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Will

Will manages the business on a day-to-day basis, responsible for a sales and demonstration team; operations and is the primary contact for pre-sales support.

Jan 19
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Winter 2024 Product Update

By Software Updates

19th January 2025

Hello and welcome back from your well-deserved break. We’re wishing you lots of success in 2025, and, to help, below are some of the new features you can use in Parents Booking to deliver even more successful parental engagement.

    • The red Notification bar now has a new and (we hope you’ll agree) more logical layout for when your school has multiple parents’ evenings set up.

        • When teacher, class list or other parent conference changes are imported or made within the admin area, and when a school has multiple parent conferences set up, you’ll now see a Notification which is parents’ evening specific for these changes. In simple terms, it’s easier to apply changes to the correct parents’ evenings only.

    • Changes to the Wraparound module:

        • You can now set up wraparound clubs which allow multiple booking options/sessions per date, for example where there’s a different cost depending on whether the parent books 1 hours or 2 hours.

        • You can now ask questions when you set up wraparound care booking, for parents to answer when they sign students up to certain dates, e.g. “Does the student need a bus?” and “Are there any allergies?”

        • Schools can now also turn on a feature which will send an email to the admin(s) every time a wraparound booking is made, if wanted.

    • Teacher schedule updates:

        • We’ve added options that let teachers customize their appointment schedule’s print-off a little more, e.g. being able to show/hide available appointments and parent contact info.

        • Parent RSVP statuses are shown on the teachers’ appointment schedule now, in the “Which students have not booked?” section.

    • You can now add a teacher to a class/subject directly on the ‘Edit the Teachers’ page, using a small + symbol.

    • Schools can now choose to import Pre-Admission students, which will be helpful for parents’ evenings, events, clubs and wraparounds that want to include these as we move towards the summer.

    • There’s a new Priority feature on the Send Invite to Parent pages, which makes it easier for schools to strategically send invites using the Priority setting in the school’s MIS database.

    • When you add students to a teacher, you can now choose to use an automatically-created class code name, or name the class code yourself.

    • There’s a new option to search/add the whole school, when adding students to a teacher or class code. This is found in the “Year Groups” tab.

    • Schools can hide the contact details and start/end times of parent conference on the parent Dashboard if wanted. It’s even easier to send a password reset to parents (especially those who have not chosen a password yet) now.

    • Shortcuts to the 5x main parents’ evening setup pages have been added to the top of these pages, making it easier to toggle between these setup pages.

    • A filter for the Dashboard to make it easier for schools to find/show just the parents’ evenings, terms, events, they want to see.

    • Lots of other smaller UI/UX changes such as helping add a year group to a student when you create them, better UI/UX for the Copy/Move Class Codes wizard on the Teachers page, breadcrumbs on some pages updated, warning messages added to provide better context/guardrails in some places, etc.

Aug 03
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Summer 2024 Software Update

By Software Updates

Hello and welcome to the Summer 2024 Parents Booking software update.

This Academic Year (August 2023 to end of May 2024 at the time of writing) has been one of the most exciting for us. Not only did we welcome over 1600 new schools as customers, we completed two enormous tasks that have been being worked on behind the scenes for about two years. We have now released a big software update which brings with it all the new features below, but also 1) a totally new Admin and Teacher area web page design, and 2) significant changes and updates to the technology that underpins Parents Booking, including our database technology.

New features:

