Groupcall Parent Paperwork Module

[Achandler]

Hi All

 

Since Groupcall are consistantly incapable of helping me... I asked for a trial which would be setup in 2 days, 3 days maximum but it has been 4 working days now since I asked for it. The 3 people at their end that were organising it are now all on annual leave according to their email, customer service at its finest. I have rung them this morning and they couldn't help me, and their livechat which claims to be online doesn't work either...

 

So does anyone use the Parent Paperwork addon module within Groupcall, if so is it actually any good with what you can design with it. We looked at Adobe Echosign which looks great except is limited to 300 bits of paperwork per account, so becomes prohibitively expensive.

 

We wanted originally to use a fillable PDF, so obivously it had nice graphics in etc and we want to re-create this.

 

Is the Parent Paperwork module capable of recreating the PDFs with a bit of work or is it really basic? Or is creating forms one of those tedious jobs that really doesn't feel worth it?

[Achandler]

Might as well delete this thread as it appears noone uses it.

[GREED]

Hi Adrian

 

I can clearly see you are dissatisfied with the customer service you have gotten from my colleagues (at Groupcall). I have read through all the communications you have had these past few days with said colleagues, and would like to apologise for the less than stellar service you have received in terms of getting ParentPaperwork switched on within Groupcall Messenger.

 

I am the Head of Products at Groupcall, very much apart from the sales/customer service team. I would be happy to firstly answer any questions you seem to have about the product, that you have not gotten from your communications so far with my colleagues; I would also be happy to separately look at how you have been let down these past couple of days. Please feel free to get in touch with me, either via PM or at [email protected]

 

Of course, anything product-related I am happy to discuss (or be retrospectively posted) here for the benefit of other users. For information, over 100 Messenger customers use ParentPaperwork (perhaps with it being the summer holidays, responses might be low).

 

Regards

[Achandler]

I have spoke to someone who has helped me, I was hoping to get a response as to what I could actually use the parent paperwork for as oppose to the service level.

 

We have battled through using the product this morning after a few more phonecalls to get it working. So we have we think go to the point we cna use it.

 

One thing I must say for anyone who intends to use this product, it is slow going getting the forms created and then also slow in sending them out. E.G. one form (literally to 1 person) due to send at 10:30am didnt get sent till nearly 11am.

 

I also have sent the same form (different actually message and spelling corrected) to the same person twice for testing and it just relaods the first one everytime, so we can't refill it, making testing difficult.

 

Apart from that there is no options for graphics which is a little disapointing but understandable, there is a limit of 3MB of attachments which is made clear. But there is also a limit to 3 attachments on the form this isn't make clear at all until you try to upload more then 3.

[GREED]

I was hoping to get a response as to what I could actually use the parent paperwork for as oppose to the service level.

 

I think that is what I was offering

 

it is slow going getting the forms created

 

It would take a little while to create your own custom forms, if the build in sample ones were not suitable or close enough to edit (Not that I assumed they would be out of the box)

 

and then also slow in sending them out. E.G. one form (literally to 1 person) due to send at 10:30am didnt get sent till nearly 11am.

 

ParentPaperwork works on a schedule, sending messages out in bulk in 15 minute windows (if you choose to send immediately) - it is just the way it works.

 

I also have sent the same form (different actually message and spelling corrected) to the same person twice for testing and it just relaods the first one everytime, so we can't refill it, making testing difficult.

 

This sounds a little odd, I will take a look at this.

 

Apart from that there is no options for graphics which is a little disapointing but understandable, there is a limit of 3MB of attachments which is made clear. But there is also a limit to 3 attachments on the form this isn't make clear at all until you try to upload more then 3.

 

I will take this to the developer to see if initially we can make this clearer at design time, but also into the limits imposed and see what can be done to improve this.

[Achandler]

I'll try to be as honest as possible. Bearing in the mind that I am finding dealing with groupcall extremely frustrating and have given up ringing your support line.

 

Someone from Groupcall telling me how good a product is and how it can do this and that is not a real life view of how the product works, we have all seen demos of software before and then when you come to use it is tedious to use.

