Mar 1, 2021
One Click Booking (Push Requests)
These are requests that we will send to the parent asking them to make a booking to see a specified teacher. This might be an individual teacher or a collection of subject teachers. The parent receives an email – they click the button on the email which opens their favourite browser at the page where they can select convenient times.
Overview
One Click Booking (also called Push Requests) automates the process of inviting parents to book interviews. Parents receive an email containing a unique, pre-addressed link. Clicking the link takes them directly to the booking page — no login required. Each child receives a separate email, and each email is unique to that parent and child.
When would you want to use this feature:
- When there are specific parents that a teacher wants to meet with. Sending an individual request can help illicit a response from the parent and also can give them booking priority over regular parent booking options.
- When you require every parent to make a booking, as in SETPlans or Subject Selection interviews.
- When you want the parent to be prompted with all of the students teachers (no selection required).
These articles will assume you have already configured your booking round, the booking round settings, the dates and time slots, and any other configuration necessary. We will only be covering what happens in row #20.
There are a number of stages to this process, so let us step through each stage slowly.
The four stages
- Import SMS data eg student name, year level and classes, and parent name and contact details.
- Generate push requests: using the uploaded information we can generate a list of student/parents to send push requests to.
- Optionally you can choose to pre-book the meetings, this has been shown to improve the engagement with parents.
- Sending the push requests to the parents.
- Parents make a booking.
Stage 1 — Import SMS data
We need the student and parent data in order to send out individualised URLs to each parent. Therefore we will require the data to be imported from your Student Management System (SMS). Ensure you have permission from your school to use this PII in SOBS.
How much data do we need? We will always require an up-to-date staff list, so ensure all of the new staff have been added and staff that no longer work at the school are removed. The remaining data to be imported will depend on what you are wanting to do:
- Regular parent/teacher interviews, automatic selection of class teacher or subject teachers. You will upload: student name, year level, classes, class timetable, and parent name and contact details.
- Regular parent/teacher interviews, select individual parents to request meetings. You will upload: student name, year level, and parent name and contact details.
- SETPlan or Subject Selection interviews, requiring all parents to book an interview. You will upload: student name, year level, and parent name and contact details. Optionally you can include the classes and class timetable.
- SETPlan or Subject Selection interviews with assigned teachers. Optionally a list of teacher assignments.
Visit this help article for details on importing your data: Import Process
Stage 2 — Generate push requests
Once the student and parent data has been uploaded, you may proceed to Generate the Push Requests. These will form the basis of who will receive a Push Request, how they will receive it, and which teacher(s) will be assigned to the student for an interview. Following are some of the options available:
- Generate a push request for every subject teacher per student (secondary)
- Generate a push request for a selected class teacher per student (primary)
- Generate a push request for a single form / subject teacher per student (secondary)
- Generate a push request per student (ie for an event, no teacher selection)
- Generate a push request per student and import teacher assignments
Visit this help article for details on generating push requests: Generating Push Requests
Stage 2.5 — Pre-booking meetings
OPTIONAL : This is entirely optional.
It allows you to pre-book parents into the available time slots. It does mean that you will need to have sufficient time slots available for all of the potential bookings. We understand that this extra step does improve parent engagement with these meetings.
Visit this help article for details on pre-booking meetings: Pre-booking meetings
Stage 3 — Review, send and resend
Nothing has been sent to the parent yet.
A review of the current push requests would be wise, before we send them out. Check if the number of push requests matches the expected number of students. Check that students have the correct teacher assigned (when required). Confirm that there is a “Pending delivery…” message for each student.
You may also like to test the push request and booking. We recommend locating a friendly parent and using the action menu at the right of this entry to click “Send…”. A dialog will popup confirming who to send the email to, select the email address and click “Send”. The (first contact) parent should receive the email within a few seconds.
Often there are two parents for a student, and often the parents have different email addresses. We refer to these as first and second contact points. So, the first parent email is our first contact, and the second parent email is our second contact. When we send the first push request it will by default go to the first contact. The second will go to the second contact. If there is no second contact parent then the application will automatically wrap around and send it to the first contact again.
When you are ready to send, go to the top right corner of the table, the menu here will operate across all push requests. Click the “Send…” option here and a dialog will show the status of the current push requests, how many there are, how many are sent, booked, unsent, etc. By default clicking the send button will send the invitation to book to those parents who haven’t already booked, and each time we do it we will automatically cycle through the contact points (using different email addresses each time where this is possible).
Visit this help article for details on Sending push requests: Sending Push Requests
Stage 4 — Parent makes a booking
The parent receives an email or SMS containing a unique booking link. Upon clicking the link they are taken directly to the booking page showing only their child’s teachers and available time slots for each teacher. No login or password is required. Each child will have a separate email and a separate button to make their bookings.
If the push request was pre-booked the parent will receive an email with the pre-booked dates and times, along with multiple buttons: Confirm will confirm the pre-booked meeting times, Reschedule will allow the parent to delete the pre-booked entries and rebook these at a different time, I am unavailable indicates the parent can not make any meeting times and the pre-booked entries will be deleted and the student marked as “Skipped by parent”.
Visit this help article for details on Parent booking: Parent Booking
Booking on behalf of a parent
If a parent is unable to book online, a staff member can book on their behalf directly from the push request list. The system temporarily switches to the parent booking view, allows time slot selection, then returns to the staff view.
Visit this help article for details about Booking on behalf of a parent: Booking on Behalf of a Parent
Maintenance List
After sending the push requests out, there will inevitably be some email addresses that are incorrect, or have been changed. You can edit these details in the push request record, resend the request to the updated email, and enable the parent to then make their booking.
However, at the end of the process it can be helpful to supply a list of these changes to your administration staff as they may want to update the Student Management System with these updates.
While viewing the push requests, navigate to the top right of the table click on the action menu, and select “View maintenance list”. A list of all of the email and mobile updates made within the the Push requests has been recorded – this can be copied and emailed to the appropriate staff to update the SMS.