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.

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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:

• [Admin Guide] or [Admin Guide for Groupcall Messenger users]
• [Video Setup Guide] or [How to set up Hybrid parents’ evenings]
• [Parent Guide]
• [Teacher Guide]
• [Video Guide for Parents]
• [Video Guide for Teachers]
• [Events and Clubs Module Guide]

Read More

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.

There are several exciting new features which have been recently released with a larger software update coming on the horizon for Parents Booking. These updates will change some of the logic behind how parent teacher conferences are setup and allow for a parent’s appointments to be shared across multiple teachers, or to divide appointments between teachers where they share a class.

The new features that are immediately available include:

Appointments can now be easily shared from one teacher to another using the “Share or Transfer Appointments” button in Manage Bookings.

You now have the option of using the “Select All” button above each teacher’s schedule which will make selecting multiple or all appointments easier. Sharing appointments will allow both teachers to join the same meeting.

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Schools can now give parents the option of selecting a telephone call rather than a video appointment.

Schools can enable this new option for parents when creating their parent teacher conference. It’s as simple as checking a box if a parent would prefer to have a telephone call rather than a video conference.  The teacher will then see a notification on the teacher’s appointment schedule letting them know that the parent has requested a telephone call.

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There is now a ‘video meeting help’ button that a parent or teacher can click in the video meeting room, if there are any issues connecting to a video meeting.

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Teachers can now see which students have not booked appointments yet directly from their schedule page.

Down the road teachers will be able to send parents that have yet to book an appointment a reminder directly from this new feature. For now, teachers can go into the Manage Bookings > Send Request to Parent feature to send a message directly to the parent.

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Schools can now choose to identify new students and graduating students or students that have left the school during their automatic data import.

This will not affect teachers or classes throughout the semester, but it will allow for parents booking to keep on top of the students and add new students to their respective teachers, making it easier to add them to a live parent teacher conference if necessary.  We still recommend using the “Upload Data” button when setting up a new parent teacher conference, to import the latest curriculum and class teacher assignments.