MS Teams - Weekly Parental/Guardian Digest Email

[stebo730]

Just wondered if anyone has enabled the Weekly Parental/Guardian Digest Email in Teams?

 

Not that much guidance on it and wondered when it is actually sent and if you can turn it off for certain Teams.

 

Also what happens if no work has been set, does it still send an email?

 

Best wishes.

[AJWhite1970]

It’s on my to do list. The team behind Ruler Connect are tweaking the new SDS API so it brings over the linked parental email addresses so we can run it. Will let you know when I get my hands on it [emoji4]

[titch]

We have it going. Make sure you let parents teachers and students know it's on! Caused a bit of a fuss when parents got a message on Sunday afternoon saying their child handed handed work in.

 

Unless the "turn in" button is clicked them parents get a message to say it hasn't been handed in.

 

It's got potential but currently it's only the title of the assisgnement and wether it's been "turned in" or not.

 

There also isn't any granularity to it. It's either off or on.

[stebo730]

We have it going. Make sure you let parents teachers and students know it's on! Caused a bit of a fuss when parents got a message on Sunday afternoon saying their child handed handed work in.

 

Unless the "turn in" button is clicked them parents get a message to say it hasn't been handed in.

 

It's got potential but currently it's only the title of the assisgnement and wether it's been "turned in" or not.

 

There also isn't any granularity to it. It's either off or on.

 

Thanks for this - Do you know if it still sends the email even though there are no assignments set?

 

We have a Senior and Primary school and although we are syncing all parents' details we don't really want the email to go to Primary parents as they aren't using Teams yet.

[mullet_man]

Is this part of SDS?

 

We haven't moved to that yet, its on my to do list but this would be pretty good feature. Does anyone have an example of what information is emailed to parents? Do you need to use the assignments feature?

[stebo730]

Is this part of SDS?

 

We haven't moved to that yet, its on my to do list but this would be pretty good feature. Does anyone have an example of what information is emailed to parents? Do you need to use the assignments feature?

 

Yes it is SDS

 

It is only Assignment details that is sent in the email, nothing else.

 

If you do an image search for Teams weekly parent digest email there is a mock up of an iPad with what is included, that is the best I have been able to find.

[mullet_man]

Thanks stebo730 - we currently only have whole year group teams with channels for each subject and teachers post work to day. We haven't made us of the assignments feature as yet.

 

We will be going SDS at some point.

 

Thanks I'll have a look at the ipad mock up.

[titch]

Thanks for this - Do you know if it still sends the email even though there are no assignments set?

 

We have a Senior and Primary school and although we are syncing all parents' details we don't really want the email to go to Primary parents as they aren't using Teams yet.

I think...but I can't be 100 percent sure but they don't get sent if no assignments there.

[hyb80]

If someone could post a screenshot of where this can be configured it would be most appreciated. I cannot find it in my SDS.

[mullet_man]

We are just about to get this enabled now we are getting classes setup via SDS. Can someone who has this in place answer these questions?

 

Who does it email? 1 parent or both?

When does the email get sent?

 

Thanks

[titch]

It gets sent on a Sunday morning and it gets sent to the primary parent.

[mullet_man]

It gets sent on a Sunday morning and it gets sent to the primary parent.

Thank you titch, appreciate you letting me know.

[titch]

Thank you titch, appreciate you letting me know.

Let me know how you get on with it. We turned it off as didn't think it had enough detail to make it worthwhile.

[mullet_man]

Let me know how you get on with it. We turned it off as didn't think it had enough detail to make it worthwhile.

 

I changed a parent's email address in SIMS to mine so I received the email, it came Sunday morning.

 

So far we are the very start of using the assignments feature but as more staff assign them the more beneficial the email about what stuff the kid has and hasn't done will be.

[crwardell]

Hi All,

Is there anyone that is using Ruler Connect been able to set this up using your SDS service by importing CSV files?

Just curious as it is proving quite difficult to locate all the relevant information needed for each spreadsheet.

 

I am also concerned that doing it this way may break the link between Locker Connect and our Microsoft Teams classes?

Its a shame Locker Connect have not been able to integrate this with their service yet!

[leegcvcc]

We use it and it's 8am Sunday morning I believe. The issue is if Teachers set an assignment without the need to hand it in, the email will show that the student hasn't done the work which can create problems at home, so the teachers understanding of assignments is imperative for it to work and avoid floods of emails to the Head and teachers saying the've def done the work!

[crwardell]

Thanks for the quick reply leegcvv.