 

With regards to the slow sends, the form was done at 10:20, scheduled to send at 10:30, and then took till 11am to arrive. So it isn't to do with waiting for the bulk upload process, asfterall you just told me it is unlikely a lot of your customers (100 or so) were. There appears to be an inherent slowness somewhere along the way.

 

I agree with it being a little odd, but it definitely happened, the 2nd send of the a slightly different form actually linked the identical documentation.

 

Here is the message you get for files, just needs "a maximum of 3 per slip" adding. It is jsut frustrating when you split up a document to make it easier, then when you upload it, it doesn't work and it could have been avoided.

 

"Files to include on the Slip

 

The file(s) will be displayed to the parent on their online form. Maximum size 3Mb, must be PDF."

 

In Addition, might be another bug:

 

This morning, I have an yet another on going issue with a group that is within messenger not appearing as an option to send slips to. I was told to wait overnight, which we have done, the issue continues, so I've lost another 24 hours.

 

Today apparently support doesn't open till 9am, although this opening time seems to vary with who you speak to, so I have no actual idea what time they work. I don't actually think your support staff know enough about the product either, I know its a 3rd party addon, but when out only option is to call Groupcall then they need to know and not just make up an answer which is what it feels like, hence the wait 24 hours solution given yesterday.

 

For the costs of the product, if it actually worked properly, you could accept the annoyances with slow uploads and limits to files but at the moment the overall package just isn't good enough.

[GREED]

Have sent you a PM with the offer to give me a ring to talk though this and see where things have fallen down here.

 

Thank you for the feedback on the product, I have forwarded these to ParentPaperwork for consideration, with strong backing from me.

[Achandler]

I think it is only fair to put a followup on this.

 

I appreciate Graham has contacted me and attempted to resolve the issues, and we have agreed on several of the highlighted issues and failing and I trust he will take action as he has promised.

 

The outcome of the trial has been a failure, sadly the product couldn't do as we were told explicitly it could, though most likely through lack of knowledge of the product as oppose overselling it. However, that doesn't help us as a school and 8 days after trying to move forwards with electronically signed documents, tomorrow morning I have to come up with an alternative plan or revert back to be posting 200 sets of the documentation out, as I don't have time to try other new methods now.

 

Personally I wouldn't recommend the Parent Paperwork at the moment, the product works for the basic and if everything within Groupcall is perfect, but as soon as you go off the exact path you run into problems. I won't comment further on Groupcall technical support, as I have made my opinion of them clear already and things are unchanged.

[GREED]

Thanks Adrian.

 

Allow me to comment here - there have been some balls dropped here at Groupcall in this instance, and after getting involved myself at (unfortunately too late) this stage agree that the service and support given to you has been poor. Our management team are already on the case here, and while I have done this privately to you I will publicly apologise on behalf of Groupcall for this string of events.

 

I think it fair to mention that the technical issue that ultimately prevented you from using the product was down to a rather niche way you were trying to do things that in fact Messenger does not really support rather than ParentPaperwork - it is the first time a school has tried to use it in that way, and this was only necessary because your MIS does not supply that information. It is a basic electronic survey mechanism, it isn't perfect, it does what it needs to do, but like any system there are some fundamentals that need to be in place for it to work right, which unfortunately were not available here. The bigger frustration as I am sure you will agree is that the advice you were given was completely wrong - again this is being closely looked into.

[Achandler]

For anyone interested the niche way we were trying to use the product, was the way I was advised to in writing via Groupcall and I have passed all the information across to Graham.

 

I was ultimately advised to do a manual upload to Messenger, using the CSV format which we did and the group appears within the Messenger service correctly. Then can they ultimately be contacted via Messenger, the issue stems from the way Messenger then sync those groups with Parent Paperwork, and the required fields to sync the groups across. Therefore the group doesn't sync and cannot be used, so if using Parent Paperwork, be advised you cannot use any manually uploaded contacts/ parents/ groups.

 

 

CMIS, adds to the issues as opposes to being the cause. Pre-admissions students within the MIS system not be preloaded into Groupcall is because of the way Groupcall accesses the data (Cunninghams export the pre-admissions successfully, so it isn't entirely a CMIS issue).