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Hi, At the moment, my school uses an online service to send text messages out to parents, that they are charged for every sms sent out. Parents who have queries regarding the messages then phone the school office. We also have an app linked to our website that sends out push messages/alerts to everybody who has a copy of the app on their phones. The contract for out SMS service is due for renewal and the school is looking at what options are best for the future, cost & practicality in the forefront, especially with GDPR looming. I know that Capita does a messaging app and our current sms company also do their own version of a messaging app. Does anyone have any advice on what path the school could go down? We are a 4/5 form intake infants school and send out a lot of messages. Thanks

Hi everyone, Hornsea School and Language College is one of our earliest adopters of EduLink One, since its launch less than 5 months ago. EduLink One is a powerful whole-school platform for communication; sharing school data and providing easy access to a school’s MIS for deeper learner insight. EduLink One is accessible 24/7 via a web browser or app. Parental and student engagement is an important mission of Hornsea School and Language College, a school with 1,100 students on roll. For Rob Coles, the Network Manager at the school this has meant implementing effective measures for real time reporting, as well as messaging. Rob explains why they chose EduLink One as their preferred tool for ensuring student and parent participation is maximised. “Firstly, ‘keeping it simple’ has been my motto. If we can make access to various 3rd party tools and services easy, it is significantly more likely parents and students will use it. As EduLink One is a single unified platform that delivers several fundamental services that we want parents and students to interact with, a single login to access all of them is an attractive proposition. We previously used SchoolsComm and Emerge, but with EduLink One we could consolidate everything we needed within one solution, simplifying access. Even better, it saved the school money. EduLink One complements our Moodle Learning platform, sharing the same login, so we have a truly holistic approach to our digital services. Secondly for teachers, they can take registration electronically, which writes back to SIMS. As it runs on a smartphone, this is really useful for subjects like PE and drama, where you don’t want to be lugging round a cumbersome laptop or tablet. We can also use it on school trips. There is no limitation to how many staff can access EduLink One, which is really convenient and flexible.” To read the full case study click here. You can try out our demo site for free by clicking here (no registration is required). Please PM me if you have any questions.

Hi all. I have been asked how to get a Lock message to each classroom without sounding an alarm. The staff do not log into Teams all the time (that would be the easy answer) and the classrooms do not have phones in each room. Thanks all. Andy

Does anyone know if Edulink one can offer write-back to SiMs if a (e.g. a parent) replied to a message? That way we could completely remove the reliance on SiMs intouch? School has a trial of edulink but I haven't had time to install it yet.. Thanks!

Hi all, One of the biggest challenges for schools is managing communication and targeting it at the relevant stakeholders – be it a sub group of teachers, students or parents. As the size of the school increases or where it is multi-site, this issue only gets compounded. Read our latest blog giving advice on choosing the right tools to address this issue. Read here at: http://bit.ly/1Ajum0a As always we welcome any contribution. Best wishes

Hi everyone, At the BETT Show this week we will be unveiling EduLink One, our new and powerful web and app-based (iOS and Android) solution for schools, which meets the day to day needs of staff, students and parents to effectively complete tasks, communicate and manage/ share school data. All through one integrated system the key features of EduLink One are: Access Anytime, Anywhere On Any Device Send Email, SMS and Push Notifications Take Registers Record Behaviour and Achievement Access Documents e.g. School Reports View Current and Past Homework Access Exam Timetable, Entries & Results Look up Cashless Catering Transactions & Balance MIS Write-Back Secure and Encrypted Multiple Authentication Sources incl. LDAP Single Sign On (SSO) capabilities, providing a gateway to other 3rd party services For further information on EduLink One, click here. If you are at BETT this week, why not drop by our stand C396 to see a demo, set up a trial or just to say hello! Otherwise drop me a PM or email [email protected] to discuss any questions you have and to arrange a demo. Best wishes Reeza

Hi Everyone So we're a secondary school have all our students in one messaging policy group and currently our all KS3 students are part of one group for their daily lesson. We have a number of students in sixth form in Year 12 that have lessons delivered via teams from groups the teachers have made, currently those students can't message and we would like it if the year 12's could message their teachers but not each other. What's best way to do this, is it even possible with the current tools from the administration side of Teams? Cheers

Sorry to drag this up as I know it's been covered before, but most of the posts I can find are fairly old. I'm looking for a messaging system to use on our teacher notebooks, for intra-staff communication. The main purpose is so the attendance officer can remind the teachers to submit their electronic rolls, but a general instant messaging system is also required. We are currently using GoogleTalk, as we have Google Apps, but the GTalk client relies on users 'friending' other users, and as far as I am aware the client is not able to do SSO, so it relies on users actually signing into it in the first place (which they don't do). So I'm looking for a simple chat/IM interface, that is AD integrated and supports SSO so that it automatically runs and signs in on user logon. I've looked at OpenFire/Spark and it looks good, but can't find clear documentation on getting SSO to work on Server 2008 or R2, and it looks fairly complicated. Our domain is Server 2008 R2 and client workstations are Windows 7. Anyone have any suggestions or recommendations? Cheers