  • Parents Booking’s Admin and Teacher web pages have a brand new look.
  • The Notifications area, driven by a red banner at the top of all Admin area web pages, has had a significant upgrade so that it is much more intelligent. It should now:
    • Diagnose problems with your parents’ evening, e.g. new students can be added, or students in the parents’ evening not being ‘linked’ to teachers (meaning parents cannot book appointments for them)
    • Notice changes to class lists or similar, that have been made by Admin or imported via CSV or data sync, and offer to apply these to the parents’ evening.
    • Email admin users a reminder to apply the changes it is recommending if these go unnoticed over several days.
  • The Admin Dashboard has a new page (Dashboard > Options > Show Teacher Availability) which provides a colourful interface that presents teacher availability in a simple, pretty way. This will help Admins preview teacher availability before, during and after a parents’ evening.
  • Schools can now activate a Waiting List when creating/editing a parents’ evening. This allows parents to make clear that they wanted an appointment with a teacher that was fully booked. Teachers can see this list who wanted an appointment with them, and the Admin users can check and download the waiting list in case they want to share it with colleagues who may want to send a report or email to these parents instead. If appointments become available, the Admin can book the highest prioritized parent from a parents’ evening’s Waiting List page, as well.
  • Where allowed by your school, local authority or MAT, Parents Booking will be able to import flags such as ‘SEN Status’, ‘Pupil Premium’ or ‘EAL’ to help with prioritizing appointment invites or analyse uptake and parental engagement among certain groups of students.
  • Community Brands customers, such as Teacher2Parents, Messenger, Xporter, WisePay, SchoolMoney and ParentApps users, can now login to Parents Booking from these products from their Launch Pad and 9-Dot via a single sign-on.
  • We’ve also added a ‘Sign in with Xporter Identity’ option to our login page, for schools who use Xporter Identiy / Idaas.
  • Admins no longer need to create a Class Code name when making changes to class lists. We have created a naming convention which uses today’s date plus the name of the Reg, Class Code or Year that the students were in, instead. This will make the task of changing class lists much easier and straightforward.
  • Parents can now book all their children ‘manually’ on on web page, the same as they could using Suggest Bookings for Me, without having to toggle between their children like before. This will make booking for siblings who are in the same parents’ evening even easier.
  • We’ve made the teachers’ video meeting room even easier to use, with the clock even more obvious (and the clock will flash red for the last 30 seconds of meetings).
  • All Reports now have a search box on them to find parents/students/teachers more easily.
  • You can now add and delete students from a parents’ evening by their Reg, Class Codes and Years, more easily. This is really helpful when you want to just add a Custom Group or Class Code to a parents’ evening – for example for Targeting evenings.
  • Comments/discussion topics added by parents during the booking process are now being shown in the video meeting room.
  • Schools which use Teachers2Parents are now able to upload their CSVs to Parents Booking, to make it even easier for them to set up parents’ evenings using a process they’re already familiar with.
  • There’s now an easier way to send teachers their logins, using a ‘login statuses’ drop-down on the Teachers page.
  • There are now handy tool tips to the Create/Edit a Parents’ Evening page, to make all the settings easier to understand. We’re presently adding these to the Create/Edit Event, Club and Wraparound pages too.
  • We have added a wizard to the ‘create a student’ process which lets you add them to their teachers/classes at the same time – this should be a great time-saver for these infrequent situations.
  • School staff and parents can now all login using their Microsoft account as a SSO.
  • Parents will now see a new “My Bookings” button on their Dashboard, which takes them to a web page that summarizes all of the events/clubs they have booked, bought places/tickets for, or subscribed their children to. This will help where a school offers lots of clubs, and can be something parents can stick to their fridge.
  • We’ve expanded our ‘Unsubscribe’/RSVP “No” functionality so that parents can explain in as much detail as they like why they can/will not attend. This helpful qualitative feedback will be shown to school Admins.
  • Parents can now be given a voucher balance (e.g. from their childcare vouchers) to spend on events, clubs or wraparound that the school allows this to be spent on. The Admin simply needs to input the amount the voucher is worth on a parent-by-parent basis.
  • The Reports pages have been upgraded to show lots of new features, for example analysis of the quietest and busiest hours, the most popular appointment times, more statistics and percentages.
  • Teachers can now flip a switch on their Dashboard to see past parents’ evenings, making it even easier to look at old schedules and/or input attendances.
  • Schools who have parents login with a username and password will now find it easier to send specific parents and year groups their login info. Following a feature request, there’s also a way to bulk-reset all parent passwords.
  • We now show the Payment ID on any refund requests parents send, to make it easier for you to find their payment in PayPal and Stripe.
  • Lastly, there’s a new crop tool to help make uploading your school’s logo easier now.

To follow imminently:

  • We’ve almost finished a bigger, better, more functional Attendance section, which will be a big help for managing both in-person and video parents’ evenings live / on the day.
    • A separate Manage Attendance section for Events, Clubs and Wraparounds will follow around 3 weeks later.
  • An integration with TeamSOS.

Coming next:

  • Detailed logs which capture every action undertaken by every user, reviewable by admins, will be added in Q3 of 2024 hopefully.
  • A direct data sync with SIMS’ “SIMS ID” API will be added in Q3 of 2024.
  • A Room Booking System is slated to be released by the end of 2024.
  • We want to build a login portal for local authorities and multi-academy trusts, to display return on investment and usage statistics.

