Create a New Meeting Schedule (Post-Primary)

If you are a ‘school admin’ and want to know how to create a ‘new meeting schedule’ for your Post-Primary School, please follow these instructions:

Nb. If you don’t see the ‘new schedule’ button, this is likely because you are not set up as an administrator for your school. To get admin status, speak to someone in the school who is already an admin and they will be able to give you these privileges or email support@equipple.com and provide the name of your school as well as the rationale for requiring admin permissions.

The schedule builder has eight steps — Name, Classes, Teachers, Dates, Times, Format, Timeline and Review. The dots along the top of each screen show you where you are, and you can go back at any point using ‘Previous step’. Nothing is created until you click ‘Create schedule’ at the very end.

Step 1 – Name

•   From the Equipple ‘home screen’, simply click ‘new schedule’. If this is your school’s first schedule, you can also click ‘Create a schedule’ on the ‘No schedules yet’ card.

•   You will be asked to ‘give the schedule a name’. This name is used in parent communications, so choose something unique, specific and easily understood — for example, ‘Year 9 Parent Teacher Meetings’. Then click ‘Next step’.

Step 2 – Classes

•   Select the year groups taking part in the parent/teacher meetings. To include your entire school, click ‘Select all’.

•   As you make your selection, Equipple tells you how many students and teachers are involved. Every family can book one meeting with each teacher who teaches their child, and families choose their own times once invitations go out.

•   Every class in the year groups you chose is included by default. If you would like to fine-tune this, click ‘Include all classes’ to open the full list and untick any class you don’t need. ‘Select all’ and ‘Clear all’ are there to save you time.

•   Classes tagged ‘+OTHER YEARS’ contain pupils from more than one year group. They are listed because pupils from your chosen year sit in them, so only untick one if you deliberately want to leave it out.

•   When you are happy, click ‘Next step’.

Step 3 – Teachers

•   If any of your classes are taught by more than one teacher — a job share or co-teaching arrangement — Equipple lists every teacher against that class so you can choose who holds the meetings.

•   Use the toggles to turn off anyone who won’t be holding parent meetings for that particular class. They will still hold meetings for any other class they teach.

•   Click ‘Next step’.

Nb. Because these teachers come from your school’s records, you may see a teacher appear under a subject you weren’t expecting. You can change these toggles at any point up until invitations are sent.

•    Once you are happy with your settings for the upcoming meetings simply click ‘Continue’. 

Step 4 – Dates

•   A calendar will now come up. Select the date, or dates, when your meetings are taking place — these will then be highlighted. A single schedule can be spread across several days.

•   Click ‘Next step’

Nb. Meeting days must be at least a week ahead, and today is always blocked. This protects the run-up you need for teachers to confirm their availability, for invitations to go out, and for parents to book.

Step 5 – Times

•   First, set the rhythm of your meetings. Use the up and down arrows to choose how long each booking slot is, and how long a gap sits inside it. The gap is a short changeover that gives teachers time to make any additional notes, reset themselves and prepare for the next family.

•   Equipple spells out what your choice means in practice underneath. In the example below, a 5 minute slot with a 2 minute gap gives parents a booking every 5 minutes: 3 minutes talking, then a 2 minute changeover, or 12 slots per hour.

•   Next, choose the exact times your meetings will run. Click and hold on the earliest slot for the day and drag down to the final slot. You can click an individual slot to add it or take it away, so it is easy to leave gaps where you need them. The ‘Starts’ time and the slot count update as you go.

•   If you need a longer break in the middle of the evening — for a staff briefing or a meal, for instance — click ‘Add break’ under ‘ADD BREAKS’, set the ‘from’ and ‘to’ times, and click ‘Accept’. The ‘Total’ line always shows how many slots each teacher ends up with.

•   Finally, ‘Limit bookings per parent’ caps how many teachers each parent can book with. This can be an effective way of managing the capacity of your staff in a larger school. Turn the toggle on and use the minus and plus buttons to set the number.

•   Underneath, ‘meeting coverage’ tells you what proportion of the meetings parents want can actually be accommodated, and ‘teacher utilisation’ tells you how full your teachers’ diaries will be. Expand ‘Per-teacher breakdown’ to see exactly who is stretched.

•   If coverage is lower than you would like, use the ‘Add more dates’ or ‘adjust classes’ links to improve it. When you are happy, click ‘Next step’.

Step 6 – Format

•   Now you need to choose your meeting format with parents. If your parent/teacher meetings are in person, click ‘In person’. If your school conducts phone call or video call meetings as well, you can select these options here too.

Step 6 – Format

•   Now you need to choose your meeting format with parents. If your parent/teacher meetings are in person, click ‘In person’. If your school conducts phone call or video call meetings as well, you can select these options here too.

In this step you are simply setting the permissible formats. Teachers can choose to have fewer formats available for parents to book, but they cannot add additional formats.
For example, if an admin selects ‘in-person’ an individual teacher can choose to open their availability to ‘in-person’ meetings only. But they cannot choose to add ‘phone calls’ as an option. Only the admin can add extra formats for meetings.

•   ‘Allow teachers to edit availability’ lets teachers check their times, adjust anything they can’t make and confirm them before invitations go out. This is particularly useful when the meetings span multiple days or you have part-time staff.

•   ‘Additional instructions’ is optional and is shown to parents on the booking page. This might be instructions for parking on the day, which entrance of the school to use, or where parents should wait.

Note – Ideas for instructions may include:
-    Instructions for parking on the day of the meetings.
-    Which entrance of the school to use.
-    Where Parents should wait for their meeting.
-    Reminders to ensure Parents arrive on time for their meeting.
-    A gentle encouragement to stick to the schedule.

 ‘Send post-meeting recap to parents’ emails each parent a link to a progress summary for their child, the morning after all of their meetings are complete.

•   Switching that on reveals ‘Include Forward Focus summary’, which publishes each teacher’s Forward Focus — a progress summary plus recommended next steps — to the parent’s summary page.

•   Once you are happy with your settings, click ‘Next step’.

For more information on the Forward Focus please refer to this support article: https://help.equipple.com/support/solutions/articles/202000098878

Step 7 – Timeline

•   This page sets when parents will automatically receive their invitations and when the booking window for parents closes. Your first meeting date is shown at the top, along with how many days away everything is.

•   Under ‘INVITATIONS’, click the date or the time to choose exactly when parents are invited. We recommend giving parents a week or two to book, so that teachers have time to prepare and parents have time to choose their slot.

•   Then repeat the process underneath for ‘BOOKINGS CLOSE’. This is the deadline at which the booking system closes and prevents further bookings. We recommend closing a day or two before your first meeting so that teachers can prepare.

•   Equipple confirms how long parents will have to book in the grey panel underneath, so you can sanity-check your dates at a glance.

•   ‘Booking confirmation message’ is optional and is included in the confirmation email a parent receives after they book.

•   Click ‘Next step’.

Nb. Teachers and admins can still manually assign parents even once the booking closure date has lapsed.

Step 8 – Review and confirm

•   The final step is to ‘review and confirm’ the details of your meeting schedule. Check each section — anything you want to change has an ‘Edit’ link beside it that takes you straight back to that step.

•   ‘Notify teachers now’ asks your teachers to review and confirm their proposed times. Leave this ticked unless you would rather do it later.

•   If you’re happy, click ‘create schedule’.

•   Once your schedule has been created you will land on its dashboard, where you can track teacher confirmations, parent bookings and the run-up to meeting day. That is how you create a schedule in a Post-Primary School.