What it does

• Creates a custom Parent role with fine-grained, minimal permissions
• Allows parents to monitor their children’s enrolled courses and progress
• Enables parents to enroll their children in courses they personally have access to
• Provides a secure email invitation system for parents to connect with their children
• Syncs enrollment access — when a parent loses course access, their children’s enrollment is automatically cancelled
• Integrates with WooCommerce Memberships for Tutor LMS and Tutor LMS Installments
• Includes a full admin interface for managing all parent-child relationships

Key benefits

• Parental oversight of children’s online courses without giving parents any admin access
• Automated enrollment sync keeps child access aligned with parent access at all times
• Flexible role assignment — via admin panel, user self-request, or domain whitelist
• Multi-parent support — a child can have multiple parents, and access is only revoked when all of them lose it
• Secure invitation workflow requiring the child to confirm before a relationship is created

Minimum requirements

Recommended environment

Required plugin

• Tutor LMS (Free or Pro)

Optional but recommended

• WooCommerce Memberships for Tutor LMS (Ksajie) — for membership-based enrollment integration
• Tutor LMS Installments (Ksajie) — for installment payment integration
• SMTP Plugin — for reliable delivery of all invitation and notification emails

Method 1: WordPress admin upload (recommended)

1. Log in to your WordPress admin dashboard
2. Navigate to Plugins → Add New
3. Click Upload Plugin
4. Select the tutor-parent-role.zip file
5. Click Install Now
6. Click Activate Plugin

Method 2: Manual FTP installation

1. Unzip the tutor-parent-role.zip file
2. Upload the tutor-parent-role folder to /wp-content/plugins/
3. Navigate to Plugins → Installed Plugins in WordPress admin
4. Find “Tutor Parent Role” and click Activate

Post-installation steps

1. Verify Tutor LMS is active and fully configured
2. Enter your license key when prompted after activation
3. Navigate to Tutor → Parent Settings and configure the role assignment mode
4. Create or designate a page with the [tutor_parent_dashboard] shortcode for the parent-facing portal
5. Test by assigning yourself the parent role and creating a test parent-child relationship

Parent role assignment settings

Approval logic priority

When a user submits a role request, the plugin checks in this order:

1. Auto-Grant is enabled → role granted immediately
2. User’s email matches the domain whitelist → role granted automatically
3. Neither condition met → request queued for admin review

Domain whitelist format examples

• Full email address: parent@school.edu
• Domain only: @school.edu
• Multiple entries: @school.edu, admin@otherdomain.com, @company.org

How a user requests the parent role

Users who don’t yet have the parent role can request it from the frontend. When a logged-in user visits the page containing the [tutor_parent_dashboard] shortcode and doesn’t have the parent role, a role request form is displayed automatically.

1. User visits the parent dashboard page
2. A request form is shown with an optional reason field
3. User submits the form — the system checks for auto-grant or domain whitelist match
4. If neither applies, a pending request is created and the admin is notified by email
5. Admin reviews the request and clicks Approve or Deny from Tutor → Requests
6. User is notified by email of the decision

Admin role management

Admins can also manually assign or remove the parent role from any user directly from Tutor → Parents, without the user needing to submit a request. Removing a parent’s role also removes all of their assigned children.

How relationships are created

• Via email invitation — the parent sends an invitation; the child accepts it (see Section 7)
• Via admin assignment — an admin navigates to the parent’s detail page and adds a child directly

Admin-side relationship management

From Tutor → Parents, admins can view any parent’s profile, add or remove children using a live AJAX user search, and see the date each relationship was created. Removing a child from a parent does not delete the child’s account or enrollments — it only removes the link.

When a child is assigned to a parent by an admin, the parent receives an email notification automatically.

Invitation flow

1. Parent enters the child’s email address in the “Invite Child” section of the dashboard
2. Plugin verifies the email belongs to a registered, non-parent user not already linked
3. A unique invitation code is generated, valid for 14 days
4. An email is sent to the child with a link to the Tutor LMS Dashboard → Invitations tab
5. Child can accept or reject the invitation from the Invitations tab
6. On acceptance, the parent-child relationship is created automatically
7. Parent receives an email notification of the child’s decision

Invitation states

Invitations tab in student dashboard

The plugin automatically adds an “Invitations” tab to the Tutor LMS student dashboard for all non-parent users. Students can view pending invitations and accept or reject them directly from this tab. A template file is auto-created in the active theme on first activation — if auto-creation fails, manual creation instructions are shown in the admin.

Enrollment rules

• A parent can only enroll a child in courses the parent themselves is actively enrolled in
• The child’s enrollment is created as immediately active — no pending approval needed
• The enrollment is tagged with the source “parent” and includes the enrolling parent’s ID in its metadata
• If the child is already enrolled in the same course from another source (individual purchase or membership), the existing enrollment is left completely untouched
• If the child already has a parent-source enrollment in the course, the current parent is added as a co-parent without creating a duplicate enrollment

Co-parent enrollment

Multiple parents can enroll the same child in the same course. The plugin stores the list of all enrolling parent IDs on the enrollment. This is what powers the multi-parent protection in the sync system — a child’s access is only revoked when every parent who enrolled them has lost access to that course.

What triggers a sync

• A parent’s enrollment post status changes (e.g., completed → cancel)
• A parent’s enrollment is trashed or permanently deleted
• Tutor LMS fires its own enrollment cancellation or expiration hooks
• The WooCommerce Memberships plugin revokes a membership-based enrollment
• A full membership expiration event fires
• A parent purchases a new course (triggers re-enrollment of children if they were previously cancelled)

Cancellation logic

When a parent’s enrollment cancellation is detected, the plugin removes that parent from the child enrollment’s parent list, then checks whether any remaining parent still has active access to the course. If no other parent has active access, the child’s enrollment is cancelled. If at least one other parent still has access, the child’s enrollment is left untouched.

Enrollment source protection

The sync system only ever cancels enrollments with the source “parent”. Enrollments tagged as “individual”, “membership”, or “orphaned” are never touched by the parent sync logic — a parent losing access cannot remove a child’s individually purchased course.

Re-enrollment on parent access restoration

When a parent regains access to a course (for example, by purchasing it again or renewing a membership), the plugin checks for any children whose enrollment was previously cancelled due to this parent losing access, and re-enrolls them automatically.

What the dashboard shows

For a logged-in parent with children, the dashboard presents five sections:

• My Children — list of linked children with a selector to switch the active child view
• Course Progress — courses the selected child is enrolled in, with progress indicators
• Assign Courses — list of the parent’s own courses with enrollment controls for each child
• Invite Child — form to send email invitations to new children by email address
• Pending Invitations — list of outgoing invitations with their current status and a cancel option

Dashboard states

Parents page (Tutor → Parents)

Lists all users with the Parent role in a table showing display name, email, number of assigned children, registration date, and two actions: View (opens the parent detail page) and Remove Role (removes the parent role and all of their assigned children). An “Add Parent” button reveals a live user search to assign the role to any existing user.

Parent detail page

Shows full information for a single parent — their profile information, a table of all assigned children with remove and view-profile actions, and an “Add Child” form with live AJAX search that only returns users who don’t already have the parent role and aren’t already assigned to this parent.

Requests page (Tutor → Requests)

Two tabs: Pending and All Requests. The Pending tab lists requests awaiting review with the submitted reason and Approve/Deny buttons. The All Requests tab shows the full history with status badges, approval method, submission date, and reviewer name. A count badge appears next to the Requests menu item whenever there are pending requests waiting for review.