[EDULINK] - Parents messaging school

[gumbygaz]

Morning & HNY,

 

Just a query to those Edulink users, we're trialling edulink and all very impressed so far. However, the one feature I'm surprised that is missing is how do parents message the school. I can see they can message teachers/HOY/Headteacher or reply to a message we've sent out but sometimes Parents just want to do a general query e.g, let us know they're dropping of PE Kit - Spoken to edulink and they say it isn't a feature.

 

Anybody got any cunning work arounds or do you just tell parents to e-mail/call in?

 

Gareth

[FragglePete]

We use Edulink, but to be honest, we just had a general enquiries e-mail setup as a shared mailbox that key members of admin staff monitor and action as needed.

 

You can setup Edulink to use the .Gov Notify service for sending e-mails (and SMS messages also) - better than having a mailbox sending out masses of e-mails that could trip the spam filter on your Microsoft Tenant (if you use M365). The only downside that it doesn't allow attachments .... yet.

 

Pete

[AlistairB1983]

Morning & HNY,

Just a query to those Edulink users, we're trialling edulink and all very impressed so far. However, the one feature I'm surprised that is missing is how do parents message the school. I can see they can message teachers/HOY/Headteacher or reply to a message we've sent out but sometimes Parents just want to do a general query e.g, let us know they're dropping of PE Kit - Spoken to edulink and they say it isn't a feature.

Anybody got any cunning work arounds or do you just tell parents to e-mail/call in?

Gareth

We actually limit who parents message, primarily to try and stop this very issue! We want our parents to go through a single channel, so sadly we've had to close all the others as no matter how often they were reminded, some still persisted.

 

So we ask them to email in via our office@ email address, which is also included in our signature for EduLink. It might be something we can revisit later this year once parents have been trained in 'good habits' (or preferred habits at least!).

[gumbygaz]

Ok thanks, we would like to get them to use the app for everything so one communication route but having them e-mail teachers/head etc will just get messy.

We'll go down the shared mailbox route and disable the other communication channels on the app. Too much good about the app not to press ahead.

 

Thanks, just wanted to make sure we weren't missing a trick.

[chall]

This is an issue for us as well, we are hoping that Edulink adds this as a new feature.