 

Just to confirm

Are you are using locker connect and have you used Microsoft SDS to upload the relevant CSV files?

[leegcvcc]

I just enabled the Guardian email in the SDS portal and Salamander (god bless them!) included the parental addresses in the SDS CSV upload sync, so that needs doing whoever does it.

I don't use Locker Connect

[crwardell]

Ah I see. I wish locker connect would do this also.

It's a bit of a mind field trying to locate all the relevant information needed for the CSV's before uploading.

You don't happen to have copies of the CSV's that where uploaded (minus the data obviously haha GDPR and all that) to give me a head start on the required column titles needed for each CSV?

[robyholmes]

Ah I see. I wish locker connect would do this also.

It's a bit of a mind field trying to locate all the relevant information needed for the CSV's before uploading.

You don't happen to have copies of the CSV's that where uploaded (minus the data obviously haha GDPR and all that) to give me a head start on the required column titles needed for each CSV?

 

This should help:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/schooldatasync/uk-school-data-sync-format-csv-files-for-sds

[leegcvcc]

Ah I see. I wish locker connect would do this also.

It's a bit of a mind field trying to locate all the relevant information needed for the CSV's before uploading.

You don't happen to have copies of the CSV's that where uploaded (minus the data obviously haha GDPR and all that) to give me a head start on the required column titles needed for each CSV?

Salamander script deletes the uploads file after upload for whatever reason, so no, I can't. I think they can change it to not delete, but involves a call to support which we don't need. Sorry

[crwardell]

No bother it was worth trying. :-)

I have just been in touch with Locker Connect and they are looking into a solution or a workaround to help with the Parent Digest Email

There is a risk of breaking the link between Class Teams and Locker Connect if you do the manual upload of CSV's to SDS. One of the CSV's includes uploading Teams names which could potentially break the link if you dont get them named correctly.

[mobrien]

Locker/Ruler connect now has a version that creates the 8 csv files in the Ruler folder. These can then be used to set up SDS, linking the students with their parents. 4 of the csv files created are blank, so as not to interrupt the existing import of SIMs classes into Teams classes (there was a query earlier about this).

 

Once an SDS profile is created with these files, the sync works fine.

 

But, we enabled this early last week and no Guardian emails were sent out. Checked the settings in Teams Admin centre (the master 'switch' under Assignments), and also that each class had the setting for the email enabled and they are correct.

 

Not sure where to go to fix this

[cstreet]

I've dealt with our parent emails this week and this may be of interest...

 

I'm using salamander AD to create the csv files. They are pushed up automatically every day early hours.

 

Be mindful for your user provisioning flow with SDS uploads: check that any new student/teacher accounts ilare created in 365, and have a licence applied, BEFORE your SDS csv upload includes them. Otherwise SDS will have validation errors if new accounts included in the csv don't actually exist in 365 yet.

 

Next, check that Salamander filter which parents are included. In SIMS we have priority 1/2/5 for parent contacts. Our P5 are normally grand parents or god parents who won't want extra emails! Or contacts that are related but have no access to students for safeguarding. Queue GDPR complaints. We include only P1 and P2 parents in our csv now.

 

Finally, I can tell you that parent emails do not get removed automatically. If you stop uploading them, they still remain in SDS. You can see the parent emails in SDS if you go to the People list and open up a student. The guardians and emails appear at the bottom of the student fly out details pane.

There is a way to remove parent emails using a graph API script provided by Microsoft support. Once set up you can reset parents for a single student, or for all students. When your csv uploads again it will put only the parent you need back in again.

 

I am in the process of installing the script as a scheduled task on our server to run on a Friday evening, removing all parents. The next csv upload would be Sat early hours and contain the correct parents for the weekend summary to build.

 

The parent emails are processed by Microsoft from Saturday afternoon. Please appreciate the scale of this task! The entire world's parents all getting an email. It is for this reason that there are no controls over exactly when your tenant is processed. It just happens whenever Microsoft get to your tenant as quick as their servers can process it.

 

I feel like I have got to grips with SDS and parent emails now so if anyone would like a hand, drop me a PM!

 

Hope this helps someone

[cstreet]

There is a way to remove parent emails using a graph API script provided by Microsoft support.

 

https://github.com/OfficeDev/O365-EDU-Tools/blob/master/SDS%20Scripts/Reset-Guardians.ps1

 

I booked a call with MS support to help me register an application API in Azure AD for the script. It includes adding the required permissions on the API registration for the script to run with.