PARS can be used for both internal and external communications. Parents can be contacted regarding absence or acheivements, or messages can be sent internally for various reasons. PARS also has various alerts, which will automatically be sent when certain criteria are hit such as a pupil achieving 5 positive behaviour incidents in a week (you can define how and when these alerts are sent).

The communication features are described in brief below, with a link to a wiki page that goes into more detail about each feature. Each link that you can click is coloured and emboldened like this (you can't click on this one).

Usage

Internal messaging

You can sent internal messages via PARS to other staff members. This is done via the notices section of the homepage.

Attendance view (an tool for attendance officers) can be used to send messages to staff about any attendance marks that you want to query.

Staff can be reminded of any registers they have not completed with notices that you can send from the missing registers feature in PARS.

If a recipient group has been configured (see "Non-technical configuration", below) then you can send assistance requests. This is a high priority request for help, perhaps because a pupil is having a medical emergency. The assistance request is immediately delivered, usually to the school office.

Reports can be automated in PARS, so that they are emailed to certain staff members weekly, rather than have a staff member generate the report, then print and deliver it. You can find instructions for automating reports along with various other tips in our training guide - A guide to using reports.

External messaging

Generic messages can be sent to parents via email or SMS from the external contact page. You can also use this page to record the details of phone calls or meetings with parents.

• Reporting on contacts

• Emailing re: homework
• Emergency contacts
• Contacting parents re: detentions

Configuration

Technical configuration

If you wish to send emails via PARS then you need to enter your SMTP details - this can be done via the preferences in PARS.

If you wish to send SMS messages via PARS then you will need to create an account with Text Anywhere (the SMS provider that we work with) and then enter your account details into PARS. You can access Text Anywhere's website and enter your details into PARS both via the configure SMS page.
Texts from Text Anywhere cost approximately 3 pence each.

You may also need to configure your proxy server in order to send emails and SMS messages via PARS Connect.

Non-technical configuration

Generic messages can be stored to a message bank so that staff do not have to recreate them every time they want to send a message.

When behaviour incidents are recorded, staff can choose to refer the incident to another member of staff for them to action. In order for them to do this, you will need to have configured the list of behaviour referrals that can be used.

The configure alerts page explains how to create automated alerts to notify staff of behavioural issues. This might be for repeated issues such as the Form Tutor being notified if 5 instances of disruption are recorded in a week, or one-off incidents such as the Head of Year being alerted to every outstanding piece of work.

You can also send alerts for issues not related to behaviour. Assistance requests allow staff to very quickly send a message asking for help, perhaps because of a medical emergency in their classroom. Attendance alerts will automatically notify staff whenever certain pupils receive specific attendance codes (such as N) or truant. Both of these alerts are configured via the the notice section of the group manager page.

Maybe this shouldn't have its own section - notifying parents of behaviour

Behaviour incidents can also be referred to parents - usually for information only. Parents can be notified by either SMS or email, in either case you will need to decide what message to send. For emails, the message will need to be imported into the slip designer before they can be used (we will design the template for you free of charge).