Separately, Twilio, our video meeting technology partner, have announced that they will be depreciating their programmable video meeting technology by the end of 2024 and are replacing it with Zoom’s SDK technology. Migrating to this technology and gracefully releasing it for all customers will be a significant development project through Q3 of 2024.

In addition to all of the forthcoming features (which we hope to release mostly in over the summer of 2024), we have a road map containing around 70 other tasks that we spend every day working through. However, if you want us to add a feature which you don’t see here, send us an email about it.

Want to know more? You can read our last development release blog post here.

Dec 19
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Winter 2023 Software Update

By Software Updates
Hello and welcome to the Winter 2023 Software Update for Parents Booking.

New Features:

More new features when inviting parents to book
Now you can search by parents/carers who have been invited or not, and filter/search for parents more easily. We are also mail merging the student and parent/carers’ login info into the default invite message – although you can remove this if you want. This is particularly helpful where a school uses the login by username/password method, because it tells parents their login and that makes it easier for them to reset their initial/first-time password and login.

Assign events and clubs to teachers
You can now select multiple teachers who can be assigned to an event or club, meaning that it shows on their Dashboard when they login and

Admin users can now login from Firefly
Schools who use Firefly can now have their Admin users login to Parents Booking from the Apps > Bookings SSO button in the staff user’s Firefly portal. Previously it was only parents and teachers who could do this.

Admin users will need to have a personalized Parents Booking admin account set up for this to work. Go to Parents Booking > Set Up School > Usernames and Passwords > Add/Manage Additional Admin Users to add an admin user with an email address which matches the Admin user’s Firefly account.

Parents/carers can use vouchers to pay for events/clubs
Where the government or other school-approved vouchers can be used by parents to pay for or towards events, clubs and wraparound care, there is new functionality to allow a school to assign these vouchers’ value to the parent, giving them a ‘voucher balance’ only they can see, and lets a parent spend this balance (until it has been used) rather having to pay.

Admin User/Pass Resetting: We’ve made it easier for Admin users to request a password reset via the login page.

Reminder/Info Emails CC’d to All Admins: Account and other reminder emails will now be CC’d to all Admin users, rather than the main admin.

Coming Soon:

  1. Brand new admin and teacher area website design (see screenshot)
  2. Fixing a bug which meant that event and club Booking Opens dates/times were not adjusting for international schools’ timezones
  3. We’ll make it even easier to add students to a parents’ evening by class code, custom group, year group or similar via the Edit the Students page
  4. We’ll build a bigger, better, more functional Attendance section, which will be a big help for managing both in-person and video parents’ evenings live / on the day
  5. We’ll build a graphical interface that show teacher availability in a really intuitive way
  6. We’ll build a new page in the parents area called “My Bookings” which summarizes all of the events/clubs a parent has booked, bought or subscribed their child(ren) to
  7. We’re currently implementing a Microsoft Office365 / oAuth 2.0 single sign-on (SSO) login for teachers
  8. We’ll also expand our new ‘Unsubscribe’/RSVP functionality so that it collects more information about why a parent will not attend.

Read More

May 15
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Summer 2023 Software Updates

By Software Updates
Hello and welcome to the Summer Software Update for Parents Booking 😊

New Features:

Wraparound Care: Our newest module – Wraparound Care – allows schools to take bookings for clubs which are likely to have a different attendance every day, perhaps because they’re either a breakfast club or after-school club that helps parents drop off or pick up students earlier/later than the school’s usual opening times.
For more information, read this blog post.
Because this module is brand new, feedback and feature requests are very welcome. Send those to us here.

Ask questions when parents book events/clubs: Schools can now ask Yes/No questions, and optionally collect text answers, when parents are booking Events and Clubs. Simply add these when you create or edit an event/club, so whether you need to know if a student needs a bus, or whether a parent has agreed to the Terms and Conditions of booking, or ask which allergies students have, this can be easily asked and parents will have to answer in order to book. All answers are provided as part of the List of Bookings in the admin area.

Export imported teacher/class data: Have you ever wanted to export a simple-to-read Excel spreadsheet of all the class lists Parents Booking has imported? Now you can. The helpful “Export to Excel” feature on the Teachers shows all the students ‘connected’ to teachers.

