Collecting Parental Email Addresses

[OllieC]

Started giving this some thought today and think I need to put it out to the hive mind before I spend days potentially going about this the wrong way.

 

We're missing a significant number of parental email addresses; with the current situation I need to get these populated.

I've managed to get SIMS to cough up parental email addresses and filter the empties.. my plan was to just text these individuals, however, I can't find any way to create a group from a list like this in Groupcall so I suspect I'll have to text all parents (an expensive inconvenience).

 

I've also looked at the Groupcall comms export and it doesn't populate the "regarding" field or the phone number on the incoming messages, making it very difficult to match direct responses to a text to the relevant student.

 

I need a way to reliably capture new emails in a format that I can try and convince SIMS to accept.

 

I've considered using Microsoft Forms/Power Automation to update the spreadsheet but I'm struggling on getting a solution that is simple enough to actually get a good response, but also without creating a mountain of manual data processing on my end... the only unique student field that I can reliably get off a parent is the students' exam number (this forms part of their usernames). But I'm on the fence about how sensible this is still.

 

Has anyone else had to sort out similar and had any success?

 

Cheers,

Ollie

 

EDIT: So yeah, there's 1732 "parental" contacts on SIMS without a primary email, so yeah.. I need to automate this as much as possible.

I've also realised that using the exam number alone as a key in power automate won't work as there's multiple contacts for each student and I'm not sure of a sensible/technically possible way to match this accurately. HMM.

 

SECOND EDIT: Brain is finally getting warmed up; have rationalised down to only collecting email addresses for priority 1 parental contacts and found another hidden email field that appears to be far more consistently populated; this means I only have to update 1 contact for each student AND there's only 300 that are missing. Now I've got to find a way to just text these 300 parents...

Edited April 6, 2020 by OllieC

[jmak]

Do you have SIMS Parent App or the free version, SIMS Parent App Lite?

 

Parents can sign in to that with either a Microsoft or Google account. You could then send a blanket text to all parents asking them to log in and check that their contact details are up to date. Should be done once a year anyway.

[Ditto]

I think the SIMS Parent app would be worth looking at too, but has a cost.

[OllieC]

SIMS Parent App Lite is included; I could set that up and get a text out... don't anticipate great uptake from that, though as it requires an app and registration...

[Ditto]

Do you have SIMS Parent App or the free version, SIMS Parent App Lite?

 

Parents can sign in to that with either a Microsoft or Google account. You could then send a blanket text to all parents asking them to log in and check that their contact details are up to date. Should be done once a year anyway.

I had asked (as a governor) my primary school to have a look at SIMS parent app after a chat about improving communication. I wasn't aware (or had forgotten!) about the Lite version. How do they compare against each other?

[OllieC]

I think I've cracked a workable solution to the initial issue of those kids without *any* email address..

 

Whittled data down to those 300 without an email address for the priority 1 contact - got that in a spreadsheet, form and a power automate. Having to use the student exam number as the key, but it works!

 

After this, I'll get parent app lite out there to collect email addresses for any none priority 1 contacts!

 

Thanks for the input, guys

Edited April 6, 2020 by OllieC

[enjay]

At my previous school, we failed spectacularly to get SIMS Parent App functional. The registration process for parents was too complicated, it requires a second authentication method such as "sign in with Google" or "sign in with Facebook" and many parents refused to do that (we had a LOT of emails saying "why not just send me a password?"). Also, in instances where parental records have been duplicated for siblings rather than one contact being linked twice, the parent is only able to view one of their children.

 

We ended up doing data collection via a Google Form and a long manual process (took perhaps 3 working days to get everyone in). You probably have either a mobile number or email for most parents, so send an all parents email and all parents text with the link to the form.

[OllieC]

Managed to work out custom variables in Groupcall - gave all of the relevant students a random four digit code, texted that to the parents with the forms link and used that code as the key to add their email to the spreadsheet with power automate. Had a hundred returned within half an hour!

[OllieC]

My next job is to verify the email addresses and get the necessary permissions to use the email addresses (I need to comb the AUP, but I'm fairly sure that we don't have permission to share their email addresses with a third party, which we'd be doing for the free school meal vouchers). Need to work out a system that can email them a verification link, where they can also agree the usage.

[jmak]

At my previous school, we failed spectacularly to get SIMS Parent App functional. The registration process for parents was too complicated, it requires a second authentication method such as "sign in with Google" or "sign in with Facebook" and many parents refused to do that (we had a LOT of emails saying "why not just send me a password?"). Also, in instances where parental records have been duplicated for siblings rather than one contact being linked twice, the parent is only able to view one of their children.

 

We ended up doing data collection via a Google Form and a long manual process (took perhaps 3 working days to get everyone in). You probably have either a mobile number or email for most parents, so send an all parents email and all parents text with the link to the form.

I didn't get SIMS Parent App running at my school, but did use it at another school and thought it worked well from a parent point of view.

 

We tried really hard for a couple of years to get good data in our MIS and succeeded, which made it much easier in subsequent years.

 

My catch all was once a year to send an email to all parents (and in latter years put a link to a Google form to submit updates) and then a paper letter with a report of contact details held in SIMS including the text:

 

We have sent you an email today. If you haven't received it, we don't hold the correct contact details for you. Please contact the school office.

 

You could do similar with a text message. You should hold at least one set of contact details for each student.

[enjay]

My next job is to verify the email addresses and get the necessary permissions to use the email addresses (I need to comb the AUP, but I'm fairly sure that we don't have permission to share their email addresses with a third party, which we'd be doing for the free school meal vouchers). Need to work out a system that can email them a verification link, where they can also agree the usage.

 

You don't need consent to share their details with meal voucher companies - that comes under protecting vital interests.

[OllieC]

Magic!!! Thanks