How to prepare your Tapestry account for setting closure and remote learning: Relatives

[EmilyTapestrySupport]

We’ve written this series of articles to help you prepare your Tapestry account for setting closure in the wake of the Coronavirus pandemic. We hope they offer some help and guidance in this difficult time. 

If your setting has already closed, we recommend you still take a look as you may find the advice here is beneficial. 

In this article we’ll go over the preparations you can make with regards to relatives on your account, but below you can also find articles to help you with preparations for staff and children. 

How to prepare your Tapestry account for setting closure and remote learning – Staff

How to prepare your Tapestry account for setting closure and remote learning: Children

 

In this article we will cover the following:

1. Checking relatives are set up correctly on your account
2. Do you have the correct contact details for relatives?
3. Relative user permissions
4. Can relatives receive notifications?
5. Do you know how to send information to them using Tapestry?
6. Do they know how to use the different features?

 

1. Checking relatives are set up correctly on your account

If you haven’t added relatives to your account yet, take a look at the tutorials linked below explaining how to do this individually and in bulk.

Adding relatives individually

Adding relatives in bulk

Once they are added, to check they are all set up correctly you will need to go to the Control Panel (1) -> Manage Relatives (2). 

Here you can see all the names of the relatives on your account. If it says ‘Active’ underneath their name (3), this means they will be able to login. 
If it doesn’t say active, there are 4 other statuses they might hold. These are:

Activating: This means an email activation link has been sent to the parent, but they have not yet followed it. You can resend it to them by following these instructions. Do make sure you remind them to check their spam/junk folders as our emails can sometimes get filtered into there.

Not activated: This can happen either if you choose to not activate a parent when you add them or if they don’t follow the link in the activation email within 30 days. To activate them, just look at this tutorial.

Inactive: This means a manager made them inactive. They can be reactivated if needed by following this tutorial.

Awaiting deletion: This means a manager deleted them. They can be restored up to 90 days after they were selected to be deleted if needed, this tutorial explains how. 

Next to where it shows the status of the relative, you can also see the last time they logged in (4). If they have never logged in, they might need some assistance from you to be able to do so; we would recommend they try resetting their password. This tutorial explains how.

 

 

The final thing you might want to ask your relatives is whether they are confident they know their password. Passwords can be reset at any time, so it’s not a problem if they forget, but they might feel more reassured if they are sure they know it. This article gives some advice on how to set a memorable and secure password.

 

2. Do you have the correct contact details for relatives?

As we don’t have access to relative’s accounts for safeguarding reasons, we ask that they don’t contact us if they are having any issues as we are only able to send them back to you.

There are several places in Tapestry where they are directed to you if they need any assistance, therefore it is important that these details stay up to date. You can check them, and correct them if needed, from within the Control Panel. You’ll need to select ‘Settings’ (1) and then ‘Contact Details’ (2). On this page, go to the section that says ‘If a relative needs to contact you’ (3). If you make any changes here, just remember to save (4). 

 

 

3. Relative user permissions

To make sure you are confident with what relatives can see or do on your account, we would recommend you take a look at the User Permissions page on the Control Panel (1). Make sure you select the ‘Relatives’ tab (2). 

Here, the permissions are divided up into different sections. You just need to select a section to see the permissions within it (3). 

 

 

To change a permission, you can click on the ‘Edit’ button for it. This tutorial will talk you through the whole process of setting user permissions on Tapestry for relatives. 

 

 

One permission we would suggest you look at is ‘View group obs media’, which can be found in the ‘Observations’ section. This is important as you may be adding more group observations now to set activities for parents, and they might need to be able to see the media included.

 

 

 

4. Can they receive notifications?

If you will be using Tapestry to support remote learning, it will be especially important that relatives receive notifications when you add something to Tapestry.

To check relatives are set up to receive notifications you will need to go to the User Permissions section mentioned above (1). Ensuring you are on the ‘Relatives’ tab (2), you will need to select the ‘Notifications’ section (3). If the option ‘Receive notifications’ (4) is set to not permitted, you will just need to click on the ‘Edit’ button to change this to permitted (5). 

 

 

Relatives can then adjust their own notification preferences by following this tutorial.

 

5. Do you know how to send relatives information using Tapestry?

There are a range of features you can use on Tapestry to communicate with relatives, share resources with them and provide activities for them to do with their children.

I’ll go over them all briefly below with links to tutorials to explain more:

• Observations: You might want to make particular use of adding group observations to set activities for key children or groups of children. Remember, you can split group observations if you then want to add separate pieces of information after, this tutorial will explain how. If you haven’t set up manual groups already on your account, take a look here. 
  
  Remember to also use the tagging feature on Tapestry if you want to track observations focusing on a specific activity or task. This tutorial explains tagging on Tapestry.
   
• Documents: Here you can upload files and organise them into folders. You can choose whether you want to share files with relatives, but please note if you do share them they will be accessible to all relatives on your account. The instructions in this tutorial will show you how to enable this feature and this tutorial will show you to upload documents. 
   
• Comments tool in the Care Diary: You may not have the Care Diary enabled for your setting currently, but you may wish to consider doing so to use the comments tool in it. This allows you to send messages back and forth with individual relatives. For more information about how this feature works, have a look here. If you wanted to enable the Care Diary to use Comments, you will just need to follow these instructions. 

6. Do your relatives know how to use the different features?

If you are thinking of using any of the above features for your parents and carers, you may need to think about how to make sure they are confident with accessing them. 

The Memos, Documents and Care Diary features are all only available on the browser version of Tapestry, so we would also suggest you make sure they are aware of that.

You can direct them to our relative’s tutorials page, which you can find here if they need any assistance. This has a range of tutorials to talk them through how to use the different features on Tapestry so they can help their child learn at home and stay connected with you. 

 

 

So, those are all of the things you might want to go through on your Tapestry account for relatives in preparation for your setting’s closure or if it has already closed. We hope you and your children and families stay safe and well over the coming weeks.