News in brief

• New Features
• Tapestry security certificate changes
• Parent/relative tutorials

Hi Weavers,

We hope you are all managing to keep well and safe during this difficult period. All Tapestry staff are currently working remotely from home, but we are continuing to offer a full support service for Tapestry users.

We understand the significant impact that the closure of settings to all but vulnerable children and children of Key Workers is having on staff and families. In response, we are working hard to add extra features to Tapestry and create supporting resources to help you and parents and carers with home learning.

All announcements of new features are being put on this page. Here you can also find all the articles and downloadable resources we are creating as well as links to our relevant podcast episodes and FAQs.

We hope you will find these new features and resources helpful.

New Features

Reports

At the beginning of the month we launched our new Reports feature on Tapestry, replacing the previous system. All reports made on the previous system were transferred across to the new one.

One of the biggest changes to the new Reports on Tapestry is the ability to make reports using a variety of assessment framework templates, including EYFS, KS1 & KS2, Montessori and SEND. Depending on the template you use, there are also additional features such as the ability to take a digital signature.

You can learn how to use the new Reports system by following these video tutorials or the written tutorials in the ‘Reports’ section on our main tutorials page.

Memos

We released Memos in the wake of the setting closures to help with parental communication. You can use them to set work and share activities with parents/relatives.
Memos work similarly to observations. You can link a memo to an individual child, groups of children or all children. This allows you to choose which relatives can see the memo.

At the time of posting this newsletter, memos are only accessible on the browser version of Tapestry, but we are working on adding them to the apps.

This tutorial will talk you through how to enable and use this new function. If you want your parents/relatives to be notified when you add a memo, we recommend you ensure they are set up to receive notifications on your account. This tutorial explains how to check this.

Include documents in posts

As well as photos and videos, you can now attach files such as Word documents, PowerPoints, PDFs and Excel documents to observations, memo and reflections. You can use this to share specific files, such as activity sheets and templates with parents/relatives.

It’s not currently possible to view any attached documents through the app, instead you will see a note informing you to view them through the browser version. We are working on adding this functionality though.

Extended video limits

To help you communicate with your children and set activities for them remotely, we have temporarily extended the limits for videos added through the browser version of Tapestry to 10 minutes or 5GB.

Unfortunately, this isn’t ready for the app versions of Tapestry yet, but we are working on adding it.

Clickable links within posts

To make it easier for you to direct families to other websites for work or activities for them to do with their children, we have now made links within observations and memos, clickable. This means a user will be able to click on the link, taking them directly to the website.

Again, this isn’t available on the app versions of Tapestry yet but hopefully this be ready soon.

Shortcut to split group observations

To make it easier for you to split group observations we have introduced a shortcut button when doing this. Until recently you would have had to individually tick off the children you would like to have their own version of a particular observation. Now however, once you have clicked on the option to split a group observation, you will see a button at the top of the list of names saying ‘split all’. This will allow you to add individual notes, media or assessments to an observation.”

This tutorial explains how to add and split a group observation.

Option to disable notification types

After listening to feedback from some of you about notifications on Tapestry, we have now added the ability for you to be able to completely disable specific notification types meaning you won’t receive an email or internal notification.

This tutorial here talks you through how to change your notification preferences.

Tapestry security certificate

We are approaching the point where our security certificate for Tapestry will be renewed. We wanted to let you know that this time, we are planning to stop using ‘Enhanced Validation’ on the certificate.

Enhanced Validation didn’t change how secure your connection to Tapestry was, but previously it could be used to establish you were on the correct website by showing a green box with the company’s name in the URL. In practice most people wouldn’t have done this check, therefore most modern browsers no longer show this.

For more information about this, please see this post.

Parent/relative tutorials

Families will be increasingly reliant on using Tapestry to stay connected with staff, accessing activity ideas and sharing what they have been doing at home. For extra support on using Tapestry as a tool to facilitate remote teaching and learning, you can direct parents and carers to our range of tutorials specifically designed for relatives. You can find this page here.

Reminders

• If your account is up for renewal, will be up for renewal shortly, or you need to pay another invoice, we completely understand if the closure of your setting means you will have trouble making your payment. If this is the case, please email us at customer.service@eyfs.info and we will be happy to help you make arrangements to ensure there is no lapse in your Tapestry subscription.
• All our staff are currently working from home, but our finance team are taking it in turns to pick up post from our office. This may not be done on a daily basis and this situation may change, so if you have, or will be paying by cheque, please get in touch with us by emailing customer.service@eyfs.info quoting your invoice number and we can help you.

We are thinking of you all. Thank you for working so hard for your children and families in this crisis.

Best wishes from the Tapestry Team.