Schools using SchoolComms - question

[timbo343]

To those who are using SchoolComms. How do your SLT feel about the INBOX in SchoolComms been open to all staff users no matter what their role is?

 

We are in the middle of testing SC, and so far it's been going well however i've stumbled upon this inbox issue.

 

I got a test parent who's also a member of staff to text back via the app and All Users (even those who are set to email only) can see text messages that have been received by parents.

 

Could this be classed as a child protection issue as there may be confidential data in the messages that not everyone should see. Maybe im over thinking it.

 

If would be nice to have a single inbox that could receive text messages.

 

Also we are planning on using a noreply email address for emails so if a parent tries to reply to an email, their email will end up going to noply that gets deleted.

 

SchoolComms web app for teachers to use runs in silverlight too so only works on IE and Firefox? No Chrome support unfortunately.

[FN-GM]

Wouldn't you treat it the same as your schools generic / general mailbox? Only certain trusted people have access?

[timbo343]

Wouldn't you treat it the same as your schools generic / general mailbox? Only certain trusted people have access?

 

You'd have thought so but it wont let us do that.

[FN-GM]

You'd have thought so but it wont let us do that.

 

I think your missing my point. Wouldn't you just give trusted people access to school comms and not give it to the whole school?

[timbo343]

I think your missing my point. Wouldn't you just give trusted people access to school comms and not give it to the whole school?

 

Oh! teachers like to email parents - they have that option at the moment using teachers2parents and cannot send text messages. SchoolComms also allows teachers to email students of the class too so parents and students can be sent the same information.

 

I honestly cannot believe SchoolComms have no created a permission for EMAIL ONLY that removes users from been able to see the INBOX for parent text messages.

[andyturpie]

We have only recently started to use SIMS intouch and there is a similar issue where if a message is sent (blanket or individual message), if a parent replies then all administrator group members get to see the reply, worrying if it was a query regarding a safeguarding issue. From what I hear, Capita don't seem to see it as an issue..... The right to turn off replies to individual messages should be at the very least high up in the feature list!

[FN-GM]

Oh! teachers like to email parents - they have that option at the moment using teachers2parents and cannot send text messages. SchoolComms also allows teachers to email students of the class too so parents and students can be sent the same information.

 

I honestly cannot believe SchoolComms have no created a permission for EMAIL ONLY that removes users from been able to see the INBOX for parent text messages.

 

Oh i see. We use the standard email system to do that. Class groups are created by Salamander and they get parents email addresses from SIMS.

[timbo343]

We have only recently started to use SIMS intouch and there is a similar issue where if a message is sent (blanket or individual message), if a parent replies then all administrator group members get to see the reply, worrying if it was a query regarding a safeguarding issue. From what I hear, Capita don't seem to see it as an issue..... The right to turn off replies to individual messages should be at the very least high up in the feature list!

 

Yeah i would have thought so too.

 

Oh i see. We use the standard email system to do that. Class groups are created by Salamander and they get parents email addresses from SIMS.

 

Does salamander do student reports to email too? Im just thinking if we were to ditch the text system

[FN-GM]

Does salamander do student reports to email too? Im just thinking if we were to ditch the text system

 

Not that I know of, its to assist in identity management really. You could do a mail merge? I did one last week to all staff and each had a unique PDF attached.

[timbo343]

Not that I know of, its to assist in identity management really. You could do a mail merge? I did one last week to all staff and each had a unique PDF attached.

 

Depends how easy it was. Schoolcomms is basically a few clicks for our office staff

[jmak]

I would have thought you'd only use Schoolcomms for bulk mailing, which by definition isn't confidential. In our setup the only staff sending via Schoolcomms are office staff who've all got access to the office email address anyway.

 

Anything confidential goes from a single persons email account direct to the parent.

 

We set ours up so that replies go to the office email as we decided we didn't want to lose contacts from parents. We think again if we got overwhelmed.

[timbo343]

Emails arent a problem, we've set a no reply address, its the text that is the issue.

[Sylv3r]

We are a school comms user but only a limited number of users have School COMMS logons. I don't really like the idea of all staff having a logon as literally some parents may end up getting bombarded with messages on a weekly basis.

[Cache]

We are a school comms user but only a limited number of users have School COMMS logons. I don't really like the idea of all staff having a logon as literally some parents may end up getting bombarded with messages on a weekly basis.

 

This is what we do too. If it's an individual parent needing to be emailed then the member of staff can send it from their own email address or route it through the main office so it goes out via the admin address.

[timbo343]

We are a school comms user but only a limited number of users have School COMMS logons. I don't really like the idea of all staff having a logon as literally some parents may end up getting bombarded with messages on a weekly basis.

Our parents seem to like the bombardments and communcation from our place.

[jmak]

Our parents seem to like the bombardments and communcation from our place.

The ones that like it are vociferous about it and the ones that don't hide in case you send them even more 😋

[FragglePete]

Likewise, we only have a small amount of staff that actually have access to Schoolcomms. They deal with any correspondence from staff to parents; when we used ParentMail all staff could send messages to parents and this caused all sorts of issues primarily with bad spelling and grammar! Parents weren't impressed!

 

Schoolcomms is working wonders for us, but there are a lot of features we would like to see added to really make it complete - they do have a wish list, but I see this as a black hole as they don't publish the wish list and I've yet to see anything we've asked for put into action.

 

Pete

[Sylv3r]

Likewise, we only have a small amount of staff that actually have access to Schoolcomms. They deal with any correspondence from staff to parents; when we used ParentMail all staff could send messages to parents and this caused all sorts of issues primarily with bad spelling and grammar! Parents weren't impressed!

 

Schoolcomms is working wonders for us, but there are a lot of features we would like to see added to really make it complete - they do have a wish list, but I see this as a black hole as they don't publish the wish list and I've yet to see anything we've asked for put into action.

 

Pete

 

We love the product too, but get back very little feedback from suggestions we have added to the wishlist also.