Parent Portal troubleshooting
What you saw, grouped by the screen you are on, why it happened, and what to do about it. The general rule for this module is that an empty screen almost never means an uneventful week: it usually means the account is not linked, or the feature behind it has nothing to draw on at all. What each screen shows you is the plain-language version of the same thing.
Getting in
Every screen is empty and there is no error
The most common symptom in this module, and it has one cause.
Your sign-in is not joined to your guardian record. Requesting your own account details did not return a guardian id, so every screen's request is switched off before it is ever sent, and the pages fall through to their empty states.
PTRS has no way to make that join today. The one field both the sign-in check and every request depend on has exactly one writer anywhere in the product, and it belongs to a demonstration copy of PTRS, not a real installed one. There is no registration screen, no invitation and nothing that sets it for a real guardian. The full chain is in how the account link works.
Nothing you can do from your own device changes this. Contact your club.
Signing in as a demo or test guardian shows the same empty screens
The sample guardian given to a demonstration copy of PTRS is pinned to one fixed test value, and the account actually used to sign that guardian in was given a different one. Whoever built that sample data gave its two halves different values, so requesting account details fails immediately and never even reaches the guardian lookup behind it.
So the sample guardian account does not work either.
An administrator opened a parent web address and saw an empty portal, not a permission message
Expected, and it is a gap between two separate checks. PTRS itself lets a guardian, an organisation administrator and a super admin all into the portal's screens. The server accepts a guardian account alone.
Requesting account details only resolves a guardian id for someone holding the guardian role, so an administrator's requests never actually fire, and the screens look identical to an unlinked guardian's. There is no message explaining why.
A guardian-only account reached a staff screen
PTRS lists fifteen staff areas to redirect a guardian-only account away from, and it leaves out four that exist. A guardian reaching one of those four gets the full staff layout and a refusal from every request behind it.
"guardianId query parameter is required."
Every one of this module's 20 actions requires a guardian's own id attached to the request. This is only reachable by calling the server directly; the portal itself always attaches one.
"You are not authorized to access this guardian's data."
The guardian id sent does not belong to whoever is signed in. This message is deliberately identical for several different causes, including the guardian not existing at all, belonging to another organisation, having no sign-in link set, or belonging to somebody else entirely, so the message itself can never be used to guess a valid id. That is correct behaviour.
"Guardian is not linked to this member."
You asked about a child who is not linked to your guardian record. Every action that names a specific child checks that link on its own, again, separately from the check above. Changing a child's id in a web address always produces this.
Dashboard
Unread Messages and Pending Forms are always 0
Structural, and permanent. Unread messages counts messages marked as sent by staff, and the only thing that ever writes a message always marks it as sent by the guardian instead, so no such message can exist. Pending forms counts published forms, and nothing anywhere in PTRS can publish one.
Neither will change with more data.
The badges on the bottom navigation never appear
The five navigation buttons read their counts from a spot on your own device that nothing in PTRS ever writes to. The counts stay at zero and the badges never render.
This is separate from the dashboard's own counters, which do come from the server and are zero for the reasons above.
The dashboard does not update while I watch it
There is no live update. A real-time connection for this module is built and correctly secured, and nothing ever sends anything over it, and nothing on any guardian's device ever listens for anything either. Reload the page.
The bell icon does nothing
It has no action behind it at all. Its badge would count unacknowledged emergency alerts from the same unwritten store described above, so it never appears either.
My child was signed out but the card still says Checked In
The card reads the check-out time on the arrival record. A check-out recorded from the staff attendance screen sets that correctly. A check-out recorded at a kiosk never reaches it: the kiosk sends a placeholder value where a guardian's id belongs, which PTRS refuses before it can set anything.
Child
The Child screen is always empty
It reads from a spot on your own device that nothing in PTRS ever fills in. It is empty even for a fully linked guardian with a child checked in on the dashboard at this exact moment.
The server has working answers for a child's profile, attendance, schedule, weekly summary, medications, medication log, emergency action plans, incidents and illness records. None of the nine has anything on a guardian's device asking for it.
The attendance grid shows squares that change every time
You are on a copy of PTRS built for demonstration purposes. That branch draws thirty squares at random. It is not your child's attendance, and it changes every time the screen redraws.
