Refresher - If you've not used Parents' Meetings for a while

If it is a while since you last used Tes Parents' Meetings and you're in need of a few reminders, this article will help you get ready for the new academic year and run in-person, or online video call evenings! 

Update Data

The first thing to do is to refresh the data on your system, to ensure you have your current students, teachers, contacts and classes. How you do this depends on the school management system you use (or if you manually import your data). Please see the relevant guide in the list below:

Setting up an Evening 

Having refreshed your data you're ready to set up the evening, whether it's in-person, via video call, or a mix of the two. Please see the following guide: Setting up a new Parents Evening.

Teacher Breaks and Start & End Times

Teacher Availability - setting breaks etc. will take you through how to set availability, add teacher breaks, and change teacher's start and end times.

Shared Classes

If you have shared classes included in your evening How to use the Class Teachers page will take you through how to set them up.

Appointment Length

To set selected teachers with a different appointment length than the default see  Setting a different appointment length for teachers.

Custom Groups

If you have teachers that are not currently linked to students but you would like them to be available for parents to book, you can set up custom groups to allow this - see Custom Groups: how to create and use them.

Setting up access for teachers

You may have new teachers that need access, or want to remind existing teachers of their login details.
See Creating and editing Teacher Logins for how to do this. 

Alternatively, if you use one of our supported Single Sign on methods, see Teacher authentication and SSO for further information.

Send communication to Parents including the Parent Guide

Once your evening is set up you will need to inform parents about it and how they can make bookings. You can download a parent guide from the system, there is also a template letter that can be tailored to your school's requirements. See Parent Guide and Template Letter for further information on these.

Check overall availability

To check your teacher availability is correct you can download a booking grid, allowing you to easily view overall availability as well as any appointments already booked: Viewing an overall grid of teacher availability and appointments.

Does the booking screen appear as expected?

If you want to check the correct teachers are appearing to parents when booking you can go through the steps of making a booking yourself. See Logging in as a parent to check what they see. Remember to not actually book an appointment (unless you wish to do so) as this would send an email to the parent confirming the details!

Reminders

Once your evening is open for bookings you can send reminder emails (or text messages) to parents. See How to send Reminders for Evenings.

View and Print Appointments

See How to view and print appointments made for an Evening.

Adding, Modifying or Deleting Appointments

Should you want to add, amend or delete any appointments on the system, as an Administrator on behalf of a parent, see Adding, Deleting or Editing Appointments.

Attendance

Admins, and/or teachers, can record parent attendance and Admins can also run attendance reports.
See How to Record and Report on Parent Attendance.