Welcome to the new face of PTO.

Familiar layout, fresh design, and feature enrichment

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CONTINUOUS BOOKING MODE FOR STUDENTS

General

Unlike the regular booking mode for PTO, the continuous mode allows a student (or parent) to book to speak to the teacher of a class more than once within the event dates.

To allow manageability and performance speeds, it is recommended that the event duration does not exceed a school term.

A completely separate instance of PTO will be set up, so that the continuous nature of this system doesn’t impact standard events. Contact PTO Support to arrange for a continuous instance of PTO.

Access to the continuous instance of PTO does not need to have booking access turned off until the event is completed, as students (or parents) can continue to book each day. It is recommended that teachers keep PTO open to allow for the regular automatic booking updates PTO will deliver in continuous booking mode, which replaces a static booking report in this mode.

Students

Students can be prompted to enter their contact details if administrators enable this setting
Students can log in and book to speak to their teachers about their classes
Students have the option to enter a note for their teacher, then select a time, then add the booking

Teachers

Teachers logging in to a continuous instance of PTO will be taken directly into the ‘Your Bookings’ page.

In continuous mode where the student is booking for themselves:

The ‘Your Bookings’ page refreshes automatically every five minutes
'Hide past date/times will be active by default, meaning elapsed bookings will not automatically be displayed
The next booking will appear at the top of the page after each automatic refresh
A checkbox will appear in the active time slot after page refresh for attendance marking
It is will be assumed that the booking was attended, unless otherwise marked
An icon will appear in the far right column if the student has left a note about what they need help with - this can be clicked to view the notes entered by the student.

Filtering Booking Information

To create efficiency, the bookings information for students/parents as well as the teachers PTO now has has two additional filtering options:

Date filter
Hide Past Bookings

This feature is particularly designed to manage upcoming bookings for teachers. Combined with the automatic refresh on this page, PTO will bring the current or next booking to the top of the list, and hide bookings that are already completed.

UPLOADING DATA

Import Data Without Spreadsheet

PTO now accepts data transfers using Wonde, instead of using a spreadsheet.

Wonde allows secure data transfer from many commonly-used school management systems to third-party applications, such as PTO.

To use this functionality, schools need to be registered with Wonde, and supply the Wonde customer number to PTO support. Once enabled, PTO administrators will be able to choose what data they would like to import from their student management system.

Data Help Page

We have created a data help page within our Help Documentation Library, which provides information about:

Extracting data from several student management systems, for uploading into PTO
General instructions on how to set out data on a spreadsheet, to upload into PTO
Student management systems which are Wonde-enabled
How to configure data on a spreadsheet to use PTO for several common types of special events (enrolment interviews, counselling appointments, etc.)
Information on the PTO data upload process

FUNCTIONALITY FOR NON-FACE TO FACE BOOKINGS

Teacher Virtual Location Links

PTO now allows the static URL offered by a number of video conferencing software services to be used for parents/students to contact the teacher at the time of the booking. The parent/student simply returns to PTO at the time booked, to access the link for the teacher. PTO does not provide the video conferencing software - instead, it allows the opening of a specific URL, which is the assigned link for the teacher from the video conferencing software.

Download Map button label

In line with the changes made to facilitate bookings for non face-to-face meetings, the ‘Download Map’ button visible in the booking page can be renamed to something more appropriate for online meetings. As an example, this button could be used to take parents/students to instructions on how to use the school’s preferred video conferencing software.

The button label can be changed by administrators in Settings > Teacher Settings. Once the label is entered, remember to click the green tick above it to save.

Collect Phone / Contact Details

In addition to collecting/checking email addresses, the phone number/contact details can be requested before parents/students go to the booking screen. This field is optional to complete.

BRANDING

Login page background

The login page will now show a blue gradient by default:

Schools can now replace this with an image of their school, to make the page feel like an extension of the school’s brand:

DASHBOARD

Menu Buttons

The menu at the top of the page has been updated with more modern terminology and icons. These will still take you to the same parts of PTO as before.

Was
Now

Help for Administrators

We know that administrators of PTO need help too. The help documentation for PTO has been updated for this version, and can be found by clicking the Help button at the top right of any PTO administrator page.

There is a wealth of information here designed to ensure self-sufficiency. Please check this page before contacting the PTO support team, as you will be re-directed here if there is already instructions written to assist you.

Parents Requesting Contact

Where parents have requested ‘Please contact me’ in lieu of a time slot, a notification now appears on the administrator Dashboard. Clicking the button for this notification will go to the extract available in the Downloads section.

The requests will still appear at the end of the respective teachers' booking reports.

BOOKING PAGE ENHANCEMENTS

Add Booking Button

To make the natural progression of an individual booking clearer, the ‘Add’ icon will appear once a time is selected from the dropdown. This will only appear for that one booking, to make it clear to the user that this must be clicked to finalise the transaction.

Start time for automatic booking mode

In order to more organically distribute bookings, the date and time must be selected by the user in Step 1 of the automatic booking mode if there is more than one option for each dropdown. This ensures that users make a conscious choice of what time the user is available from, rather than everyone choosing the first option that appears.

Download Bookings Reminder

When bookings are added, changed, or cancelled, the ‘Download / Email Bookings' button will ‘pulse’. This is to prompt the user to get an up-to-date copy of their bookings.

TIME SLOT MANAGEMENT

Time Slots Over Multiple Dates

Time slots can be added for multiple dates within the same transaction, where the time slots have the same parameters.

Copy time slots also allows this:

Unbooked time slots can also be removed for an entire date range, in one transaction.

Any time slots with bookings will remain in place. To delete these time slots, follow the existing procedure of using administrator logins to act as the teacher with bookings. This will give the opportunity to notify those who have booked, if an email address is linked to their profile:

Delaying release of specific times slots

If specific time slots shouldn’t be available for booking when parent/student access is opened, their release can now be set by PTO administrators. Time slots can be chosen individually using the checkboxes, or the ‘Select All’ option can be used for all available time slots on the page, at the time.

Notes:

Multiple selections can be chosen at one time, following the instructions on the page.
Use the filters for the date and grade to target specific time slots.
‘Select All’ only relates to the time slots being displayed on the page at that time.

Teacher Availability

The page formally known as ‘Bulk Teacher Availability’ has been moved to the Data page. To access the page, click on ‘Manage Teachers' Availability’:

The Manage Teachers' Availability Page now scrolls on both the teacher axis and the time axis, where they exceed the allotted area.

Note:

Particularly when working with larger blocks like the one above, remember that clicking the first checkbox, holding down the shift key, then clicking the opposite corner of the ‘square’ will allow a block of time slots to be selected.

Remember to click the button at the top of the page to finalise the transaction.

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Release Notes for PTO V2.0 (March 2020)