Send bulk-reminders to parents – per date: Previously, when you wanted to email all parents a reminder of their appointment, but your parents’ evening had multiple dates, you could not select to only send a specific day’s reminders. Now you can. Go into Dashboard > Options > Print, Email and View Teacher Schedules and click “Email Appointment Reminder to All Parents” and if your parents’ evening has multiple days you can send this for All, or tick the dates you want to send this for.

Post hyperlinks to external booking links/websites on the parents’ Parents Booking pages: Schools who want to list their external booking pages for events/clubs that are booked outside of Parents Booking can now do so by creating an event or club and ticking the box to make this an externally listed item. Just paste in the booking link and this will be shown to parents among your other events and clubs when they login.

Choose which term to replicate events/clubs in: When you replicate an event or club, we’ll now ask which term you want this in. That helps you copy events or clubs from last term much more easily.

Updated Guides: These are the latest versions of our PDF guides:

Read More

Mar 02
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The Wraparound Care Solution You Need Is Here

By Software Updates

Organising clubs which likely have a different attendance every day – for example Wraparound Care, Stay and Play, breakfast clubs and after-school clubs – can be a huge amount of work. Parents Booking takes away all the pain, and makes their management even simpler than you can imagine.

Simply create a wraparound, for instance a breakfast or after-school club, by choosing the dates and times parents can book, for example every Monday-Friday from April to July. Next block out any dates which are unavailable within that range, choose a maximum capacity for each day and finally set a cost per booking if applicable. In minutes you can have invites sent to parents/carers, and later can easily see/download each date’s bookings.

Parents can be asked to pay online, using built-in payment intgrations or childcare/other vouchers.

Sessions can be set up to charge different amounts for different times of day.

For schools and local authorities that already use Parents Booking, the Wraparound booking features are shown as an extra, meaning parents will be familiar with how to login to and make their bookings using the same modern, professional website that they’re familiar with from their parents’ evening use. Everything is under one roof.

For schools and local authorities who only want to use the Wraparound functionality, Parents Booking can be only that for these customers.

Ask us (call +44 (0)1463 731000 or email hello@parents-booking.com) to show you the Wraparound Care features, and/or for help setting up your first Wraparound Care bookings. Let us do the hard work, so you don’t have to.

Jan 05
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Winter 2022 Software Updates

By Software Updates

Hello and Happy New Year!

Thank you so much for all your support of Parents Booking in 2022. As we finished 2022, we looked back on a year which has seen millions of parents and teachers connect due to appointments made, either for in-person or video meetings, through Parents Booking. We’re extremely proud of that and excited by all the opportunity to help schools that 2023 brings.

We’re immensely proud of our part in each customer (school)’s success, and we’re committed to continually improving Parents Booking, to help lower parent barriers to access appointments and conversations with teachers, and to make setting up parents’ evenings, events, clubs, trip, interviews and more as simply as possible.

We have been busy, as usual, and the below list is a showcase of new features added over the last few months:

New Features:

Cards on the table, this isn’t new new – it was added over summer, but we wanted to keep it on your radar because from what we have seen across thousands of parents’ evenings, schools who went from video meetings back to in-person meetings are seeing a drop-off in their attendances:
We are certain Hybrid parents’ evenings are the best way to achieve the highest attendance possible. Schools who pay for the video module can now set up Hybrid meetings. Just create a different block of time for each “session” and decide which are video sessions and which are in-person. The video to the right explains more about this great new functionality, and there’s a great guide here too.

New for March 2023: Wraparound Care
This is so new that we are looking for ‘early adopters’ to test it in the knowledge that it is very much ‘version 1’ and might not have all the required bells and whistles, but feedback and feature requests are very welcome. Send those here.
You can now set up wraparound care booking, which is to say breakfast clubs, after-school clubs and similar where the attendance is expected to be different each date. For more information, read this blog post.

Google single sign-on (SSO) for parents. Schools can now toggle on/off the ability for parents to login to their school’s Parents Booking using a Google button that will appear on their parents’ login page. Much like how you have no doubt used Facebook, Google or other ‘single sign-on’ buttons to login to other websites, this should make logging in even easier for parents who have a Google/Gmail email or linked email in Parents Booking.
[Watch 1min demo video here]

Rather than turn this on automatically, it is currently ‘off’ for all schools. To turn this feature on, please go to Set Up School > Preferences and tick “Allow parents to login via Google single sign-on?”

Google single sign-on (SSO) for teachers. More news on the Google SSO front: On our login pages, teachers can now click the “Sign in with Google” button to login to their Parents Booking account, but obviously only where the school has set up the school’s emails with Google accounts, or uses Google to manage their emails. We will be adding a similar Login via Microsoft single sign-on option for teachers soon too.