A real, installed copy of PTRS shows a message saying there is no attendance data yet instead.
The medication log is empty for a child who has medicine on site
Permanent. Nothing in PTRS can record that a medication was given, on the staff side or here: there is no screen and no save anywhere in the product that does it.
An empty log does not mean the medicine was not needed. It means PTRS cannot record that it was given. Ask the site directly.
Hours this week reads 0.0
The weekly summary only counts hours from records with a check-out. See the kiosk check-out entry above. Days present is counted from arrivals directly and is correct.
The week in the weekly summary looks a day out
The week's own boundary is worked out in universal time, not Delaware time. Between roughly 7 in the evening and midnight Eastern on a Sunday, the summary has already rolled over to the new week.
Messages
Sending a message does nothing and the box empties
Every send fails. The screen sends a placeholder value where a real staff id belongs, and PTRS refuses the request immediately, before anything else runs. What you typed is cleared regardless of whether it was actually sent.
There is no way to send a message from the parent portal today. Use the phone.
I never receive a reply
There is no staff-facing screen anywhere in PTRS for writing to a guardian. The only thing that ever writes a message always marks it as sent by the guardian, and nothing on the staff side even reads the message list, so a message that did save would reach nobody regardless.
A message shows no translation
Nothing performs that translation. PTRS tracks how long a translation step would take without the step itself ever existing.
Forms
Both tabs are always empty
Nothing in PTRS can create a form for a guardian to sign: no screen, no service, no way for a club to add one. No form can exist, so neither tab can ever be populated, and the sign button has nothing to act on.
"Authorization form not found or not published."
The same cause. Signing requires a form that has actually been published, and none can exist.
Download PDF does nothing
The button has no action behind it, and the piece of code that would build its own web address has nothing calling it either. If it were connected, that address would carry nothing proving who is asking, so it would be refused anyway, and what it returns is plain data, not an actual document, carrying only the time a signature was made.
The confirmation checkbox does not have to be ticked
That checkbox is not connected to anything. The sign button works whether it is ticked or not.
A completed form lists a child I did not sign for
The completed list shows every child linked to your account against a signed form, without checking which child the signature actually covers. The pending list is correct and only shows a child who has genuinely not signed, so the same form can appear on both tabs, with the completed tab stating a consent that was not actually given for one of the children shown.
Signing with more than one child only signed for one
Signing always covers the first child shown on the card, even though the card lists every unsigned child.
Settings
"Settings saved" but nothing was saved
The Save Changes button shows a confirmation and calls nothing. The save it should call exists, works, and has nothing on your device asking for it.
Your contact preference and quiet hours live on your device only and are lost when the tab closes.
Quiet hours have no effect
Those two time boxes are not connected to anything. PTRS does not send messages of any kind, so quiet hours would have nothing to suppress regardless.
I chose SMS or Phone and nothing arrives
Neither channel exists at all: there is no delivery method built for a text message or a phone call anywhere in the product. The setting never reaches the server in any case.
The language resets to English when I sign in again
The language lives in the web address, and signing in always sends you to the English one first. Set it again from Settings, or bookmark the Spanish or Creole address. See change the language.
Some text stays in English in Spanish or Creole
A handful of phrases are written directly into the screens rather than drawn from the language files: mostly empty-state messages and a couple of short labels. The three language files themselves are complete, with the same number of entries and matching names throughout, so nothing is actually falling back for want of a translation.
Emergency alerts
The emergency alert screen never appears
Nothing anywhere in PTRS can raise an emergency alert: no screen, no save, no scheduled check. Reading alerts always returns nothing, and acknowledging one always fails, since none can exist to acknowledge in the first place.
The parent portal is not an emergency channel. Expect a phone call.
An alert was acknowledged and the acknowledgement rate reads n/0
Acknowledging an alert counts the acknowledgement without counting the alert as ever having been delivered in the first place, so the total it divides by stays at zero.
The same action also marks an alert delivered, read and acknowledged all in the same moment, so an alert can never sit in an unacknowledged state long enough for anything watching for one to notice.
Related
Checked against PTRS on 7 September 2026.