Home Contact/ParentMail or Other?

[witch]

The Boss is looking at HomeContact rather than ParentMail. Has anyone any experience of it?
I can't say I've ever heard of it but it is a lot cheaper than ParentMail so that has excited him!

[Edu-IT]

The Boss is looking at HomeContact rather than ParentMail. Has anyone any experience of it?
I can't say I've ever heard of it but it is a lot cheaper than ParentMail so that has excited him!

Have you also look at KeepKidsSafe? It ties in with SIMS unlike this?

Parents' Details Updates
Every time a parent updates their contact details within HomeContact the system is able to send the account administrator an email informing them of the update and containing the parent's new details. This can then be used to update any other records.

[witch]

Any more? Could really do with some feedback as my DH went to the ICT co-ord instead of me over this and he knows nothing. It would be great if I could come back with a lot of useful info...

[elsiegee40]

All I can say about KeepKidsSafe is their sales drones won't take no for an answer

I'm so sick of them that when we do get round to investigating a solution it won't be them.

[Edu-IT]

Not sure how this would refect for yourself, but there is

Call Parents - Call Parents - Welcome
Truancy Call - Truancy Call - Welcome

I know these both integrate with SIMS.net, Not sure if they work with any other systems but they might.

We use them both with SIMS.net

James.

Here's some more.

[CSNM-Carl]

I know the guy behind HomeContact and also work closely with the company that develops the system for them. I've played with the system as an end user and been very impressed with it.

[witch]

Thanks - now please can someone using one of these systems comment?

[Jamman960]

We had a trial of ClarionCall, the web interface is a bit clunky but it offers Email, Text and Voicemail(staff call a central number, record a message and all parents in the group get a text to say theres a voicemail from the school waiting for them). I found ParentMail sales to be very pushy and their product limited - as an independent school we really didn't see having the schools name at the top of every email in bold, size 30 text with a red/green background to be all that professional.

When I looked into it all SchoolPost came out very well for us on the email side, not sure how hot they were on text messaging though as the head pulled funding at the last minute

If your using sims and can wait until the summer they are releasing a module called "InTouch", from what I heard yesterday at the SE UG meeting. it sounds pretty impressive - there was mention of being able to trigger messages to be sent to parents based on events within sims.

[witch]

If your using sims and can wait until the summer they are releasing a module called "InTouch", from what I heard yesterday at the SE UG meeting. it sounds pretty impressive - there was mention of being able to trigger messages to be sent to parents based on events within sims.

I can't find anything about this new module - have you or anyone else got any info as it might be useful?

[markberry]

We looked at Keepkidssafe and one other one, forget the name. We found that using them would have meant us breaking Data Protection as when they connect to SIMS/CMIS they download details of all parents regardless of whether they want to use the service or not. This goes against the first 3 principles of the DPA.

Also if a parent wanted to opt out of the service they had no facility for this, except for us to remove the contact details from CMIS (legally not an option). This also breaks certain telecoms laws. When you receive a text you must be able to send back a 'STOP' message so that you no longer receive messages from the service.

[penfold_99]

There also is groupcall messenger, which can send Text, Email and voice messages.

[MGSTech]

We have Parentmail, its not SIMS linked as such, but you can do your initial populating from a SIMS export.

However once your account is SIMS "enabled" you can only ADD parents via a SIMS export/import

You can edit people manually though....

It won't do an export that you can then use to auto-update SIMS it will do an export, but its then a manual job to update SIMS

They have also just revamped the look of the site (although they've kept the horrible buttons!)

Text messages are 5p each if you buy 5000 at a time and require one credit PER recipient, so if mum and dad register separate mobiles that's two credits

Seem ok, but if like us you have 1300 students most with both parents registered then that’s upwards of 2,600 texts at 5p each (£125) per whole school text)
This is still cheaper than post though! And we rarely send text messages to the whole school.

Email is free and there's also a way of seeing who's read the messages without relying on read receipts.

[Jamman960]

I can't find anything about this new module - have you or anyone else got any info as it might be useful?

Have searched support net but still can't find anything and its not even on the roadmaps, was told about it yesterday directly by Capita reps though.

[bossman]

@witch:

Truancy call here and it integrates with Sims attendance and automatically texts parents when there child has not registered as far as I know (will talk to the attendance officer now) it works well but she is the one who uses it.

From technical side it upgrades automatically and is very easy to set up.

[witch]

Further investigation reveals that they really want the email option - texting isnt so important, apparently!