Parent/Guardian Access

When we talk about parental/guardian access, the typical way would be to invite parents to use Evisense. They can use the Evisense app or website to access the posts. This is not the only way to use Evisense with parents.

If you do not want parents to access Evisense directly, you can print out reports from Evisense that you can share with them. You can print all the evidence posts between two dates, turning on the For Parents? option.

You can also use the Parent Mode in Evisense if you want to use the app or website to take parents through posts for their child you have allowed them to see. This is especially useful if there is lots of video content you want parents to see.

These methods do two things, the first is they only show posts that you have set the privacy so parents can access the posts, the second is that they exclude posts that include protected students.

Parental/Guardian Access Levels

When schools start to use Evisense, parental/guardian access is set to none. If schools want to allow parents to access Evisense directly, they need to set the default access level. There are four levels of access for parents:

• None
• View and Like
• View, Like and Comment
• View, Like, Comment and Create Posts.

All schools start with parents having no direct access to Evisense.

If parents have View and Like access, it means they can log in to Evisense via the app or website and they can see the posts they have been given access to. They can respond to posts by liking them, like you do on Facebook and other social media apps.

If parents have the View, Like and Comment access, it means they can log in to Evisense via the app or website and they can see the posts they have been given access to. They can respond to posts by liking them or adding a comment.

If parents have the View, Like, Comment and Create Posts access, it means they can log in to Evisense via the app or website and they can see the posts they have been given access to. They can respond to posts by liking them or adding a comment. They can also create posts for the post types you have allowed them to create posts for. As a school you may use several post types, but you might only allow parents to create Home School Diary posts.

Parental Access can be adjusted on an individual basis on the Manage Guardians screen in My BSquared. All parents are set to the default access level when they start using Evisense, but you can modify the access level as needed. You may want more interaction with parents for a particular group of students or you may want to have more input in what a pupil can achieve at home for your EHCP pupils.

Parental Isolation

When parents use Evisense, they will only access the posts their child is tagged in, that you have shared with them, and no protected children are tagged. They will see posts where just their child is tagged, and they may see posts where other students are tagged alongside their own child. Some schools have a policy that if the photo contains multiple students, the post is not shared with parents, while other schools are happy to share posts containing multiple students.

All comments on posts are isolated based on your connection to the students. School users will see all comments, threaded by student, students will only see comments linked to them and parents will only see comments linked to their child. This also means school users can link a comment to any of the students, the student’s comments are linked to themselves, and the parent’s comments are linked to their child.

In one post containing five students, you could have five different isolated conversations with input from all ten parents and five students involved. Each conversation will be linked to a student, with only the teacher, student and their parents will see the conversation relating to them.

When commenting on a post containing multiple students, you must tag a student in the comment using the @ symbol. If there is only one student in the post, it automatically tags the student.

This isolation between parents of different students means private conversations can be had and there is likely to be less confrontation, disagreements, or misunderstandings.

The only time comments from parents are not isolated is when using the Event post type. If you are using the Event post type, all comments on that post are visible to everyone.

Printing and Downloading

As well as controlling parental access to Evisense, schools can limit what functionality parents can use. All parents can access their child’s posts, but schools can limit access to the following features:

Download Media

When viewing a post, parents can be allowed to download the photos, videos, or documents from Evisense. If parents can download the media, they will see a Download button in the top right of the media when viewing the post.

Print Posts

When viewing Evisense, parents can be allowed to print off posts from Evisense. They will see a print icon under the three dots when viewing a post or at the top of the feed they will see a print icon.

Download All Media

Schools use Evisense to capture all the things their students achieve and experience with them. When it is time for a student to leave, you can give parents the option to download all the media you have captured with Evisense in a few clicks. It is great to share all the memories of the student’s time with you and give it to parents to keep forever.

Blocking Parents from Each Other

Sometimes parents/guardians have a non-communicative relationship. In these situations, it is hard to have constructive conversations with both parties.

Evisense allows users to block content from other users. This is required by Google in any app that allows user generated content. Within the context of Evisense it seems counterintuitive, as the app is for schools to share information with parents and celebrate their child. To ensure this does not cause any issues with accidental blocks, Administrators can view all current blocked users and remove if necessary. This feature is extremely useful in the situation described above. Each parent can block the other parent or one of the Administrators can create the blocks avoiding any unpleasantries.

All examples below are based on parents A and B being parents of the same child.

Blocked Posts

If parent A has blocked parent B and parent B has created a post, then parent A will not see the post, or any comments linked to that post.

Blocked Comments

If parent A has blocked parent B and parent B has commented on a post from their child’s teacher, parent A will not see the comment. If the teacher responds to parent B’s comment, parent A will not see the comment.

