Other MIS Users September Readiness Checklist

At the end of this academic year / beginning of the new academic year, you will need to update and re-import your spreadsheet (CSV file). You will need to remove any leavers and add any new members. All registration groups and year groups of existing school members will need to be updated to reflect the new academic year. Once the spreadsheet is updated, you will need to re-import this into Schoolcomms. Please ensure that you do not amend the MIS IDs for your existing students.

You can then delete any leavers when you no longer wish to have any further contact with them. Access the Delete Leavers help guide here.

You will need to manually add each parent along with their email address and mobile number into Schoolcomms.
Access the help guide for adding/amending linked contacts here.

Parental Responsibility is required for parents to be able to give consent, see balances, and make bookings on School Gateway.

Click here to access a guide to assist you with this.

To review and identify any gaps in data currently imported into your Schoolcomms account, check your registered users Management Report.

Click here for assistance with this.

Access the Management Dashboard help guide here.

Ensure that your data issues are dealt with on a regular basis; if ignored, you may not be communicating to all imported contacts.

Your school multi-user administrators can create, unlock, amend, and delete staff Schoolcomms user accounts.

School leavers will need to be removed from the CSV file and once re-imported can be permanently deleted from Schoolcomms.

Access the Delete Leavers help guide here.

Once students are identified as leavers in Schoolcomms, they can still be messaged as normal, however they will no longer show in their MIS groups. We would recommend that you manually create a leavers group in Schoolcomms to continue to message them in bulk before they are deleted as leavers.

Access the Groups help guide here.

In order for them to no longer be passed to Cypad (at which point they should change to Closed on Cypad and Anonymised), you will need to follow the Delete Leavers process in Schoolcomms.

As part of our improving security standards, schools will be asked for proof of ownership when adding new bank accounts to Schoolcomms.

Amend existing or create new payment requests for the new academic year. Add any new starters to existing relevant payment requests.

Please Note: Schoolcomms recommends that a new payment request is created if a vast sum of monies has been collected to prevent time-outs.

For credit balances for leavers etc., access the Refunds help guide here Alternatively, if they have a sibling at the school, you could transfer the credit to them in Schoolcomms via manual transactions. Click here for further information.

Top up text credits to ensure you have enough for the new academic year.

Access the Ordering Text Credits help guide here.

To ensure you have enough space to send messages, archive messages and clean up the inbox.

Amend existing or create new Dinner Plans for the New Academic year.
Add new students to the Dinner Plan and connecting payment request once they have been imported.

Access the Schoolcomms dinners help guide here.

A separate dinner plan with no charge would need to be created for FSM pupils.
UIFSM year groups will not be updated until your new file is imported following your academic promotion being completed in your MIS.

Click here to access the Schoolcomms Dinners help guide

To ensure that UIFSM meals are charged correctly on your first day of term, run an import in Schoolcomms before 11am so that the updated year groups will be passed to Cypad.

Depending on when the first import in the new academic year is run in Schoolcomms, pupils and class groups will update in Cypad after the next data sync:

School members – 6am, 11am, 3pm, and 6pm each day.

The status of leavers will change to Closed and they will be anonymised on the next Cypad sync.

Once they have been deleted from Schoolcomms; they will then no longer appear on the Whiteboard.

For ongoing clubs i.e. Afterschool / Breakfast Club, you can extend the existing club by adding new sessions, remove leavers and add any new starters once they have been imported after they have reached date of admission in your MIS., then create a new connecting payment request via the club.

Please remember to expire the old payment request.

You will need to create new clubs that require all sessions to be booked (enrichment clubs).

Encourage your new and existing parents to register for School Gateway.
Useful letter templates can be found in the School Gateway Success Guide here.

There are also useful App/Payments invite templates within Messaging.
 
Access the full parent guide here.

Access the School Gateway help guide here.

Please remind parents to ensure they are on the most recent version of School Gateway for the best user experience. They can check for updates via their respective app store.