How to pre-populate family contacts
SpacesEDU Pro supports importing family (parent/guardian) associations from your Student Information System (SIS) or Learning Management System (LMS) using the OneRoster standard.
To ensure that teachers have control over when their students' parents or guardians are invited to connect, emails are not sent automatically. Instead, the family associations we receive are saved in SpacesEDU for you to easily invite them when you're ready.
If your students' family members have been imported, you can simply:
Open the People tab for a class in your Teacher account
Click the Invite Family button in the 'Family Invite Manager' box on the right-hand side
You'll see a list of imported family associations, including the family member's first and last name, email address, and the student they are linked with. From here you can:
Click the Invite button to send an individual invitation
Select multiple family by checking the box to the left of their first name, then click Invite Selected
Select all family by clicking the checkbox at the top left of the list, then Invite Selected
That's all there is to it! Once you've sent the invitations, your students' families will receive an email with a link to set up their SpacesEDU account.
Note that this option is only available with SpacesEDU Pro, and OneRoster SIS Sync. CSV Rostering does not support importing family links. If you don't see this in your Teacher account, not to worry, it's still easy to invite your families to connect!
If you've already invited your students' families manually, and we receive family emails from your SIS later, it won't cause any issues.
Importing family does not prevent teachers from inviting other family members manually. Teachers can always remove family links if necessary as well.
In the event a family email is no longer included in the OneRoster uploads before they have been invited, they'll automatically be removed from the list in the family invite manager.
When a parent's email stops being included in the uploads after they have been invited, or after they have created an account, their link with the student is not removed in SpacesEDU.
It can still be manually removed by a teacher like any other family association: open the Family tab, then click the menu button (three dots) for a student > Edit Family > Remove
If you don't see these options in your teacher account, your school may not be using OneRoster SIS Sync. The simplest way to tell is by checking the Students tab in the People section: if you don't see an option to manually invite a student, your class is rostered with SIS sync.
Before teachers can complete these steps, the family associations will need to be included in your school's OneRoster uploads.
If your district is using OneRoster but you don't see this option, it means we have not received family associations from your SIS. To confirm if family associations are being uploaded to SpacesEDU, you can contact your district IT helpdesk.
For district leads or IT staff seeking support with OneRoster integration and family imports, please reach out to your account manager or technical onboarding contact. You can always start a chat with us here too, and we can put you in touch with the right person.