Two-factor authentication for school Admin users. Schools can now toggle on/off the requirement for Admin users to verify their login using an two-factor authentication SMS/text. So, similar to when your bank asks you to verify the device you are using, and you are who you say you are, Parents Booking can ask Admin users to do the same. Set this up in the Preferences page, and define the mobile number for Admin users in the Usernames and Passwords section of the Set Up School page in the Admin area.
[Watch 1min demo video here]

Rather than turn this on automatically, it is currently ‘off’ for all schools. To turn this feature on, please go to Set Up School > Preferences and tick “Turn on two-factor authentication (2FA) for Admin logins?”

Schools can now create more Admin users. In the school’s ‘Set Up School’ page, in the Admin area, you can now click “Add/Manage Additional Admin Users” in the Usernames and Passwords section, and use this to create more Admin users. Simply create an Admin, and they will be emailed with a link to create their own password. Also, if input their mobile number, they will also be asked for a 2FA code when they login (if you have turned this feature on, as per the above update).

Parents can RSVP ‘no’ to invites and reminders. Parents will now receive a type of unsubscribe link in their invites and reminder emails which allow them to RSVP ‘no’ to the parents’ evening. This helps make sure they are not reminded again unnecessarily, and will show the school data on why some parents have not booked. We will go on to expand this functionality to include comments and include in the evening stats in the next version/software update.

You can now hide the “In-Person” / “Video Call text which is shown on the parent and admin/teacher booking pages. We had added this text to help schools display whether a parents’ evening is in-person, by video, or where it’s a mix of both, which session is which. However, some schools didn’t want this text to display, e.g. where they were using Zoom or Google Meet but our pages were saying “In-person”, so a tick box called “Hide “In-Person” / “Video Call” text on booking pages” in Set Up School > Preferences will now let you hide this text if wanted.

Pie charts in Reports section. We plan to show more and more of these, including to help as an overview during parents’ evenings (so you can see how many meetings are taking place, live), but for now this first version of our pie charts shows them on the Dashboard > Options > Check Stats page, and when you use the Reports pages to check on parents’ evenings which have not taken place yet.

24hr or 12hr clocks: You can now go to the Preferences page and toggle between these two time displays for all parent, teacher and admin views.

Aug 29
Love0

Summer 2022 Software Update

By Software Updates No Comments

Hello and welcome back!

We hope you had a really refreshing summer, and if possible that you found yourself sipping a piña colada on a beach somewhere!

While you were away, we were busy adding more features to help you make this the best year of parent teacher conferences yet.

Here’s a quick summary:

We are certain Hybrid parents’ evenings are the best way to achieve the highest attendance possible. Schools who pay for the video module can now set up Hybrid meetings. Just create a different block of time for each “session” and decide which are video sessions and which are in-person. The video to the right explains more about this great new functionality, and there’s a great guide here too.

Free trial of our basic Events and Clubs module through to 1st July 2023. This module usually costs an additional 25p per student, per year, but we wanted all schools (who don’t currently pay for the premium version of this module) to have the benefit of the basic Events and Clubs module, to help them set up events, clubs and their Christmas performances. Read more about how it works here: https://parents-booking.com/events-and-clubs

Custom Groups: If your school sets up and uses ‘Custom Groups’ in its MIS database, you can import these using our Wonde integration (and we’ll add this functionality to other integrations soon).
More info on how to import and use Custom Groups here: https://knowledge.parents-booking.com/importing-and-using-custom-groups/

Parents can RSVP ‘no’ to invites and reminders. Parents will now receive a type of unsubscribe link in their invites and reminder emails which allow them to RSVP ‘no’ to the parent teacher conference. This helps make sure they are not reminded again unnecessarily, and will show the school data on why some parents have not booked. We will go on to expand this functionality to include comments and include in the evening stats in the next version/software update.

Teachers can now toggle between their schools. If a teacher works at multiple schools, they can now toggle between those schools without having to log out and back in, providing their accounts use the same email/login information.

Teacher First Name or Initial? Schools who import their data via Wonde can now choose whether to show the the teacher’s forename or initial to parents. This was important for some schools, who wanted to show an Initial rather than Forename. Change this by going to Set Up School > Preferences page.