Both Parents Commenting

If parent A and parent B have blocked each other and they both comment on their child’s post, they will not see each other’s comments. It will start off two separate comment threads, one for parent A and one for parent B.

Parent Mode, Printing and Blocked Users

Printing and Parent Mode are not impacted by parents blocking each other. It will use the blocked users setting of the logged in user. If a teacher opens Parent Mode to share information with parent A, parent A will see all content from themselves and parent B. To prevent parent A from seeing the content from parent B, the teacher would need to block parent B before sharing information with parent A. The teacher would then need to remember to remove the block for parent B, so they do not miss updates from parent B.

Notifications

The main purpose of Evisense is to share achievements, experiences, and other information with a range of people. It has also been built to drive engagement between the school and parents. To make this work effectively we need to keep everyone updated when there is something new. Evisense has three ways to keep everyone up to date:

• Email notifications – You can be sent an email when content is added.
• Internal notifications – In the app or website, you will see a list of your notifications waiting for you.
• Push notifications – If you are using the app, you can receive notifications like you can with your email and social media accounts, without even opening the app.

Users can turn off Email notifications within Evisense and then can turn off the push notifications on their device if needed.

It important and healthy for a relationship to manage expectations. This includes between parents and school. Evisense has built in controls that schools can use to limit when staff receive notifications. If you do not want staff emailing or responding to parents outside of specified hours, you do not want them notified of updates outside of these hours either. Schools can the days and times staff receive notifications. Individual users can adjust these settings to suit their working schedule. Users will receive a summary of missed notifications when they reach the next notification period.

It is important to implement these notification limits, it is equally important to inform parents and manage their expectations that teachers will not read or respond to posts or comments in the evening or over the weekend.

Choose Your Notifications

By default, users will only receive notifications if someone likes or comments on one of their posts. If a user wants to receive a notification when someone else adds an evidence post for a student in their class, they can set up a notification rule. A SENCO may want to be notified every time there is new Home School Diary post for a group of students, they can set up a notification rule for Home School Diary posts and that group. There is a lot of flexibility to make it work for your school.

Parent/Guardian Notifications

It is important that parents/guardians are updated when new posts or comments are added linked to their child. They will be notified for the following reasons:

• If their child is tagged in a new post
• If someone writes a comment linked to their child on a post
• If someone comments or likes a post the parent created
• If someone replies to their comment
• If a post has had its permission changed so the parent can now access the post

Keeping Everyone Safe

Evisense has lots of safeguarding features built in. In this document we have covered all the controls around restricting access to content and the various levels of access parents can have. All these features allow you to be proactive and set the rules for how the system will be used, how it will be accessed and what content is shared.

Reporting Posts/Comments

Sometimes the system is not used as it should be. This is where you need to react to something that has happened. If someone has created a post or added a comment that is not appropriate then any user, parent/guardian, external user, or student can report the post/comment. The process is like reporting a post on social media, where you pick a general reason and then provide more information. The significant difference between Evisense and social media is that as soon as a post is reported, it is hidden for everyone.

When a user reports a post/comment, they also have the option to block the user that created the post/comment.

When a post or comment is reported, a notification is sent to all users marked as Safeguarding Leads. You set Safeguarding Leads by editing users on the Manage Users in My BSquared.

If no Safeguarding Leads have been set by the school, then the Super Administrator is the Safeguarding Lead and will receive the notification.

The Safeguarding Lead can view a list of all reported posts/comments, see who reported it and the reasons why. They then need to decide on the action to take. They can do one of the following:

• Reinstate the post/comment, due to there being no issue.
• Change the privacy of the post to restrict access (not applicable to comments).
• Edit the post/comment as required.
• Delete the post/comment due to the inappropriate nature of the post/comment.

Whatever action the Safeguarding Lead takes, they will need to give a reason for their actions. This is then logged and stored for future reference. They also have the option to suspend the user who created the post/comment.

Suspending Users

All users, external users, parents/guardians, and students can be suspended apart from the Super Administrator. There are a variety of reasons you may suspend a user, but the one most people will think of is inappropriate use. It could be a student posting something inappropriate or it might be a parent downloading a photo containing other students from Evisense and uploading it to social media.

To suspend someone, find them on the appropriate screen in My BSquared and you will see an option called Suspended. Turning this on prevents access to all B Squared software they have access to.

Auditing

B Squared audit what is accessed within Evisense. This is not directly accessible by schools, but they can request audit logs if required from our support team for specific users. We audit all logins, post views, likes, responses to posts and media downloads. We can share with schools what has been accessed, when and from what device (if using the app) or IP address.