What are the requirements for importing SIMS staff contact details?

To successfully import staff contact details, message contacts within Schoolcomms and for staff members to access School Gateway, you will need the following data in SIMS:

Email addresses

In SIMS please check that:

• The email address is in section 5, Contact Information of the staff's record.
• The location of the address needs to be Home or Work
• If there is more than one email or mobile you will need to set the one you want to import as Main
  

If that all appears to be correct please check in Schoolcomms to see if the contact has been imported. To do this:

• Go to School members and groups
• Find the staff member in the list and single click on them to highlight them
• Click on the Linked people icon at the top of the page. This will open up a new window showing their contact details.
• If there is not an email address for a contact, highlight the staff member and click on the SIMS update button. It will check the information in SIMS, hopefully bringing across the email address if it has not already imported it
• If there is an email address on the staff members line, you need to check the staff member has not been opted out. Select the staff members name and the button underneath needs to say Opt out. If it says Opt in that means the staff member has been opted out and you will need to confirm with them they want to receive your messages; if they do click Opt in
• If there is an email address, but the contact method does not include email, their email address may have become blocked. Please check your data issues for the staff members name. You can find your data issues in Management | Import management, select View Data Issues from the top toolbar
• If the staff members email address is blocked, please confirm with the staff member that they want to receive your messages. If they do, go back into the Linked people screen - as described above - select the staff member and click Re-enable. This will unblock their email address and you will be able to send messages to them again.

Mobile numbers

In SIMS, please check that:

• The mobile number is in section 5, Contact information of the staff members record.
• The location of the mobile number is marked as Mobile

If all of that is correct, the next place to look is in Schoolcomms:

• Go to School members and groups
• Find the staff member in the list and single click on them to highlight them
• Click on the Linked people icon at the top of the page.
• If there is not a mobile number for a contact, highlight the staff member and click on the SIMS update button. It will check the information in SIMS, hopefully bringing across the email address if it has not already imported it
• If there is a mobile number for the parent, you need to check the staff member has not been opted out. Select the staff members name and the button underneath needs to say Opt out. If it says Opt in that means the staff member has been opted out and you will need to confirm with them they want to receive your messages; if they do click Opt in
• If there is a mobile number, but the contact method does not include text, their mobile number may have become blocked. Please check your data issues for the staff members name. You can find your data issues in Management | Import management, select View Data Issues from the top toolbar
• If the staff members mobile number is blocked, please confirm with the staff member that they want to receive your messages. If they do, go back into the Linked people screen - as described above - select the staff member and click Re-enable. This will unblock their mobile number and you will be able to send messages to them again.

To review your Schoolcomms Import settings see here