How to inform parents of class placements for next year

[Rob Clarke]

Here is an interesting use case from Raewyn at Everglade – what are some of the ways to easily let all parents know their child’s class placement for the upcoming year?

You have options! Here is the one I often recommend:

Mail Merge using Autocrat – I use the add-on for Sheets called Autocrat, which is a really useful tool that allows you to connect a Doc template to a Google sheet, then merge data into newly created documents (whether these are PDF or Google Docs). It allows you to send a personalised email using <<merge tags>> and has a range of handy features.

1. I suggest you prepare your Sheet first by exporting it out of your SMS. You might want to include a nice welcome message from the teacher which can become part of the merge to personalise this, as well as potentially an image of the teacher and the URL to their class web presence.
2. Go to Resources > Add-ons > search for autocrat or filter for Sheets

This video was created by a friend of mine and is 9mins long:

Here is the Getting Started section of the user guide which steps you through how to work with Autocrat.

What other ways do you inform parents of next years class placement?

[Anne Cato]

We print generic cards for each room, indicating that…. is placed with …..teacher in Room …. for 20??.  Then after creating next year’s classes in SMS we print from SMS a students list for each class – by this year’s class, with details of their next year class. Prepare the cards for this year’s students, by this year’s room and select the appropriate teacher card for the following year. We send them out with reports. Fairly easy and quick. Do a double check before sending to make sure everyone has correct card. Like the idea suggested above. Might try and incorporate this into our process for 2020.

[Sara Moppett]

Hi Rob,

With our autocrat leave system we are getting an error saying:

The Google Sheets add-on AutoCrat is set to run automatically at a specific time interval, when a form is submitted, or both.

The add-on recently ran but was not able to complete successfully for the following reason:

Unable to talk to trigger service

Any thoughts on this?
Thanks

Sara

Deputy Principal, Waitaha School

 

[Rob Clarke]

Hi Sara,

This email is just a warning to check your spreadsheet and make sure your merge ran correctly.

‘Unable to talk to trigger service may be related to a connection issue or overcapacity issue. Either way, if a row did not merge the next trigger (time or form submit) could have already picked up that.

If everything looks good on your sheet, you can essentially ignore this email.

Rob 😉

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