The School Connection app in Microsoft Teams (mobile) empowers parents and guardians to engage, support, and monitor their student's learning at school. As a parent, you can stay up to date on:
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Assignments: upcoming, overdue, or recently completed.
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Assignment feedback, grades, or rubric feedback.
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Insights from the past month on digital activity, assignments turned in, and reading progress.
Your school's not using School Connection yet? Please consult with your school and share this link with them.
Note: School Connection is generally available to all regions except countries in Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA). The full release for those countries will be at a later date. Schools in the EMEA region can still use School Connection in Private Preview access by submitting this interest form.
School Connection access
Onboarding for parents and guardians
To start using School Connection in Microsoft Teams (mobile), do the following (this is the recommended onboarding process):
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Go to https://aka.ms/gotoSchoolConnection on your iOS or Android device to launch School Connection in Microsoft Teams (mobile). You'll be automatically redirected to the Microsoft Teams mobile app on your mobile device (if the app is already installed).
Note: If the Microsoft Teams mobile app isn't already installed on your mobile device, it will first take you to the app store page to complete installation. If you're using an iPhone and get the message "Safari cannot open the page because the address is invalid," tap on OK, and then tap on Join School Connection. Once you download the Microsoft Teams mobile app, if you get the message "Teams would like to paste from Safari," tap on Allow Paste.
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Sign in using a free Microsoft account that matches the phone number or the personal email you've saved with the school.
Note: If you don’t yet have a personal Microsoft account, you can easily sign up for free on the Microsoft Teams mobile app or here with your phone number or personal email that's registered with your child's school. Note that work emails aren't supported for School Connection.
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Once you complete the sign-up process, you’ll land on the Welcome screen for School Connection, and it will be pinned in Microsoft Teams (mobile) for easy access. You can add students to your profile by specifying each child’s school-issued email address.
Alternate setup for School Connection
You can also set up School Connection by first signing in to the Microsoft Teams mobile app with your phone number or personal email address that's registered with your child's school. Once you sign in, tap your profile icon to open Settings, then tap to open the School Connection screen, and then tap Enable. Alongside your other apps, you’ll now see School Connection pinned for easy access. You can find a more detailed version of the process here.
Tip: For first-time sign up, navigating through the link https://aka.ms/gotoSchoolConnection is the recommended onboarding approach for School Connection.
Note: To validate access to your child's profile, Microsoft may need to verify your Microsoft account login information.
Learn more from any of the following topics
If you don’t already have a personal Microsoft account, you can easily create one for free on the Microsoft Teams mobile app or here.
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You can use your phone number to create a personal Microsoft account.
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You can also use any existing personal email address (although not your work email).
If you would rather create a new email address for your Microsoft account, you can do that as well. Just ensure that the personal email used to sign into Microsoft Teams matches the personal email that you have registered with the school.
If you get the following prompt while creating a personal Microsoft account in your Microsoft Teams mobile app, be sure to select Create a new account.
No. The email address used to sign-in to your Microsoft account can be from an existing Outlook.com, Hotmail.com, Gmail, Yahoo, or other providers. If this is the first time you’re creating a personal Microsoft account, you can use your existing personal email address from these providers, but you'll have to create a separate password for your Microsoft account. If needed, see Create a Microsoft Account.
Instead of email, you can choose to log in to Microsoft Teams with the phone number that you’ve registered with the school.
Alternately, if you want to use email, you need to replace the work email address with a personal email address by contacting your school administrator.
Yes. You can log in to Microsoft Teams with your phone number that's registered with your child’s school.
Currently, School Connection is only available as a Microsoft Teams app for iOS or Android operating systems.
In such a scenario, try these steps:
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Check your network connection.
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Sign out of the Microsoft Teams mobile app and sign back in.
Students can only be added to your profile if:
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You use a personal Microsoft account to sign in on Microsoft Teams (not your work account)...
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That same phone number or personal email is listed as a parent/guardian contact with your student’s school, and...
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School Connection has been enabled by the school.
You should see the same classes that are visible to your student. Classes only show up in School Connection after they've been activated by your student’s educator.
To access School Connection using a different account, contact the school administrator to update your phone number or email on file. You'll then be able to sign in with the new phone number or email on your Microsoft Teams app and add your student(s) to that account.
Note: In this transition, you may temporarily lose access to your student’s class data.
To export your data, submit a relevant ticket through Contact Support, which you can reach by selecting the […] icon that's available on every screen in the app. In the form that opens up, be sure to select the Allow Microsoft to contact me option if you want us to contact you.
Please report any concerns through the Contact Support option available by selecting the […] icon that's available on every screen in the app.
School Connection provides up-to-date information as it becomes available. If you're not seeing assignments that you expect to see, try these actions:
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Check your network connection.
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Sign out of the Microsoft Teams app and sign back in.
Teachers sometimes assign work that doesn’t have any grades or points associated. It's also possible that the teacher has chosen not to share grades/points for some assignments.
Teachers using Microsoft Teams for Assignments will typically post most or all assignments there. However, some may post only a smaller selection there, and will instead prefer other ways to distribute the class work.
Currently, all Teams Assignments require a submission to be considered "Turned in." To be considered turned in, all Teams Assignments require that either a student submit the assignment online or that their educator mark it as completed.
Regardless of the school location, School Connection shows times in the time zone from which you're accessing the app.
To help you see trends and high-level takeaways, School Connection provides a daily refresh of basic insights into your student’s education. The app compiles learning data from your student’s activity on Microsoft Teams during the last 28 days and gives you an updated list of new insights.
For a given class, Private Preview offers insights into these categories:
Assignments
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Number of late submissions.
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Whether a student submitted all of their assignments, more than 70% of their assignments on-time, or none of their assignments.
Reading Progress
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Whether a student’s accuracy on the Reading Progress tool has increased or decreased.
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Set of “challenge” words that a student struggled with and may consider practicing.
Activity
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Whether a student often worked early in the morning.
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Whether a student often worked late at night.
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Whether a student was inactive in a class, meaning they didn't open files, attend online meetings, or visit any channels.
Student data is owned by each school organization. Parents are advised to contact the school for requests related to exporting student data.