Using the parent portal

The parent portal is a second, much smaller app living on its own address, and it is the only part of Sijil a family ever sees. Each madrasa has one link; a parent opens it, enters a PIN, and lands on their own child's day. There is no dashboard behind it and nothing to search. The account is the phone number the madrasa entered, and it shows the children linked to that number.

One link, and a code for the parent who has lost it

A madrasa's parent link is parent.sijil.pk/t/ followed by its own subdomain — the same subdomain its public page uses. That address is what the WhatsApp invitation carries, and it is the only thing a parent needs to keep.

A parent who has lost it can open parent.sijil.pk on its own. It asks one question — Enter your madrasa code — and a five-digit madrasa code sends them to the right madrasa. Only an approved madrasa answers, so a digit typed wrong reads No madrasa found with this code. Please check it and try again. rather than opening somebody else's.

Nothing is downloaded from a store. Install the app in the menu puts an icon on the home screen — An icon goes on your home screen and it opens offline too. — and on iPhones it says the manual step out loud: Tap the Share button below, then choose «Add to Home Screen».

How a madrasa hands out access

Open the student and the Parent Access panel sits on the profile. Walidain ko Dawat Dein asks for three things: the guardian's name, their phone number, and the relation — Walid, Walida, Chacha, Mamu, Bhai, Dada, Nana, or Deegar.

The phone number is not a contact detail here. It is the login — Yehi number walidain ke login ki pehchan hai — ghalat number par code nahi pohnchega — and Sijil canonicalises it before storing, so 0316…, +92316… and 316… are one account rather than three.

One account can hold several children. Inviting the same number on a second student links it there as well, and if that parent has already set their phone up, Sijil says so and sends nothing: Is number par pehle se rasai hai. {name} ka rabta khud ban gaya — paighaam bhejne ki zaroorat nahi.

The first open: a phone number, the code, then a PIN

The setup screen asks for the two things the parent has — Enter the phone number and code the madrasa gave you, with Paste the code from WhatsApp under the second field. A code past its three days says exactly that, This code has expired. Ask the madrasa for a new one., rather than failing as a wrong code.

Then the phone asks for a PIN of its own: Create a 6-digit PIN, entered twice, under This PIN will be needed every time you open the app. Do not share it. Six digits are required in full — The PIN must be a full 6 digits.

The first open needs a signal, and so does setting the PIN. Internet is needed the first time is a real state with its own screen: There is no saved copy on this phone yet. Once it opens with internet, it will open offline after that.

One account, one phone

An account is bound to the handset it was set up on, and the app says so where a parent will read it: This account opens on this phone only. To use a new phone, ask the madrasa for a new code.

There is a way back on the same phone, closed by default so nobody wanders into it: Already registered? Come back with your PIN on this phone. It takes the phone number and the PIN, and it is deliberately unable to bind a new handset — This only works on the same phone the account was registered on. On any other phone you will need a new code from the madrasa. It is there for the ordinary accident, a parent clearing their browser history, not for moving house.

Used on a different phone, the same form refuses in plain words: This looks like a different phone — the account is registered on another one. Open the app on that phone, or ask the madrasa for a new code.

The PIN

The PIN is six digits, and it is what the parent presents every time the app opens. Wrong tries are counted and then stop: Too many wrong attempts. Locked for 15 minutes.

Nobody can reset it from the app. A parent who has forgotten it reads Forgotten your PIN? Ask the madrasa admin for a new code. — and what the madrasa does next is in the last section of this page.

With no signal the PIN is still checked, against the copy the phone already holds: With no internet, your PIN is checked against the copy saved on this phone. On a phone that has no copy yet there is nothing to check it against, and the app says so instead of guessing: The PIN cannot be checked without internet. Please connect once and open the app.

A parent can change it themselves from the menu — Change PIN, Your current PIN will be needed. — and that is the one thing in the menu that needs a signal, because the server is the authority for a PIN.

The four places

The four facts on Today are facts and not links. A parent reading a number wants the number, and the place that owns it is one tap away in the bar below.

Where a family has more than one child, the row naming the child sits above all four and does not scroll away, so nobody reads the wrong boy's attendance while scrolling.

Two of these are careful about a distinction the madrasa's own screens make. Attendance shows Shifts counted beside the percentage, because a shift the madrasa never marked is not an absence: Shifts the madrasa has not marked yet are left out of this percentage — they are not counted as absence. And Fees keeps Monthly fees and Other charges in separate lists rather than one running total, because an exam fee and a month's fee are not the same kind of thing.

Learning draws the track as one tick per unit rather than a bar, with both numbers written underneath it, and it never computes forwards. There is no guessed next sipara on a parent's screen — only the unit the madrasa has marked and how long he has been on it, days so far.

Everything about the madrasa is in the menu

The four places are about the child. Everything the parent can do is in the 3-dot menu, and it is the only part of the portal that performs an action at all: the language, Refresh information, Lock the app, then Change PIN, Account, Children, Install the app, Offline status, the madrasa's own number to call or open in WhatsApp, and About this app with the madrasa's name, city and address.

The language switch is the first thing in it, for the obvious reason that a parent who needs it cannot read the screen it is on. Both languages travel inside the app rather than being fetched, so switching works with no signal at all, and the choice is remembered on that phone for a year.

Account is where the binding is stated in the parent's own words: the phone number, the guardian's name and relation, whether a PIN is set, the madrasa, the year, and how many children — with the note about this phone repeated underneath it.

When the signal goes

Reading works without a connection, because the app reads the copy on the phone: No internet at the top, This is the copy saved on your phone., and a Saved copy label on what is being shown. The only thing a parent ever writes is their own PIN, and that one asks for a signal, so there is no queue of unsent work on this side and nothing to lose.

Offline status in the menu says which of three states the phone is in, and the third is the one worth knowing about:

When only part of the day's information arrives, the app says which part is old rather than mixing the two silently: Some information could not be loaded. The full boundary of what works offline, on this side and the madrasa's, is in Working without a signal.

When something has changed at the madrasa

What the madrasa can do when a family is stuck

All of it is on the same Parent Access panel, and none of it needs the parent present.

The badge beside each guardian answers one question — can this family get in right now — and it is derived from the phone bindings rather than from how far the account once got. Code Sent means a code is outstanding and nothing has come back. Registered means a phone is bound to the account; it is not a claim that somebody is holding a live session this second, and it was renamed from "signed in" because it was read that way. Signed Out is a fact rather than a problem: that parent can come back on the same phone with their own PIN, so a code should not be spent on it. Access Blocked is the one state where the family genuinely cannot get in — every binding is revoked, and only a new code opens it. No Children means an account with nothing linked to it, which would open to an empty app.

Screenshot to followThe parent portal on a phone: the child's name across the top, today's shifts, and the four places in the bar below.