Hello and welcome to the Winter 2023 Software Update for Parents Booking.
This term (Autumn 2023-Winter 2023) has been quite quiet with regards to big and exciting new Parents Booking features, because over the summer we completed a big behind-the-scenes task, which took over a year to implement, which significantly changed the underlying database and other technologies we use. This was necessary as part of our continued growth, but did mean we weren’t able to add new features and products/modules at the usual rate. As such, below is a less-glamorous list of new features than usual, perhaps, but there’s also a lot of exciting work ahead now that that project has been completed.
New Features:
Direct integration with Arbor
Schools which use Arbor can now import data directly into Parents Booking. Just ask us to send your school a request to data share, which you will later simply approve in Arbor > System > Partnered Apps.
Scottish (SEEMIS) schools can now import all teachers for shared classes
This should be a huge improvement for schools wen setting up parents’ evenings, meaning much less of having to move class codes around and add missing teachers. There’s a whole blog with a video about this you should read, if this applies to your school, here.
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.
It’s important that schools create Admin users for the required staff. This blog post explains more.
Admin users will need to have a personalised 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.
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.
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.
This feature is brand new, and we’d love to work with schools who have an interest in using it – to make sure it does everything it needs to. Can you let us know if you want to use this feature, and we’ll help you set it up?
Assign events and clubs to teachers
You can now select multiple teachers and assign them to an event, club or wraparound, meaning it shows on their Dashboard when they login. This allows them to view its settings, bookings, and other stats/info.
American/Canadian DOB Format: We’ve made some changes to how we process CSVs which contain an American or Canadian DOB format (e.g. mm/dd/yyyy), so that these upload more successfully and without schools having to make CSV changes.
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.
- We’re half-way through re-skinning our Admin and Teacher web pages, so that they’ll look much more modern and be easier to use. There’s a screenshot to the right showing an example of how this will look.
- We’ll soon release MyLogin single sign-on functionality (SSO), which will make login easier for teachers, for schools who use it/Wonde
- Fixing a bug which meant that event and club Booking Opens dates/times were not adjusting for international schools’ timezones
- 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
- 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
- We’ll build a graphical interface that shows teacher availability in a really intuitive way
- A waiting list that allows parents to notify the teacher if they couldn’t book them but wanted to see them.
- 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
- We’re currently implementing a Microsoft Office365 / oAuth 2.0 single sign-on (SSO) login for teachers
- We’ll also expand our new ‘Unsubscribe’/RSVP functionality so that it collects more information about why a parent will not attend.
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 become a significant development project this year.
In addition to all of the above which we hope to release mostly in Q1 of 2024, but certain by summer 2024, we have a roadmap containing around 100 other tasks. However, if you want us to add a feature which you don’t see here, send us an email about it.
Updated Guides: These are the latest versions of our PDF guides:
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