This article explains how to create Online Parent Teacher Conference (PTC) using Meeting URL's (e.g. Zoom, Microsoft Teams, etc.).
There are three parts of a Parent Teacher Conference creation, the article walks you through the three parts.
- Part One: Container Creation
- Part Two: Teacher Creation
- Part Three: Meeting Creation
Part One: Container Creation
- Click the Activities & Clubs / Bookings Admin tab (this may be labelled differently due to your School's preferences)
- Click the 'Parent Teacher Conference' container type
- Click '+Add' to create a new container
- Complete the overall settings:
- Sign Up Title: Name of the Parents Evening(s) / Parent Conference(s)
- Information to Parents: Include details relevant to all PTC's to be displayed to parents. For example, who to contact if you cannot attend at the last minute/ whether parents can cancel appointments themselves.
- Allow booking cancellation: If you wish to allow parents to make cancellations/change their chosen time slots, select the box. Parents will see up-to-date availability of time slots. NB. Parents can only cancel/make changes during the time sign-up is open.
- Meeting Format: Select Online (via default online method)
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Maximum meetings with a teacher per student: If you would like parents to book more than 1 meeting with a teacher, change this to the number of meetings they can book. Otherwise please leave it as 0.
- Fill in the rest of the details.
- Meetings start date/end date: The first and last day of the PTC.
- Meetings default start time/end time: The earliest start time and the latest finish time of PTC.
- Who can book meetings: Whether parents, students or both will make bookings
- Sign up opens: Date and time when sign up opens
- Sign up closes: Date and time when sign up closes
- Use Organisation Block Dates: Selecting this will prevent any PTC's being created on days that have been blocked for your organisation, for example teacher training days.
- Terms & Conditions: You can enter any Terms & Conditions for the parent to agree to before making a booking, or link to a page of your school's Terms and Conditions hosted on your website by entering this URL in the T & C's additional info (URL) box.
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Booking Data Form: SchoolsBuddy can create custom data forms if you need to collect any information from parents at the time of booking.For example, translator requirements. Contact us with any requests.
When all details have been entered, select the green 'Save' tab.
- The container will be created and it will take you into the container.
(Please note a container must not be re-used. A new container needs to be created for the next round of PTCs.)
Part Two: Teacher Creation
The first tab within a container is the teacher tab, this is where you add the teachers who will be hosting PTC, and their classes to their group.
- To create an individual group click Add or to create all groups from the data imported from your Student Information System click Bulk Add.
- If you have selected the Bulk Add option you can choose to generate groups from Subject Classes or Registration Groups. Select the desired option.
Subject classes are filterable by Teacher, Subject, Year and keyword search:
If you select Registration Groups, this will list all your registration groups or homerooms.
- Select the Reg Groups or Subject Classes you wish to add by clicking the toggle boxes or using Select all. If you wish to see which pupils are in the Reg Group or Subject Class, click the green (i) logo located next to the name.
- Fill in a Teacher title suffix. For example,the group title suffix will be applied e.g. 10A Parent Teacher Conference, 10B Parent Teacher Conference. This is what a parent will see when they choose the teachers they want to book.
- When the classes/registration groups have been selected, click the Generate Teachers button.
- A list of the newly created teacher groups will appear. To change the lead teacher for a class, click on Change.
- To add/update the meeting link, click the green icon next in the location field
- When you are happy with the teachers, check the individual boxes on the left or click Select All and then click Complete.
- The newly created groups will be listed in the Teachers tab within the container. If there is a warning message showing because more than one group has the same teacher, you must be careful not to schedule meetings for both teacher groups at the same time. We recommend deleting any that aren't needed and moving their classes over - please read this article to find out how to do this.
In practise, you may have duplicated teachers if they are seeing different classes at different times. For example, perhaps a teacher is seeing a group of students as their English teacher, and another group of students as their CAS coordinator. It is important to ensure that each teacher only has one group in this page. If a teacher has more than one group, please combine all the classes into one group and delete the duplicates. - If you wish to edit any details, click Edit and amend any details manually as required. For example, you could edit the availability to allow students from other subject classes to have appointments with this teacher if needed.
You can also add/update the Meeting URL here. Click on the green 'i' icon
You can then enter the Online Meeting ID (A) and click Save (B) and then click Save on the Edit Groups page. - Click Block Dates to view any dates that PTCs will not be scheduled on. If you have selected to use the Organisation block dates, these will appear here. You can also add more block dates that only apply to these PTCs rather than to the all school activities if necessary.
Part Three: Create Meetings
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Click Create Meetings and Add New.
- Fill in the information:
- Title: Title of the specific Parents' Evening / Parent Conference.
- Vital Information: Add any relevant vital information relevant.
- Bookings per meeting slot: Usually one parent can book a slot at a time but this will depend on your School's preferences. For example, if you are holding student led conferences with two students in attendance at the same time.
- If you wish to create the conference for every teacher/registration/subject class, click Select All in Create for Teachers. Alternatively you can select individual teacher groups - do this if you are scheduling different teachers at different times, for example subject class meetings on Monday, Counseling meetings on Tuesday.
- Fill in the details:
- Meeting Method: This cannot be changed because at the container level, the Meeting Format was set to Online (via default online method)
- Location: This will be Online meeting via URL
- Frequency: You can create time slots for one day or multiple days. If each day has a different start & end time we recommend adding them as a single day then adding another event for the different timed slots afterwards.
- Meeting date: select the day/s for the Parents' Evening / Parent Conference.
- Start time: Beginning of first time slot.
- End Time: The end time of the last time slot.
- Event time length in mins: The length of each time slot.
- Interval time in mins: Add a time length if teachers need a break between every meeting.
- Click Create Rule to finish.
- The system creates a schedule template for every teacher group. These are editable by clicking Edit on the right-hand side.
- Click on the Publish Meetings tab to review the meetings created. Note the Meeting Count column should have enough meetings to cover the amount of students a teacher has to see, if it doesn't, you may wish to add extra time on their schedule.
- You can either Select All meetings to be published or choose individual teachers schedules by checking the boxes for each meeting. For example, this could be used if you create all the meetings for Lower School and Upper School in the same container but only want to publish the meetings for Lower School first.
- Click I confirm and Publish. Please note, once published, the dates and time of the meetings cannot be changed.
- Note, events will immediately be visible to parents if the sign up period is already open. If the sign up date is in the future parents will not see anything yet.
- A message will appear saying that the meetings are being generated and cannot be changed. Once they have been generated, this message will automatically disappear, or you can click Refresh to update the screen.
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If you are running all day PTC, please see this article Handling breaks in your Parent Teacher Conference / Parents Evening
Now that you have published the meetings. Please see this article for