Aug 10
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The Hierarchy of Parent Teacher Conference Organization

By Industry News No Comments

With schools having seen so much change to the ways they ‘connect’ and communicate with parents over the last two years, it’s worth considering where your school is on the parents’ evening organization hierarchy (see graphic to the right). Should your school be looking to employ more technology, to increase parental engagement, grow attendance and improve welfare?

Every school is different, which is why it’s helpful to analyze what others are doing and considering whether those solutions might suit your challenges also.

Beginning in Tier One, these schools employ a traditional method of organizing parent teacher conferences, where paper forms are sent home via students to collect availability, followed by a process where teachers or administrators plot all parent appointment schedules by hand.

Schools who want to remove admin/teacher/classroom time can offer parents the facility to book appointments online. These are the schools in Tier Two. These schools import their timetable via an integration with their SIS database, for quick set-up of parents’ evenings. Due to Covid they may also be facilitating video meetings using a separate, 3rd party/free video platform such as Teams or Zoom but probably are not looking to continue this post-Covid restrictions.

Tier Three identifies the schools who started using a parent teacher conference platform with integrated video meetings during Covid or thereafter. By having their parent conference platform create video meetings automatically, with these meetings being timed and clever functionality moving participants on to their later meetings automatically, the school has removed as much administration as possible. They may be looking to continue these video meetings into the 2022-23 academic year and beyond.

Tier Four details the schools who are at the cutting edge with regards to how they offer a completely ‘joined up’ parental engagement solution. These schools not only offer video appointments through an integrated, timed meeting solution, but have the facility to offer a mixture of in-person and video meetings to parents, depending on their needs. These schools can choose to have some parent conferences by video, and others in-person, or vice-versa, or a mixture of both. The intention here is to capitalize on the advancements in technology and offer the best of both worlds, with the principle benefit being that the schools have the highest level of attendance possible, by offering teachers and parents greater flexibility, accessibility and the highest standards of welfare.

The term ‘hybrid’ is becoming ever more familiar as we emerge from the restrictions phases of Covid. Hybrid meetings are precisely what tier four schools are able to offer. Parents Booking customers generally found that their parent teacher conference attendances were at an all time high during Covid, and for many the lesson learned was that by lowering the barriers to access, such as simply having one link to click on to join all your parents’ evenings (whether you are a parent or teacher), attendances climbed steadily. After all, not all parents are necessarily able to visit the school on the night that parent teacher conferences are scheduled.

There will be a group of parents and teachers who would prefer an in-person meeting, but where this isn’t possible for some, many or all, the use of emerging technology – being able to offer hybrid meetings – is a fantastic advancement driven forward by schools’ need of technological solutions during Covid.

Simple. Intuitive. Versatile.

If your school is in tiers 1-3, and would consider employing more technology to offer a better solution for parents, teachers and the school management team, just reach out to Parents Booking for their advice on how to take the next steps. Schools can try Parents Booking for free here.

Mar 14
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Hybrid Parent Teacher Conferences

By Industry News No Comments

As we move out of the ‘restrictions phase’ of the Covid-19 pandemic and look forward to being able to meet in a more familiar, traditional manner, one burning question for all of us should be: How can we continue to embrace new ways that we discovered in 2020 to enhance school/home communication while appreciating our return to more normal times? We believe the answer to this question may be hybrid parent teacher conferences moving forward.

Throughout the pandemic, Parents Booking has endeavored to support schools by providing creative solutions to problems which were new to them.

Distance learning, parental engagement and effectively connecting parents and teachers virtually were amongst some of the biggest hurdles facing schools during Covid-19 lockdowns and restriction. One of the almost-universal improvements brought about by the pandemic however is the world’s more familiar use with video meetings.

In general, virtual parents teacher conferences were much-praised because they lowered barriers to access, made sure that meetings started and ended at the correct times and allowed meetings to take place when they otherwise could not have. It was a quantum leap forward for schools who embraced this technology and were able to facilitate these valuable moments between the parent and teacher, where goals, targets and updates are discussed.

Parents appreciated being able to join meetings from work or home, which helped with childcare or transport. Equally, the convenience of being able to attend while taking a break at work, when parents might otherwise not have been able to attend an in person parents teacher conference, should not be left behind as we pursue ‘normality’.

Being able to support teachers work from home or outside the school has also been such an improvement for staff. Teachers can now create their own mini-parent teacher conferences, at times that suit them, inviting selected parents, which has meant that parent conferences can be much more ‘on demand’ both now and in the future.

