Contact Group's Blog - Latest Comments

Re: How I recently switched from Atom to VS Code

Adam Hicks — Fri, 20 Oct 2017 04:27:40 -0000

I'm surprised how much I like code its even better than vim :)

Re: Proof of Concept - eCards in Call Parents

Adam Hicks — Tue, 26 Sep 2017 03:52:17 -0000

Ged i thought as much - maybe we just need to get some templates designed up and put in - we can automatically add them as part of an achievements/behaviours add-on.

Re: Parents Evening Booking in Parent Portal

Edvins Antonovs — Wed, 30 Aug 2017 09:46:35 -0000

Is there are chance to get a better quality/resolution images, so the flow would look better?

Re: Roadmap Update 14/08/2017

Graham Fain — Wed, 16 Aug 2017 11:36:43 -0000

No LAC items on here - add to this or show on a separate graphic?

Re: Roadmap Update 14/08/2017

James Harrison — Tue, 15 Aug 2017 07:55:38 -0000

@Adam - should we have 3 of these then, one for each stream, or colour code to differentiate?

Re: Roadmap Update 14/08/2017

Adam Hicks — Tue, 15 Aug 2017 03:44:48 -0000

Thanks for this Ged - one point I would make is that its difficult to ascertain which of the three streams of work (CP/OSA, Datacall or LAC) these items relate too without understanding each of the items.

Re: Managing Partners Access to Data Call APIs

James Harrison — Thu, 10 Aug 2017 05:09:55 -0000

Perhaps we could get James Sharp to show us Wonde's partner management portal on 17th August when we meet?

Re: How to make the perfect toastie

James Harrison — Thu, 10 Aug 2017 04:45:18 -0000

Toasties are against our building fire regulations :-)

Re: Parents Evening Booking in Parent Portal

James Harrison — Thu, 10 Aug 2017 04:36:09 -0000

Thx Ged.

Same point as last blog is notifications, assume the parents will get an SMS confirmation of booking by default to drive more revenue and this can be changed by school to e-mail or push.

Are we going to populate a parents calendar in OSA with their booked slot? just a thought......

Re: Parents Evening Booking in Call Parents

James Harrison — Thu, 10 Aug 2017 04:30:38 -0000

Thanks Ged.

I cannot see anything about notifications to the individual teachers, for example when their booking is complete the relevant teacher gets an e-mail with the order, so they know who they have at what time?

Also, what happens about notifications about cancellations where a parent cancels in PP and slot becomes available or is vacant, on the night for example if another parent is early and one has cancelled they may chose to move the early parent earlier in the schedule etc?

Cheers

James

Re: Microsoft Translate VS Google Translation API

Ged Dunn — Thu, 10 Aug 2017 02:38:37 -0000

Yes indeed! Both offer text to speech translations

Re: Microsoft Translate VS Google Translation API

James Harrison — Wed, 09 Aug 2017 15:09:54 -0000

Thx assuming we do this for attendance also, i.e. when we migrate Truancy Call from C3 to Asterix (DC) and put in Call Parents, is there a "voice" translation equivilant?

Re: Multi-Lingual Support in CP Messaging

James Harrison — Wed, 09 Aug 2017 14:57:21 -0000

Thx Ged, looks good.

We defo need this as key selling point for MAT's - Groupcall use it all the time that they can translate into 166 languages, they have been doing it for years... so much so that they were the very early adopters when google translate was in its infancy and they meant to send a message "Your child is LATE" and it sent "your child is DEAD".

Obviously some regions need it more than others.

Quick question from me.....

Do our competitors offer translation services for outbound e-mail as well as SMS? or do they translate separately and then upload after?

Also, just checking that as a user i would not need to preselect languages for parents, it will be from the MIS where they have the preferred language of communication?

One more question....

If they reply via text message in - i assume we translate back? will that be automatic?

Cheers

James

Re: Microsoft Translate VS Google Translation API

Ged Dunn — Wed, 09 Aug 2017 11:33:05 -0000

Thanks James to answer your question - static stuff (non user generated) like OSA and PP it would be preferable to have them professionally translated - this is more accurate. There are options from Google and Microsoft that allow translations to be "crowd translated". A machine translation is done then sent to translators who verify that it makes sense and adjust if not, this would be verified by multiple people.

have a look here for example
https://www.microsoft.com/e... (Web Localisation links will do the trick)

Re: Microsoft Translate VS Google Translation API

James Harrison — Wed, 09 Aug 2017 11:11:17 -0000

Hey Ged, some great insight here, nice one!

It probably makes sense to start with the best option first for language availability in education which is google, as thats prevents a 2nd integration further down the line, also depends what the dev guys say on API docs.

I think Groupcall claim to have 166 languages available, I can find out more in September.

This cost does seem minimal and hence I would not propose a increased sms cost for a translated message, but charge for the module per school based on pupil numbers.

This is all aimed at messaging, would we use this to translate Parental Portal and OSA?

Cheers for this.

James

Re: Backstopjs - wtf is that and how you can run it on Parent Portal

tomsatta — Fri, 04 Aug 2017 12:08:08 -0000

also make sure you've installed chrome canary

Re: We're putting too much effort into tests

Adam Hicks — Thu, 20 Jul 2017 03:24:34 -0000

I also think this is down to use case - clearly some of the more complicated calculations actually really benefit from working with a realistic database - I think this is more down to implementation rather than a fault of effort. If the data is being loaded in every single unit test then thats the problem - not effort - i have plenty of other examples in other projects where 1000s of tests run in a reasonable time.

Re: We're putting too much effort into tests

Adam Hicks — Wed, 19 Jul 2017 00:25:02 -0000

These tests should have been marked with Integration tests as they are in other projects.

Re: Login form elements

Edvins Antonovs — Tue, 18 Jul 2017 08:27:43 -0000

Nice cover photo

Re: Reminder functionality in Call Parents for basic payments

Adam Hicks — Mon, 26 Jun 2017 11:50:33 -0000

okay lets add it as a story and we can get it groomed out

Re: Reminder functionality in Call Parents for basic payments

Stewart Griffin — Mon, 26 Jun 2017 11:42:53 -0000

Yeah, I was just thinking of the simple case you mentioned of a complete listing of reminders. I can imagine a school wanting to quickly see the complete list as they want to check, for whatever reason, upcoming messaging.

But we could certainly extend with more in-depth reporting like regular remindees or whatever if that is actually useful.

Re: Reminder functionality in Call Parents for basic payments

Adam Hicks — Mon, 26 Jun 2017 11:40:32 -0000

Yes agreed this probably is a good idea. I had focussed it on the payment request. But yes you could have a report which lists all reminders scheduled to go out. Who needs to be regularly reminded lol - or are you thinking about something else?

Re: Reminder functionality in Call Parents for basic payments

Stewart Griffin — Mon, 26 Jun 2017 11:38:22 -0000

Is there no way to see a list of all reminders? It looks like you need to go in to each payment to see the reminders for that particular payments.

Might be nice to have a list of all reminders across all payments.

Re: C# 7 new features !!!

nathan kelly — Mon, 26 Jun 2017 09:59:31 -0000

Thanks Ansar, worth checking these projects out from the CSharp-7-and-DotNET-Core-Cookbook:

https://github.com/PacktPub...

Re: NCrunch vs Vs Studio Live Tests

Adam Hicks — Sun, 11 Jun 2017 15:07:17 -0000

We don't have many licenses of VS enterprise. Probably should check the costs of enterprise licenses as well its a bit more than $239 per seat.