Emailing Parents System - Any recommendations

[lmgtfy]

Good Morning all,

 

We are looking at buying into a system where we can easily email a parent or groups or parents with newsletters, general letters etc with email addressees stored in Sims.

 

We have been using an antiquated spreadsheet and mail merging but it has led to a number of issues with wrong emails being sent etc.

 

Does anyone use a piece of software that can simply do what we are after and that works well? Ideally I'd like something that can log the emails and have different levels of authorisation i.e only the main office can send to whole year groups etc.

 

I'm not really after an app as I don't want something else to look after and parents complain about not being able to login etc but if it has this element as well we could always use it in the future.

 

Thanks very much

 

Cheers

[fiza]

we use https://www.psfinancials.com/solutions/ps-connect/

 

No complaints

 

SIMS also do their own https://www.capita-sims.co.uk/products-and-services/sims-intouch

[vikpaw]

Groupcall Messenger is superb. I’m not sure about the granular permissions though. We always insisted on trust and telling people what they can do. (I know!)

 

It’s a separate website and logins.

If you want to avoid that you need something that links to AD or go with Capita’s own InTouch.

[Katy]

We used to use Groupcall Messenger, only had 5 logins though (not sure why, or if it would have cost to have extra) so we just made everyone except sport go via the school office to send things out. Also meant fewer people to train. We only moved when we changed MIS and our new MIS had the capability built-in.

[lmgtfy]

we use https://www.psfinancials.com/solutions/ps-connect/

 

No complaints

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Thanks that's great. Might have to book a demo of the PS one. Do you know what sort of ballpark figure we are talking about for their product?

 

Cheers

[timbo343]

we use groupCall messager and love it. We requested granular permissions but not too sure can go down to that level you were wanting. We wanted to stop teachers from sending text messages so speaking with @GREED we agreed this would be a feature request which is now in their core system.

 

Best thing to do is to request a demo. If you don't like any of it let them know.

[jmak]

We use Schoolcomms. There is an application installed which needs to be able to talk to SIMS, and you need to use for full functionality for sending emails or texts, but the parents don't need an app. You can also use the web interface for sending, but don't get access to all the features.

 

You can target any group you have set up in SIMS or create additional ones. You can also log communications to SIMS records so that when you look at a pupil's record on SIMS you can see all the communications sent to their contact.

 

It also talks to the SIMS attendance module so that in Schoolcomms you go to "deal with attendance" and it shows a list of all pupils with unexplained absence. You then just tick "Yes" and a text is sent to the parents of all of those pupils. Not the feature we bought it for, but one of my favourites. (When you get a reply, you can log it back to SIMS with a copy of the message and an updated reason code)

[colly72]

We are looking at parental engagement at the moment. Looking at the following:

 

Schoolcomms

Groupcall

Sims InTouch

Firefly

 

We currently use Clarioncall for SMS/email and SIMS Learning Gateway for parent portal. Firefly is currently the frontrunner for us as it will allow us to consolidate our VLE and parental/staff portals, all under one roof. No SMS facility but messaging is built into the website/app.

[Sylv3r]

We are another happy schoolcomms user, we've used quite a few over the years and this has to be my favourite.

[vikpaw]

I too am a Schoolcomms fan, not sure why I didn’t mention it earlier. Probably because I’ve used GC most recently as the last 5 years have all been non SIMS schools.

[GREED]

Just to answer a couple of points as Groupcall capabilities have been mentioned:

 

Yes as Tim says, Messenger allows you to specify for each user what types of messages they can send, recently introduced for Tim himself!

 

It also allows you to scope who a users sees (what classes etc and so who they can send to) - this has been in there forever, as you asked about this.

 

Hope that helps.

 

Graham

Head of Products, Groupcall

[lmgtfy]

Thanks everyone we are going to have a trial of Messenger as it looks like it can do 99% of what we require.

[vikpaw]

It also allows you to scope who a users sees (what classes etc and so who they can send to) - this has been in there forever, as you asked about this.

Didn't realise this. So I can say, user Alice can only see form 10a,10b and no others?

[Jamman960]

Bit late but We’ve been using Schoolpost for a while, it works very well

[vikpaw]

Thanks everyone we are going to have a trial of Messenger as it looks like it can do 99% of what we require.

Some of the really cool features are the ability to track who has read, send voice messages - auto translated, and take votes through clicks.

[GREED]

Didn't realise this. So I can say, user Alice can only see form 10a,10b and no others?

 

Yep. User Management - Linked Groups

[timbo343]

If anyone wants a reference for GroupCall Messenger, i'm more than happy to have a chat to anyone about it and give my honest opinion about it. Just drop me a PM.

 

I had a query about something today, a quick phone to Groupcall, they rang me back and the answer was staring me in the face! I was doing the same thing a long way round.

@GREED has beem great to take on board our needs. I just wish parents would be more active with doing the app.