If your school uses ParentMail, and you have more than one child ...

[carbriana]

... do you get duplicate emails?

I get two copies of everything. It's not the end of the world, but I'm sure it didn't happen at our primary and I'm wondering if the school isn't using the optimum settings.

[jackparlabane]

Mine are at primary and they recently fixed that issue, but much more annoying are the messages that refer to 'your child' but no idea which one.

[Grambler]

your child Oh yes. Which one?

[xyzandabc]

No I don't think we do for whole school emails.
I do agree about the 'your child' emails though when there is no indication which year group it is intended for. More than once I've had to pop in to ask which year group/child they were referring to.

[Rockbird]

Only one set of emails but didn't know which child they were referring to (someone in your child's class has head lice? Which child??). One moved on to secondary now so no longer a problem.

[SamsMumsCateracts]

We used to get duplicates of everything, but they seem to have fixed that now. I find the ones that say "your child" has swimming on Monday/a trip/nits in the class etc to be more annoying as I never know which child they are talking about!

[SamsMumsCateracts]

Oops, should have read the thread properly. It seems I'm not the only one annoyed by "your child"!

[SillyBub]

I am the ParentMail administrator at the school I work at, I have set the 'one email per family' as default, make sure I put Year/Class in the email title and also use the facility that enables you to personalise emails so that it names the child in the email. I shall polish my halo for having exceptional ParentMail skills 😇

[CleanHankie]

Also a PM administrator and yes, it's the staff not ticking the "per family" box when sending the message.
I have to admit that I always presumed the child's name would appear somewhere. Teach me not to check!
Sillybub How do I personalise the emails?

[SillyBub]

@CleanHankie The screenshot is from my phone, not the usual PC browser screen is see at work but you just click on the various buttons above the field where you type when you want that info to appear, so I use:

Dear ,

We've been advised that a child in 's class has lost their jumper....

One thing to be aware of is that if there are siblings within the selected recipients and you've set it to the default one email per family, they will only get one email containing the first listed child's name. I got caught out again with that one this week where it looked like if only invited one child to take party in an event when it was really both of the siblings!

[Longdistance]

My ParentMail has both dds names attached to emails.
These parents portals come in different packages.
My dds school use ParentMail, the school I work in used SchoolPost. They have different packages in what they do, and also it depends on the school administration as to how they send messages. I’m an administrator to the parent portal, so any communications sent out, I can advise/adjust accordingly.

[CleanHankie]

Thanks Sillybub. Don't recall seeing those buttons before but will take a little more care next time I send a message and have a look. Tend to just fire a message off due to time pressure!

[RainOrSun]

Primary, and yes, I get duplicate messages.
And yes, "Your Child has qualified for" happened last week - and actually, I'd have guessed the wrong child, if I'd not questioned it. Could have been interesting if I'd sent x-country kit with the wrong child!

[carbriana]

@SillyBub, any chance of a screenshot of the "one email per family" option too? I'd like to pass the info on to our school office staff.

It sounds like they will have to remember to select it every time they send a message though, is that right? It would be good to make it the default, though as you say, that's no good if the individual children are tagged because then you do want more than one. You'd think they could design in a feature to detect that situation and over-ride the "one email" setting.

[Groovee]

Dd left school last year and finally I stopped getting 2 of everything.

[ninja]

An equally annoying problem is divorced parents and only the facility for one account so I got no emails!

[carbriana]

ninja, our school has both parents registered so my (non divorced) DH gets the emails too. You need to have a word with your school about that - it's not a parentmail problem.

[Username19]

Do you have both children on the same account? I have 3 children at the same school and I just get one email for all the children for general stuff. Maybe school could link the children their side so you just get one? The Individual ones are confusing when they send one saying your child has been chosen to do X activity but doesn't specify which one

[CleanHankie]

You can register many people as long as you link them to a child, so you should have received emails. Although, some places set up a Primary contact and again, the school might not have the box ticked saying "send to all contacts" rather than send to Primary contacts only. You can have 2 Primary contacts though, we do esp in circumstances such as separated parents.

Carbriana In the video at the top of this page about 2mins30 in, is an example of the messaging page. Just above the text box are boxes for send to all or send one per family. That what needs ticking.

[pikapikachu]

I hope that someone from our school reads this thread because it's often unclear which child the message is referring to.

I don't get sent duplicates so they must know about the one message per family option.

[BringOnTheScience]

Even better is when you have DCs at different schools and can't tell which one the Parentmail is from!

[leaserspottedmummybird]

I have parent mail ( one dc at primary and another at nursery) no problems with duplications

[amel1a]

Can I just ask a question about parent mail, my son is in a special school and I use it for him, but my daughter is starting senior school a completely different school who also use it, I already have the app for my son and her school is due to send a link out soon for parent mail, so I just wanted to ask the best way to set this up now rather than stumble into problems, will I need to log in and out of each account or can I combine them? Thanks