Not all the templates that ParentPay have added to your ParentPay site are the right ones for your needs.
So, if you wish to send a message to parents but do not have a suitable message in ParentPay templates, you are able to create your own template to use time and time again.
Firstly, if you have a word document saved to your PC and wish this to be sent out to all parents using ParentPay communication centre (PCC), locate the document.
Open document and copy all the relevant text
- Open ParentPay and navigate to PCC
- Select Email and SMS (if you want to send the message via letter, email and or text)
- Select create new message (from underneath the Template name field)
- Give the template a name
- Select the relevant media for your message, (recommended that you use printed letter and email for long messages).
Select Printed letter - Select Edit letter
- Right click and select Paste or Ctrl & V to place the text you copied from your word document.
Note: It is important to ensure your template has the correct merge-codes to populate the message with certain information.
- To add a merge-code, highlight the code (Including the < & >) right click to select copy and paste, or drag the code in to the correct place in your text.
Copy and paste option of merge fields Drag and drop version Once you have all the merge codes required and added any other information,
- Click continue. Note: this will not save the template!
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If you want to send this out via email and have created the new template using printed letter.
Select the copy text to other communication methods, this will copy the text from your Printed letter to Email and Text message area. Once changes made click Continue
- You are able to edit the text in any of the other media options.
For example no need to have the payers name and address in the email so these field codes can be removed. Simply delete the entire mege code.
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Deselect the send as a text messages, if your message is a large communication.
- You can add you school logo/letterhead (follow this article) select Continue to Message options
- Change the priority from normal to urgent if you are sending emails to parents who have yet to activate their ParentPay account. For more information about this take a look at this article.
- Ensure that you add subject details
- Untick send to verified email addresses only, if sending to recipients who have not activated their ParentPay accounts. Leave the tick in place if emails to verified accounts only.
- Click Continue to Add people.
- Select the person or people you wish to send the correspondence to using the Add group section.
- Click on the Add button once you have chosen the recipients.
- View recipients list, you will be able to remove individuals from here.
- Select Continue to Preview
- Select the view recipients and preview messages - This will display the list of recipients from here you will be able to select any of the messages to check them before sending to the recipients.
- Click Preview to open one of the messages. Simply close the window when you have finished.
Note: If you need to change the content of the message, you will need to select back at the bottom of the screen until you are back at the content screen. - Message summary sections, details the amount of printed letters that will be produced and how many emails will be sent.
- Once you select Send messages the emails will be sent straight to the recipient/s, the letters will need to be printed.
- Select View and print PDFs to print out the letter to send to the recipients.
- Select Communication History to see your message history.
- If you need to resend this message select Clone and follow steps 8 to 26.