newsletters

[JulieAtkinson]

I would love to be able to use Tapestry to send out notifications and newsletters. I love that I have all of the parents email addresses and it would save me printing out letters. I don't want to include them in children's journals and would love to be able just to select all and send.

[FSFRebecca]

You can do this if you make a 'child' called 'newsletters' and attach all the parents to it. Then you can upload news, information and pictures to that 'child' and then send it to all the parents simultaneously. At the end of the year you can print out or save this 'journal' as a particular year - this would make a great example to show Ofsted of how you are keeping in touch and communicating with parents.

[lynned55]

Good thinking Batman!

What a great idea Rebecca.

[FSFRebecca]

Happy to help!

 

Don't forget to remind parents that their responses to the 'newsletter' child would not be private!

[womble]

This is a great idea but is there a quick way to add parents, rather than doing 150 individually?

 

Thanks

[FSFRebecca]

No, you do have to do them one at a time but we are working hard to develop a newsletter facility. It's high on the to do list. Doing a newsletter like this is a bit of a fiddle I know, but it does work!

[womble]

If we have ticked the box to disable relatives from seeing other parents comments they would not see them on the 'newsletter' child's Learning Journey pictures or newsletters woulld they?

[FSFRebecca]

I'll check - I think they might do. That facility (stopping parents seeing when there's a group obs) is when there's several children attached - if you've got a child called 'newsletters' Tapestry thinks it just has lots of relatives - so their relatives would be able to see - it's not lots of children. I'll confirm that and get back to you!

[FSFRebecca]

Hi Womble,

as I thought, the disable comments would not work in this case. That function works only if there is more than one child attached to an observation and so there is a mix of relatives who should not see comments about each other's children. The only way round this as far as I can see (until we get the newsletter function) when you have set up a newsletter with lots of relatives - where the newsletter is effectively the child, is to have another 'blank' child called 'block comments' that you always attach to the 'newsletter' child so that Tapestry is 'tricked' into thinking there are multiple children and so blocks replies.

[womble]

Ok, thanks Rebecca, that's very useful.