Virtual Parents Evenings RLT Primary School model
Rationale
For primary schools, parents usually only have one meeting (i.e. with their child's teacher) and if students have a school account they might not use it at home and might not remember their password, so for RLT primary schools it was thought best to use a model where parents could access their Google Meet appointment from their private account. This requires the owner/host of the Meet to let the parent into the meeting. One way to do this would be to set up one Google Meet for each teacher and then share that Meet Link with all the parents who need to meet that teacher. However the risk with this is that anyone with an email account in the same domain as the teacher (i.e. a student with a student account, or any parent working in a school in the same trust) can click on the link and automatically join the Google Meet without needing to wait to be 'allowed to join'. Due to this risk it was considered best to create unique Meets for each parent and then to email the teachers with all the Meet links for each parent they are scheduled to meet.
In order for the teacher to be able to allow private parent accounts to join the Meets, then the teacher needs to be the owner/host of the Meet. To create Meets with Google script that are owned by the teachers requires the script to be run in an account with superuser permissions for the domain as it needs to create events in the teacher's calendar.
Setup
N.B. As mentioned above you need access to a superuser admin account with permissions to add events to teachers calendars to use this model.
These are the steps involved in setting up and running this Parents Evening model.
- Plan the evening
Decide on day(s) and time(s) and length of appointments.
- Get parents to book appointments
Most schools have a system of how they’ve done this in the past. In many schools, ParentMail is used, but whatever method is used, the result should be a google sheet of appointments, each row including as a minimum: student name, teacher name, parent/carer name, date and time of appointment. In the case of ParentMail, a csv (comma separated text) file can be exported with the appointment details and then imported into a google sheet.
- Link emails to appointments
The next step is to link emails to the appointments. [This step may not be necessary if you have a system for making appointments that includes emails but for ParentMail the export does not include emails.] You will need staff and parent emails for emailing the appointments and Meet Link details. The usual way to do this is to export the matching name (e.g student, staff or parent) along with the associated email from your Student Information database (e.g. SIMS, Bromcom, Integris, etc) and import this into another sheet alongside your appointment sheets. Then use VLOOKUP to match names across the two sheets and so get the correct email in a column next to the name on your appointments spreadsheet. (VLOOKUP Video demo) [If you need to combine first name and last name to use VLOOKUP, see this Video demo]
- Run script to create appointments and assign Meet links
For the next steps you will need some google script attached to the spreadsheet that holds the appointments. Before you add the script you need to make sure that the spreadsheet is owned by the superuser account that will run the script, if it isn't share it with the account and make the account the owner. The script will create appointments (the length of the appointment isn't imporant, but in this script are set to 10mins) in the accounts primary calendar and will also send the emails, so you may wish to use a dedicated account.
The Script
You add the script to the spreadsheet by going into the script editor (Menu item: Tools - Script Editor), the name of the script doesn't matter too much, you can name it the same as the spreadsheet, or whatever you like. The below code works for a sheet named 'ApptData' where the appointment data has the following column headers, or can be editted to work for different spreadsheet layouts. Example spreadsheet here. IMPORTANT: Read the comment at the top of the script about enabling the Calendar API.
[If using a ParentMail export of appointments, to get these columns, add the three extra email columns (G, I & L above) and see step '3' above to add emails. Then add extra column L header, 'Meet Link', ready to receive the meet links ]
You can run the script by selecting the function 'addMeetLinks' and clicking the 'Run' button, or you can import the function to the Macros menu of the spreadsheet ('Tools' - 'Macros' - 'Import' and then select 'addMeetLinks', you will then be able to run 'addMeetLinks' from the 'Tools' - 'Macros' menu. The first time you try to run the script you will need to authorise it for the google account running it, once it is authorised you can run it. When you've run this script all the appointments should be created in the account's primary Calendar and the associated Meet link will be entered into the 'Meet Link' column on the 'ApptData' sheet.
5. Run script to send Emails
You will want to send emails to the teachers with their appointment details (including Meet Links) and also to the parents and/or students. You can do this whenever you feel is appropriate before the date/time of the appointments. The following script (if added to the script via the script editor) has functions that can be run (similarly to 'addMeetLinks' above) to send the emails, and uses templates from a sheet of your spreadsheet, see example here.
[N.B. This script does not need super admin permissions to run, so once you have added the Meet links, added the below script and imported the sendAllTeacherEmails and sendAllParentEmails scripts to the macro menu, you can share the spreadsheet to another account (e.g. school office) for them to send the emails, this will mean that they will have the sent emails in their 'Sent' mail folder for reference, and will also receive any bounced email notifications.]
Once you have run the scripts to send emails, you can check in the Sent Mail of the account running the script to see the emails that were sent, which is helpful if people lose the email and need it sending again (i.e. you can find the email in Sent Mail and forward it). You will also see in the Inbox any emails that bounce!
6. Using Google Meet for the parent's evening appointments
Instructions/guidance for using the Google Meets for the appointments are given in the example email template.
Extra Notes about the Google Meets
Just to reiterate, this system creates Google Meets linked to calendar events in the teacher accounts. Parents with private accounts will need to be 'allowed to join' the Meet by the teacher. There have been one or two cases where a teacher has logged onto their device firstly with another account (e.g. private or class account) and then onto their teacher account, as the first/primary account is not the owner of the Google Meet they have not been able to allow parents into the Meet. The primary (first account logged in) must be the account that owns the Meet). If a parent has an account in the same domain as the teacher (e.g. they work in the same school, or a school in the same trust domain) then they will have direct access into the Meet, similarly if a student account clicks on the Meet link they too will have direct access, this is why we allocate a separate Meet link for each student/parent. As soon as the Google Meet links are created they can be used, they are not limited to the date/time of the appointment, so if teachers want to test the system they can share one of their appointment's meet link with a colleague and try joining it. The Meet link will continue to be valid/usable until 90 days after it has been inactive. This means that if you created the appointment Events (with Meet links) for one particular day/time and needed to reschedule the day/time, then (unless you want it to be correct on the Calendar) you can just change the date/time on the google sheet and resend the emails using the above emailer scripts. If you just want to resend some of the emails, you could duplicate the 'ApptData' sheet (to keep all the data in sheet 'Copy of ApptData') and then edit the 'ApptData' sheet to only contain the appointments for which you need to resend emails, then run the email scripts again.
If more than one parent wants to join the appointment, the one parent who receives the information can forward the email and the other will be able to join.
If you do want to use the Calendar as way of viewing the appointments and the Meet Links you can. If you want to delete an appointment from the Calendar you can do this as normal from the Google Calendar. If a mistake has been made or a whole evening needs rescheduling you can delete all appointments for a certain date/time using the following script: