This article covers troubleshooting tips that you may need when using Guardian Consultations.
Communications
The guardian consultation will appear in the parent portal but guardians won't be notified.
If you wish to notify guardians through email, you can create a new mail merge email to remind guardians to log in to the parent portal.
Confirmation emails are only sent out when a guardian books a meeting through the Parent Portal or Arbor App. Guardians will not receive a confirmation email if the meeting is booked from the school's side.
The email is sent to the person who is attending the session, which may not necessarily be the person who made the booking. For example, if Guardian A books a meeting and sets Guardian B as the person attending, the email goes to B only.
The email is sent to the person who is attending the session, which may not necessarily be the person who made the booking. For example, if Guardian A books a meeting and sets Guardian B as the person attending, the email goes to B only.
Be sure to also check that you've added an email address for your school. You can add an email address from the School > School Details page. Just click +Add in the Contact Details section.
Managing the guardian consultation setup
If you've got new students added after the guardian consultation was set up they won't automatically have meetings set up for them. To schedule them, just click +Add in your guardian consultation to create meetings in the same way you set up meetings initially (shown in step 2 here). Don't worry - this won't create duplicate meetings for the other students, it'll just create new meetings for the new students.
Consultations can't be deleted/cancelled until all meetings within the consultation have been cancelled. You can see how to do this in the Deleting Guardian consultation meetings section here.
Booking slots
Why can't the parent book a slot?
To allow guardians to book a slot through the Parent Portal or Arbor App, you will have needed to set a self-scheduling period when setting up the guardian consultation. Guardians will not be able to book a slot until the self-scheduling period is open.
To edit or add a self-scheduling period, click into the guardian consultation and click the Self-scheduling period field.
You'll need to add when staff will be available to attend guardian consultation meetings to enable parents to book a slot through the Parent Portal or Arbor App. Add this from the Staff Availability section.
Check if the staff member has an absence or event scheduled at the same time as their parents evening meeting times.
To check for events, navigate to the staff members profile page and click on Calendar on the left side. Top Tip: Select Day view on the top right to be able to see all events or lessons that have been set for the exact same times.
Events are shown in orange. If the staff member has an event scheduled, then this would need to be deleted to restore available bookable slots. For more guidance on events, please check out our guide on Creating and Managing Events.
To check for absences, navigate to the staff members profile page and click on Absences on the left side. Click into the absence to amend the date range so it doesn't overlap with your Guardian Consultation.
There are multiple teachers assigned to a slot - why can't it be booked?
If meetings are linked to two members of staff (if teachers have a job share or a Teaching Assistant is also assigned as an academic lead) and one of them has another event in their calendar, such as an absence or lesson, the meetings won't have any bookable slots for the period the absence covers. You'll need to either find cover for the event in their calendar or change the available staff members for the meeting.
You'll just need to go into the meetings, select all the tick boxes on the left-hand side, then click the blue pencil icon to change the teacher.
Amend the teacher to just the one teacher, then click the Change Staff button at the bottom of the slide over. You should then be able to book slots.
You'll need to amend the individual staff member's availability. To do this, click the staff member in the Meetings section and select the bookable periods field at the top.
In the slide over, click Edit, then you can change the times the staff member is available for, then click Save Changes.
You'll just need to go into the meetings, select all the tick boxes on the left-hand side, then click the blue pencil icon to change the teacher so that sessions can be booked with the specific staff member when they are free.
You will need to repeat this process for the other staff member.
You'll need to make sure:
- Both staff member's calendars are completely free for the whole duration of the guardian consultation or that cover has been allocated to all of their classes for the full duration of the guardian consultation. You can take a look at our articles on Cover for how to assign cover.
- Both staff members have the same periods of availability set up or the meetings won't be bookable.
If you are unable to set cover for staff, you would need to set up two separate guardian consultations. Please note: This will mean parents could book a slot with either teacher or both.
How do I change the guardians in a meeting?
When you set up a meeting, you tick the boxes next to the guardians that will be attending the meeting.
To edit the guardians attending a meeting, click the meeting and click the Change guardians attendees button (you'll only see this button if the child has more than one primary guardian that could attend the meeting).
You can then edit which guardians will be attending the meeting.
You can also remove guardians from a meeting by clicking the meeting name, then clicking the guardians to remove them.
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