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Software Updates

Information on the latest software upgrade from our technical team.

Sep 25
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Shareable ‘Manage Attendance’ Link

By Software Updates

Among the many new features that we have added to Parents Booking recently is a Shareable Link for the Manage Attendance page, and this blog will quickly explain how this could be a huge help for your school’s next parents’ evening.

As you may or may not know, Admin users have a Manage Attendance page (usually found via Dashboard > Options > Manage Attendance) which allows them to complete the below tasks:

  • Take attendance for parents’ evenings on a per student, per parent or per teacher basis
  • Edit the attendance of certain appointments before, during and/or after a parents’ evening
  • Watch the attendance change live during video parents’ evenings, to understand which meetings are being attended and note where any have not taken place (e.g. missed appointments or where the video meeting has not connected)

For in-person parents’ evenings, many schools look to take an attendance on the door, marking all parents who arrive as having attended all their appointments, with the option to later have Admins or teachers correct this where a parent didn’t actually attend a meetings.

However, Admin users are not always at the school during parents’ evening hours, and they may wish to delegate attendance taking to others – sometimes students, sometimes staff members. To help with this, we recently added a (different) Shareable Link to every parents’ evening’s Manage Attendance page, which will allow an Admin to delegate responsibility and control to one or more users – whomever they give this link to – without having to create usernames and passwords, or create user accounts.

Anyone who is given the Shareable Link is only able to manage the attendance for that one parents’ evening – it is not a link with access to other parents’ evenings or any other parents of Parents Booking.

We hope this will be a big help during the forthcoming parents’ evening ‘season’.

Aug 23
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Autumn 2024 Product Update

By Software Updates

Hello and welcome back from your summer break. We hope that this is the best academic year yet for yourself and your school.

Last Academic Year (August 2023 to end of July 2024) was one of the most exciting ever for Parents Booking. We welcomed over 1600 new schools and, in addition to all of the changes released before summer 2024 (opens in a new tab) , we have also:
1) released a totally new Admin and Teacher area web page design,
and
2) made 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.
  • Schools that use Wonde to import/sync their data have an even better and quicker import now. Rather than import the school’s MIS data each time, we’ll now only check for changes since your last import, and also look for changes every night so that each morning your Parents Booking is as up-to-date as possible.
    • This change will also be available for schools that use Xporter very, very soon.
  • 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.
  • We have added a new, comprehensive Manage Attendance ‘area’ for both parents’ evenings and events/clubs/wraparounds, which will help schools 1) take attendance on the door, 2) check which video meetings are being attended ‘live’ during video parents’ evenings, and 3) check appointments and attendance on a per-student, per-parent and/or per-teacher basis as required.
    • We have also built a ‘shareable link’ for the new Manage Attendance page, which will allow Admins to give attendance taking powers to users who do not usually login (e.g. students or staff), for example when attendance might be taken on the door on the night.
  • 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 pages, and the Create/Edit Event, Club and Wraparound pages, to make all the settings easier to understand.
  • 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.

To follow imminently:

  • An integration with TeamSOS.
  • Logs reporting all actions, and who made them, will be released hopefully in Q3 of 2024.
  • A direct data sync with SIMS’ “SIMS ID” API will be added in Q3 of 2024.

Coming next:

  • 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.

Updated guides:

All guides have been updated, taking into account the new Admin and Teacher area web page designs, and been given a little face-lift of their own:

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

Jun 06
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Summer 2024 Product 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 – we hope you will find the website even easier to use, and certainly prettier.
  • School staff can now login using MyLogin‘s single sign-on functionality (SSO).
  • School staff and parents can also 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.
  • Schools that use RM Unify can now add Parents Booking to their Launch Pad using the SSO Connector License. Simply go to RM Unify’s App Store, search for Parents Booking, click on the tile, click on ‘Add Connector License’ and then paste the “SSO API Key” from your school’s Admin Area > Set Up School page in Parents Booking to make the tile log you into your Parents Booking account.
  • 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.
  • Schools in the Netherlands can now use iDEAL along with Stripe to take payments.
  • Speaking of payments, we now show the Payment ID on any refund requests parents send, to make it easier for you to find their payment in ParentPay, PayPal or 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.
  • We’ve almost finished a new web page which is a graphical interface that shows teacher availability in a really intuitive way, to help preview teacher availability before, during and after a parents’ evening.
  • 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.
  • Our 2FA options will offer to remember your browser so that you don’t have to input a 2FA code with each login.

