How to send Reminders for Conferences

This article is about how to send reminders in bulk. You can also send a  specific individual parent an email listing their appointments via Conferences > Go to Conference > Manage Appointments select the parent and then click the Email button at the top of the list of their appointments.

You cannot send an individual reminder to a parent who has not yet booked - that would need to be done via the school's usual communication methods.

For video/hybrid conferences there is also an option to automatically send a reminder 1 hour before an appointment. Please see section 5 of this guide: Setting up a new parent-teacher Conference.

You can send a reminder email (or text, where you have a supported text provider) to your parents, reminding them of appointments already made for a conference, or to remind them to make an appointment.

Parents who have marked themselves as not attending will not be sent reminders. Where a conference contains more than one date, reminders are not sent for any dates in the past.

Sending reminders for Conferences

1. From the Administrator Homepage select Conferences and click the relevant Go to Conference/Event.

   

   Click Send Reminders on the navigation bar, or in the Common Actions. 

   

2. In the New Reminder box click the type of reminder you would like.Remind parents of their appointments will send an email to each parent that has already booked for the conference containing a list of their appointments and a link that allows them to log in directly. They can still log in as normal, they do not require this link in order to do so.
   
   Remind Parents Yet to Book will send an email to each parent of students without an existing appointment, asking them to log in and make bookings. The email will include a link that allows them to log in directly. They can still log in as normal, they do not require this link in order to do so.
    
3. Message Settings allows you to enter additional text in the Custom Message box that will be included in the email that is sent. You can include a web address in this if you wish, but please note that it will be sent as text (i.e. to use it the parent would need to copy and paste it into the address bar of their web browser).
   
   If you choose to send a  Remind Parents Yet to Book message you may also have the option under Parent Priority to choose the priority of parent the reminder is sent to (if your SIS has parent priorities).

   

   Click Next.

4. Confirm/Preview shows a sample message, including the standard text, any details you have entered under Custom Message, and details of appointments booked.
   
   Note that the student name shown in the example is just the first available one in the list, it will not send that student's details to other parents!

   

   If you are happy with the message click on the box next to I accept sending messages for xx parents (where xx is the number of parents being messaged).
   
   Click Send to send the reminder.If you want to make changes, click Previous to go back to the Message Settings screen.

5. You will then be taken to the Finished screen and the messages will be queued for sending. You can see the progress and message history on the Messages page. To go directly to this you can click on Go to Messages at the bottom right.
   
   Click on Close to exit.

Checking message progress and history

1. You can check the status of your sent reminders from the Messages screen. This can be accessed by clicking on Go to Messages on the Finished screen when you generate reminders. or at any other time by clicking on Messages on the navigation bar at the left of the screen. 
   

   

   Any reminders sent to parents will have Reminder at the start of the title under Message along with the name of the Conference, the Type of message, when they were Added, the number of Successful messages sent and their Status.

2. To view further information you can scroll down the list of messages on screen to find the one you are looking for (or enter details in the Search box) then click on the message name  to show the type of message, the priorities of parents selected and the name of the Evening as well as a pie chart showing the percentage of successful, failed, or in progress messages.

   Details of messages not sent will show under Failed Messages, including Parent, Email address, Date & Time and Reason they have not been sent.
   Any messages that have been sent will show under Successful Messages.including the name of the Parent, Email address and Date and Time the message was sent.