avoid using "Save for Later" as an option in the forms.