Coming next:

  • A waiting list that allows parents to notify the teacher if they couldn’t book them but wanted to see them.
  • 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.
  • A Room Booking System will be being built by end of 2024.
  • A tool to help identify the parents who engage/book least after receiving parents’ evening invites.
  • An interface to allow parents to pick a seat (like when you book the cinema/theatre online) for events.

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 this summer.

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 80 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.

Updated guides:

All guides have been updated, taking into account the new Admin and Teacher area web page designs, and been given a little face-lift of their own:

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

Feb 27
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Importing Teachers for Shared Classes from SEEMIS

By Software Updates

Great news, Parents Booking can now import all teachers for shared classes.

Before, whether you were importing your school’s data from a CSV spreadsheet or the automatic data import, any classes which were shared and would import with just one teacher, and invariably this would be the wrong teacher for parents’ evening purposes. Similarly, sometimes schools needed extra teachers added to a class code, and there was a lot of need for the Teachers > Copy/Move Class Codes feature. By and large, this will be a thing of the past for you now.

Being able to import all teachers for all shared classes will save a huge amount of time and work, and makes the use of the automatic data feed from SEEMIS (provided by Groucpall Xporter), as explained in the video to the right, which gives a very quick demonstration of how this will work.

Going forwards, we recommend that all SEEMIS schools which use the automatic data import turn OFF the ‘Main Class Teacher’ setting which is found directly above the ‘Upload Data’ button on the Upload Data page, before running data imports.

This will mean that for any classes that 2+ teachers ‘share’, the class will be linked to all teachers.

Then, when you create a parents’ evening you’ll see 2+ teachers for all these classes.

All you have to do then (on Dashboard > Options > Edit the Teachers) is either:

  1. Un-tick any teachers who do not want/need appointments made with them,
  2. OR where a class code will have multiple teachers available for it, you a can use the Yes/No questions in the further two right-hand columns to set rules related to whether parents can book the teachers together into a shared appointment, or book the teachers separately, with the default No/No settings meaning parents need to choose one or the other.

If your school has been using CSV spreadsheets, even although it has access to the automatic data feed – perhaps because you liked the flexibility of editing data in the CSV before importing it – this is probably a very good time to look at the automatic data import again, because it should provide much more than the spreadsheets do, importing all options for all classes, meaning that not only are parents’ evenings easier to set up, but if you need to make changes later you have all the teacher options you might need already imported.

If you would like our help ‘migrating’ from CSV to the automatic data import, or want to test the automatic import to see multiple teachers importing, or have any questions about how this will work, please just contact support@parents-booking.com / 01463 731000.

As ever, please be careful not to overwrite data for any parents’ evenings you have set up currently – if you have parents’ evenings set up, and want our advice on when or how to impor a new dataset which includes teachers for classes with multiple teachers, please just ask.

Play Video

Watch this quick video for a full explainer.

Jan 02
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Winter 2023 Software Update

By Software Updates

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.

Coming Soon:

  • 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:

Read More

Dec 20
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Admin user SSO login from Firefly

By Software Updates

Helpful news: Admin users you create in Parents Booking can now login from Firefly using the Apps > Bookings button (see screenshot 3 below) in their staff Firefly web pages.

This will mean that as well as parents/carers and teachers, Admin users will also be able to login without the need for separate username and password credentials.

In order to set this up, simply create Admin accounts in Parents Booking for all users who require these, using steps 1 and 2 below. This is important, because otherwise Parents Booking will not know to let these users login as an Admin.

In the unusual cases where a staff member has both a teacher account and an Admin login, Parents Booking will preference logging them in as an Admin, but they can go to the Teachers page and press ‘Login As’ next to their teacher account to access it.

