Office 365 - Create distribution lists containing all staff who teach a given student

[tigerstar]

I've had a request from SMT to have distribution groups in 365 so that if staff need to email the teachers for a particular student (if they're absent and need work setting, etc.), it goes only to those teachers instead of just using the "All Staff" or "All Teachers" distribution groups. We currently use SDS to create groups for classes, but this is going the "other way" - take a student, find all the people who teach them, then create a distribution list containing all those people. Obviously this would need to be automated as much as possible, ideally pulling its data from SIMS or deriving it from the SDS data in some way.

 

Any ideas?

[clareq]

Salamander do this for us, and so much more.

[Sylv3r]

Salamander or Locker (Ruler) would be your best bet. Obviously there's a cost involved. If you have SIMS InTouch, I think this could be done directly from SIMS too although a further cost.

 

As pointed out above - either of the two products will give you a lot more for your money and well worth it in my opinion.

[tigerstar]

Thanks. I assume that's only in Salamander Integration Suite - we already use the free Salamander utility for SDS, but if we need the Integration Suite to do it, then that's what I'll report back to SMT.

[Boredguy]

I do this with a SIMS report and a bit of powershell to create lists for each student that only has their teachers in it... takes a good 2-3 hours for our 1000 lists to be created each year/major timetable update

[robk]

That's the one, Salamander Integration Suite will do this, completely automatically, keeps up to date with timetable changes without having to touch it. Plus loads of other things with users, calendars etc.

[ifillingham]

Hi there,

 

Just wanted to see if anyone has had the same issue with the "Teachers OF" email distribution lists that Locker creates. When there are set changes and the Locker synchronisation runs again, the "Teachers of" email distribution lists are updated to include the new teachers email addresses but teachers who no longer teach a student remain on the distribution list.

 

Does Salamandersoft do the same? We currently use Locker but this bug might be a bit of a deal breaker so that we use a different company.

Thanks,

Ian

[FragglePete]

Hi there,

 

Just wanted to see if anyone has had the same issue with the "Teachers OF" email distribution lists that Locker creates. When there are set changes and the Locker synchronisation runs again, the "Teachers of" email distribution lists are updated to include the new teachers email addresses but teachers who no longer teach a student remain on the distribution list.

 

Does Salamandersoft do the same? We currently use Locker but this bug might be a bit of a deal breaker so that we use a different company.

Thanks,

Ian

 

Have you flagged this to them at Locker ? They are usually pretty quick at dealing with these sort of issues and getting it sorted.

 

We happily use Locker here, but am fully aware of how great Salamander is as well.

 

Pete

[ifillingham]

Thanks Pete,

 

It has been reported to Locker so hopefully it will be addressed in the next update. It might become more of an issue if I want to automate some kinds of notifications (email or Teams) using the ToF distribution lists.

Ian