Hi Weavers and a very Merry Christmas to you all!

In this month’s Tapestry newsletter, we’re going to have a look at some of the great new features we’ve been able to add to Tapestry this year, as well as some of the exciting new things we have got planned for next year.
 

12 days of Tapestry 

Over the last year we have continued to listen to our Tapestry users, or ‘Weavers’, about the things they would like to see on Tapestry. Below we’ve picked 12 of our favourite things that have been added.

1. Tagging – This feature allows you to put a hashtag (#) before a word within the notes or additional information fields in an observation and once saved, this word becomes a ‘tag’. This then allows you to track all observations that contain this tag. An example of this could be #childinitiated. For more information about how you can use this feature, you just need to take a look at our tutorial about it.
2. Relative Activity screens – We know that being able to track how relatives are interacting with your Tapestry account was something that a lot of you were asking for, so we were delighted when earlier in the year we were able to add two tracking screens (individual and group view) to help you with this. These screens will show you things like when a parent last logged in, how many observations they have added themselves and the percentage of observations they have commented on. This tutorial will provide you with information about where to find these screens and how to use them. 
3. Staff Observation Count screens – These screens will show you how many observations staff have completed, and for which children. To learn how to use these screens you just need to follow this tutorial. 
4. Montessori Summative Assessment screen – We added this screen to allow people to manually add assessments and refinements for Montessori activities without having to add a full observation. You can also use this screen to view how much progress a child is making for each activity from one period to the next. You can find this screen from the Montessori section on the Tracking tab.
5. Accident Form – This is available on the Care Diary and can be used to keep a log of any accident or incident for a child, notify any relatives with parental responsibility and collect a signature for the person picking up the child. You’ll find this option on the main Care Diary page
6. Communication tool – This is another option you can find on the Care Diary and it allows you to send and receive messages from relatives. This tutorial explains where to find this and how to use it. 
7. Page Tour of the Care Diary – To help people learn how to use all the different features within the Care Diary, we have added a virtual page tour. This will give you a step-by-step guide on what each element on the page does. You can find this by clicking on the ‘?’ button on the main Care Diary page. 
8. Merging children – We know that sometimes people can end up with two accounts for one child (e.g. if a child is shared and then moves to one setting), so to help people deal with these situations, we added the ability for child accounts to be merged. This tutorial talks you through this process.
9. Reports included in exported journals – Now when you export children’s learning journals as a PDF, you have the option to include any reports you have added for them. When exporting a journal, you’ll find the setting to include reports on the main export page.
10. Exporting selected observations – As well as exporting children’s whole learning journals, you now also have the ability to export specific observations. This tutorial gives you an explanation of how you are now able to do this. 
11. Introductory screens - To make the set-up process on Tapestry easier for any new accounts there are now a few screens that can be filled in before entering the account. These will allow you to enter important details about your setting, set up your term dates and enable which assessment frameworks you want to use.
12. Data Protection and Contracts section – Finally, in response to the GDPR that came into effect in May, we added two new sections to the Control Panel to help settings with this. The first lays out important information about data protection surrounding your Tapestry account and the second has copies of our old contract and our new one for you to download. 

New features to be excited about in 2019

Our first big feature we plan to release in 2019 is our Tapestry Register. As those of you that are regular readers of our newsletters will know, this is currently in ‘beta testing’ with a small group of users to check it all works as it should and for them to also give any feedback they have about it.

If you’re interested in taking part in our second round of testing, where we will introduce it to more testers, you can get in touch with us by emailing customer.service@eyfs.info. 

We are also working on two new versions of our app, one for iOS and one for Android. As well as re-doing the background infrastructure of how the apps work, we are adding some great new features such as an offline mode, push notifications and page filters. 

The new iOS app is ready for testing now; if you would like to take part with this, you can find out more information about the beta app and how to download it from our FAQs page.

If you are interested in testing the Android app when it is ready, please get in touch with us at tapestry.support@eyfs.info and we can add you to our list of people to contact once this is available for testing. 
 

Feature Focus: Reports

As you have now approached the end of term you may want to create reports from children. On Tapestry there is a 'Reports' function which will allow you to create individual reports for children, including their most recent assessments and any notes you want to add. 

It's also possible to share these with parents and allow them to comment on the report. 

This tutorial will talk you through where to find this feature on your account and how to use it! The ones linked below will show you how to make them visible for staff and relatives.

1. Making reports visible to staff
2. Making reports visible to relatives

Merry Christmas Weavers and a Happy New Year!