For all of us at Parents Booking, our next challenge looks like it will be how to merge virtual and in-person conferences into a ‘best of both’ model. While there are many schools who do not want to run anything by video going forward, for others there will be a natural instinct to offer in-person conferences and conversations again, now that these are possible. However, there will be concern from all, including admin teams, that this which could be at the expense of the groundbreaking accessibility that virtual meetings offered.

By no longer offering virtual meetings, schools risk excluding parents who found video meetings a valuable way of connecting with teachers. The risk is that we go backwards relative to the parental engagement improvements that Parents Booking has helped to engineer for over a decade.

We believe a hybrid of in-person and virtual meetings is going to be a common solution to the pressures of wanting to have in-person conferences, without compromising on accessibility or attendance from parents who truly benefited from virtual parent teacher conferences.

You can already create a hybrid of in-person and virtual parents teacher conferences in Parents Booking, but our primary concentration over the coming weeks and months will be building ever-more functionality, to ensure that the unique needs of all schools can be met by this hybrid approach.

We’d love to hear from you. If you have any special needs or a logistical/school setup which would benefit from a discussion about how hybrid parent teacher conferences would be conducted at your school, ask us for a call back or pop us some thoughts in an email.

Mar 08
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Spring 2022 Software Update

By Software Updates No Comments


1. New ‘Edit the Teachers’ page design and functionality

This is one of the most complex and sophisticated changes we have made to Parents Booking since it was created. It is designed to help schools set up parents’ evenings in a simpler, more logical way. It should also help schools who have many ‘shared’ classes select which teachers to make ‘active’ for the parents’ evening, and how to manage ‘shared’ classes, e.g. do the parents book 2+ teachers together (for one single appointment) or separately.

Intro: This functionality will work especially well for schools who have ‘shared’ classes if the school uploads not only their ‘Main Class Teachers’, but all teachers for all class codes. If your Admin user un-ticks the ‘Main Class Teacher’ tick box on the Upload Data page (if shown), and runs an automatic data upload, most school MIS databases will then upload all teachers for all classes, making it easier for schools to see which classes are ‘shared’, and giving them all the options they require to set up the appointment booking rules as wanted.

For example, you can set up one ‘shared’ class code to book two teachers together for all appointments, while setting up another class code to only allow parents to book one or the other teacher. You can even set up a class code so parents can book as many of the teachers as they want for this subject.

If you have parents’ evenings set up already, these should be unaffected by these changes.

We also intend to quickly release a ‘flag’ which shows which of the teachers is the ‘Main Class Teacher’, but this is still in development, owing to our need to code this separately for every school database integration we offer.

How does this new page layout work?

  • The new Edit the Teachers page design shows and sorts the data by class code, where these were not displayed before.
  • You can sort the columns alphabetically by clicking column headers, e.g. Subject Name
  • All class codes begin ‘ticked’. Where a class code is ticked, that teacher is a booking option for parents.
  • Un-tick the teacher name(s) beside a class code to ‘deactivate’ a teacher. This will mean they are not shown as a booking option to parents. Press ‘Save Changes’ when finished.
  • You can un-tick or tick teachers even after appointment booking has begun. Teachers who have no appointments will not be shown as being ‘in’ the parents’ evening, whereas teachers who have appointments and are then un-ticked will no longer be shown to parents who login to make more appointments, but will still be expected to attend appointments (unless the school cancels these).
  • You can add a class code to any teacher at any time via the Teachers page. Once you do, use the red ‘Review Changes’ banner at the top of the website (which shows after changes are made on the Teachers page) to add that teacher/class to the parents’ evening, if applicable. The teacher will be added to the parents’ evening as a ‘ticked’ option, meaning they become immediately available to book by parents. If the class code you add to a teacher is already linked to another teacher in the evening, and they are ‘active’ (ticked), you can then choose how to share these appointments.
  • ‘Shared’ classes can be set up to either book the parents’ appointments against all ticked teachers (meaning that a video meeting can feature 2+ teachers with the parent[s]) OR can be set up so that appointments are made separately against one or more teachers. Select the Yes/No options for class codes that are listed against 2+ teachers to determine the rules for this class code’s parent appointments.

This functionality is still very new, and although it has been being tested for months by our developers and testers, we ask you to let us know if you have any issues using it.

If you have parents’ evenings set up already, these should be unaffected by these changes.

