This article covers common questions regarding Guardian Consultations in Arbor. If you cannot find an answer to your question in this article, check our dedicated section of the Help Centre on this subject here.
Are guardians notified of cancelled meetings?
No, Arbor does not notify guardians if a meeting has been cancelled or rescheduled. If you need to make any changes to the scheduling, please don't hesitate to contact the affected guardians separately to inform them.
Can we create guardian consultations for applicants?
No, it is not possible for students to have guardian consultation meetings if they are applicants and are not yet enrolled. However, you can use custom meetings to set up future guardian consultations for when the applicant is enrolled.
Can we do online guardian consultations in Arbor?
No, Arbor does not offer a functionality for facilitating online guardian consultations. We recommend setting up a guardian consultation as usual and then sending communications to guardians to inform them that meetings will be held online. From there, you can use a third-party video call service such as Zoom or Google Hangouts for the actual meetings.
How do I manage Guardian Consultations for split families?
Guardian consultations can be a bit trickier to manage when guardians prefer not to meet together.
- When setting up your guardian consultations, ensure that you allow guardians to book separate meetings by ticking this box (you can see how this will appear to guardians here).
- You can also manage the guardians in meetings using these instructions. Top Tip: Both Legal and Primary guardians can be down as attending a guardian consultation.
For more details on the tools you have to manage this, please take a look at our Managing Parents Evenings (Guardian Consultations) for split families or separated parents guidance.
Can we record attendance for consultation meetings?
Guardian consultation meetings do not have registers in the way lessons, activities, or meals do, so there is no dedicated way to record attendance. To keep a record of who attended a consultation meeting, you would need to ask staff to record this in a shared or private meeting note.
Can I see and test my consultation from a parent’s point of view?
While you can sign in as a specific guardian to see what they see on the Parent Portal once you have set a consultation up, you can't access a test or sandbox version of your consultation. This means that if the consultation is open for self-scheduling for testing purposes, this will be the case for all parents who have meetings planned.
If you want to get a feel for how guardian consultations work before releasing this to any guardians, consider setting up a test consultation with a dummy guardian profile.
Can we release meetings for a certain group of students (e.g. SEN or PP students) first?
Once you have planned meetings, there isn't a feature to automatically release them in waves. However, you could consider:
- Only plan meetings for the student groups you want to initially release the meeting to (or bulk cancel the meetings for those students you do not want to include initially)
- Open your self-scheduling
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Manually re-add meetings for the other students once you are happy for them to be booked in too
Can we copy guardian consultations from the previous year?
No, guardian consultations can't be copied or duplicated, whether that's between academic years or within the same year. Guardian consultations need to be set up from scratch each time. To get started with setting up a new consultation, refer to our comprehensive Parents' Evening setup series: Introduction - Setting up Parents Evenings (Guardian Consultations)
Can I change the display name that shows for staff attending guardian consultations on the Parent Portal or App?
It is not possible to change the format of a staff member's name shown on the parent portal to an initial and surname or an abbreviation. The name shown is the name displayed at the top of the staff member's profile.
Therefore, if you wish to change the name displayed when parents book a meeting, you will need to do so using the preferred name fields on their profile, as these are shown instead of their legal names. See how to change a staff member's name in the Identity section of the main profile page here.
Can we set up meetings with guardians of multiple students at once?
Yes, this is possible if you uncheck the 'Separate student meetings' box when planning a Custom Meeting. This option is not available for other meeting types. For more information on the different meeting options, please visit Meeting types.
If not selected, this will create a single meeting that includes all selected students from the Students' dropdown, rather than one meeting for each student.
The following is important to note, though:
- Guardians of any of the students assigned to the meeting are able to book and or change the meeting details via the Portal or App, as long as they are still participants
- Guardians can see the names of all the students the meeting is regarding on the Parent Portal, not only their own child
- Guardians can see the names of the other guardians in the meeting (if the meeting has been booked and a guardian was omitted, they cannot see the names of the other guardians anymore)
- If you ticked the Independent Bookings box, each guardian will be able to book their own meeting
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