1. Login as an Admin user and go to Set Up School > expand the School Usernames and Passwords section and click the “Add/Manage Additional Admin Users’ link

2. Use the ‘Add Admin’ button to create additional Admin user accounts for staff who need access to the Admin Area. It is important their email address matches what is saved for their staff account in Firefly.

3. Test by asking other Admins to click the Apps > Bookings button in Firefly. This should log them in to their new Parents Booking admin account.

Jul 27
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Scheduled Downtime: Fri 28th-Sun 30th July 2023

By Software Updates

Parents Booking intends to undertake essential maintenance over the next 2.5 days. This will cause scheduled ‘downtime’, but is being timed intentionally, because these should among be the quietest three days of the calendar year, but we do apologise for any inconvenience caused.

This downtime – which we expect will begin after midday on Friday 28th July (BST / UK timezone) – is essential because it will enable us to migrate all customers to a more modern database technology, one which is essential due to the growth of Parents Booking and to ensure its robustness and uptime standards are of the very highest standard.

During downtime, no users (parents, teachers, admins or Parents Booking staff) will be able to login to or use Parents Booking. A message will be shown on all Parents Booking pages explaining about the downtime, and this webpage will also direct those who want more detail to our Uptime Status webpage, which will offer a more up-to-date status check as our developers, server and database admins progress.

Please contact support@parents-booking.com if you believe this downtime will cause you any problems, or you need help downloading/printing reports or attendance lists before the downtime begins on Friday.

Thanks for your support.

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 26
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Set up your Payment Gateway

By Software Updates

If you want to take payments online for tickets, places, events, clubs, trips or similar booking made through Parents Booking, you need to:

  1. Set a price when you make (or edit) your event/clubs/wraparound and turn the “Do parents need to pay online when they book?” setting to Yes before saving the event, club or wraparound.
  2. Make sure that you have chosen and set up your preferred Payment Gateway on the ‘Set up School’ page.

Setting up your Payment Gateway:

On the ‘Set Up School’ page in Parents Booking’s admin area is a section called Payment Gateway Settings.

In this section, you will need to choose which of Parents Booking’s payment integrations you want to take payments through. PayPal, Stripe and ParentPay are some of the most common options schools want to use. When you select on, you can download instructions which explain how to link your Parents Booking account to whichever of the Payment Gateways you have chosen.

For example, if your school already uses ParentPay, the instructions offered will explain how to take some codes from your ParentPay account and paste them into Parents Booking. Parents/carers who book tickets, places or similar and are required to pay online will then be taken to ParentPay, to pay, and the funds will be sent to the school’s ParentPay account. The same is true for all Payment Gateways.

Parents Booking does not process the payments itself. Parents/carers are always sent to the school’s preferred Payment Gateway to pay, and then brought back to Parents Booking for their tickets/confirmation, provided payment has been made. This way Parents Booking ‘plugs into’ the payment system schools already use, or can set up for free through PayPal or Stripe.

If you have any questions about this topic, please contact our Support Team.

Jan 23
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Ticking the ‘Order’ field in RM Integris Datashare for Parents Booking

By Software Updates

We would like you to go to RM Integris Datashare and ‘approve’ a field which will show you, in Parents Booking, which parent is the Main Contact when you go to invite parents to parents’ evenings, events, clubs, etc.

Step 1:

Go to Integris > Modules > System Management > RM Integris Datashare

Step 2:

Once inside the RM Integris Datashare, scroll through the different apps until you find Parents Booking. Click this “tile”.

Step 3:

Next, once you have clicked on Parents Booking’s tile, please click the blue “Information about the student’s contacts” section…

Step 4:

Lastly, we want you to tick the Order field. To do this you will need to click “Edit” in the very bottom right corner, and then tick Order, and then press Save in the bottom right corner.

Well done!

Now you’re finished, and if you run a data upload any time from now on (although there will be a 15min delay in this data importing possibly) you should find that Parents Booking’s ‘Invite’ pages show which parent is the Main Contact now.

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