We also intend to quickly release a ‘flag’ which shows which of the teachers is the ‘Main Class Teacher’, but this is still in development, owing to our need to code this separately for every school database integration we offer.

2. Share your screen in video meetings

A new ‘share your screen’ icon in the parent and teacher video meeting rooms will allow you to select content (either other tabs in your internet browser, or other open documents on your computer, or your desktop/screen) while in video meetings. Activate and turn off by using the button indicated in these screenshots.

The screen, tab or document you share will then be shown as a new ‘window’ in the video meeting, which can be clicked on to be viewed as the ‘main video source’ by the other participant(s) in the video meeting.

N.B. This functionality only works on laptops and PCs currently, not smartphones or tablets.

3. Blur your background in video meetings

A new ‘background blur’ icon in the parent and teacher video meeting rooms will allow you to blur your background while in video meetings. Activate and turn off by using the button indicated in this screenshot:

4. Create ‘Custom’ Class Codes / Edit Class Codes

A new ‘Edit Class Codes’ button on the Teachers page now lists all of the class codes which have been uploaded to Parents Booking, either from a data import or those which were created by the Admin when making changes to teachers/class lists.

You can use this new page to search for a class code, and add/remove students from those, OR you can use it to create your own ‘custom’ class codes, which you can then add to teachers. Because of the new ‘Edit the Teachers’ page, we want every teachers to have a ‘class code’ for all groups of students they teach, to make it easier for you to activate/deactivate, transfer and share appointments, but in the future the Custom Class Codes you make will also be able to be used to create special parents’ evenings, events, clubs or trips.

5. Other miscellaneous changes

On the ‘Set Up School’ > Preferences button page, in the admin area, we have added a number of features which schools have been requesting:

  • You can hide the ‘Select All’ button which is shown on the parents’ ‘Suggest Bookings for Me’ page. This will help where schools want parents to hand-pick the classes they want to book, or where schools fear parents will just try to book every possible option.
  • Depending on your school’s MIS database, you may not be able to select whether Parents Booking imports the Subject Name or Subject Description field. This is something some Arbor-using schools had asked for.

In the Reports tab:

  • Schools that use the Events and Clubs module will now be able to bulk-download all sign-ups they have received, which is helpful where a school has many clubs or events setup at one time.

In the video meeting room:

  • A new ‘Diagnostics’ button will help a user understand the cause of any connection issues they have, e.g. broadband bandwidth, jitter and other similar connection issues.

If your school uploads CSV spreadsheets and does NOT use SIMS or SEEMIS, there is a new CSV Upload format which we can move you to, which we call “Aspen”, which brings with is numerous improvements, in particular being able to bulk-upload teacher email addresses. Instructions are here, but it is important that you let us know you want to switch so we can change your upload type to ‘Aspen’ in our school management area.

6. We’re working on these changes now / Coming soon:

  • Very soon we will soon also add an option here to allow a school to choose the teacher naming convention used, e.g. [Title] [Forename] [Surname], or [Title] [Initial] [Surname].
  • One of the most-requested changes of late is being able to search for a student more easily on certain pages, e.g. ‘Login as a Parent’. We are prioritising this change.
  • We will show which is the Main Class Teacher on the new Edit the Teachers page
  • iSAMS schools will soon be shown which is the Main Contact for each student on the ‘Send Invite to Parents’ page
  • We will soon add the ‘Pupil Premium’ flag for associated students to the ‘Send Invite to Parents’ and some Reports pages, e.g. Chase Parents, BUT only for schools who want to import and show this in their Admin area.
  • We are adding more functionality to help schools run a ‘hybrid’ parents’ evening (of video and in-person meetings)
  • We will add the Buffer Time setting to the teachers’ ‘Create 1-to-1 Meetings’ page
  • Facility to email teachers their appointment schedules in bulk
  • Allow parents to RSVP ‘no’ to invites, so that the school knows the parent will not be attending
  • We are still building a new calendar booking interface for Clubs
  • We are considering building an interviews module, and would welcome feedback from schools who would be interested in this. It would allow a school to set up an event with a calendar interface, ‘interviews’ input their availability, allowing parents to pick dates/times ‘interviewers’ make themselves available, and then convert these appointments into video meetings if applicable.
  • Our next long-term project is a complete admin area website design overhaul. Designs have been agreed and the coding will begin soon. We hope to launch this in summer 2022.
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