Sprint ParentLink Product Details

Overview | Product Details | Applications

Product Details

ParentLink Suite (PLS) is a PC-based application consisting of four standard (and one optional) software modules that provide distinct solutions for schools and districts. The PLS is designed to stimulate and facilitate parental involvement with schools and allow parents and students access to grades, attendance, homework assignments and course registration via the phone or Internet.

These individual modules are:

Attendance Server (AS)
ParentLink (PL)
SchoolLink (SL)
Teacher's Assistant (TA)
Registrar's Assistant (RA)
Operator's Assistant (OA)

ParentLink Suite applies voice processing and computer telephony integration (CTI) technologies to deliver a simple but powerful set of communications capabilities tailored for the use of primary and secondary schools. These technologies integrate directly into a school's existing phone system, data network (LAN/WAN) and Web site, providing two communications channels for parents:

First, the system uses advanced voice processing to offer interactive communication channels such as homework hotlines, private teacher message boxes and school information lines.
Second, it imports data from the school's existing student management system. These attendance and gradebook reports are then sent to parents automatically via voice notifications on a phone or in the form of visual charts accessed via the Internet. Parents can also dial in from any touch-tone phone to check on student progress.

In addition, schools can easily monitor usage of the system with custom management reports that provide details on all outbound and inbound calls. These reports indicate the status of all calls - whether connected to parents, answering machines or inoperable numbers. They also give officials an indication of peak calling patterns, allowing for better systems management.

While the software is at the heart of this product, Sprint is offering the PLS as a complete turnkey solution with several components, including:

Software - bundled PLS modules that link parents with internal school student management systems and offer voice messaging capabilities
Hardware - a dedicated Pentium PC to run the software
Custom Configuration - a base file that merges school administrative databases with the ParentLink Suite prior to installation
Installation - on-site product placement, system integration and testing
Training - mandatory sessions for system administrators and end-users
Maintenance and support - Sprint and Parlant Technology's Customer Care Program (CCP)

This system is designed so that each school has a ParentLink server, whether their voice system is a KSU, PBX or Centrex. This server can be used on a stand-alone basis (with dedicated phone lines), can share the lines currently serving the school phone system or can be configured with a combination of dedicated and shared lines. The voice server connects to the LAN for Internet access and the phone switch or Centrex lines for voice access. ParentLink comes as 2-, 4-, 8- or 12-port systems.

Attendance Server (AS)

Every school administrator has to deal with communication issues between the home and school. AS is an automated system that calls or e-mails parents with attendance information and provides inbound access for parents and students to complete attendance records over the phone or through the Internet. Because all of this is automatic, schools can greatly reduce the amount of time, effort and money that their staff expends on these tasks if performed manually.

With AS parents are no longer unaware of attendance problems. Frequently, schools are blamed for their students' poor attendance. Parents claim they would have done something if they had only known there was a problem. AS allows schools to provide parents with the knowledge they need to assume the responsibility for their child's attendance, allowing your staff more time to focus on attendance exceptions and assist with escalated issues. Furthermore, AS plays "fair" by giving each student the same warning every time.

In addition, increased attendance means increased funding for many schools and districts. Some schools report a five to ten percent increase in attendance with implementation of the AS.

ParentLink (PL)

PL's robust homework bulletin capabilities allow parents and students to access homework information, lunch menus, PTA information, club activities and a wide variety of school and community announcements 24 hours a day from any touch-tone phone or through the Internet. Because PL is Internet-ready, parents can access homework messages and school announcements over the Internet as well as through a touch-tone phone. PL Web access requires no additional work for staff members.

PL tracks system usage statistics for both phone and Internet use, allowing administrators to see the improvements. School and district staff can also use PL's flexible call-out capabilities to deliver messages to individual homes. Parents can be notified of student absences, late school buses, school closings and other important information.

PL also provides powerful voice messaging capabilities. PL will enhance communications between staff members and save receptionist(s) considerable time by allowing voice messages to be left without their involvement.

PL also allows schools to survey student, parents and district patrons on issues such as school improvement efforts, safety, violence prevention, school programs and activities, teacher performance, school bond support and much more.

SchoolLink (SL)

SL provides a convenient, reliable and inexpensive inter-school messaging system between ParentLink sites and is included with the PL module. The system is automatic and no human intervention is required after the network is set up. By using existing Internet connections, SL can be implemented at little or no additional cost over a stand-alone voice processing system.

SL supports network-wide group messages and can facilitate communications between ad-hoc groups often created to tackle district issues. For example, if an administrator wants to reach all principals, only one message is needed.

A group of voice mailboxes can be reserved on each system for district-wide use. The box number may be the same on each system and only one message needs be sent to update every system. For example, if schools or offices are closed by decision of the district, every ParentLink site in the system could have the message available to callers simply by making one phone call from the superintendent's home or office.

The SL platform allows multi-tasking. Individual tasks can be completed without interrupting other functions. Parents can listen to a teacher's box, teachers can update their grade books and attendance data can be transmitted to the district office all at the same time and all on the same machine.

SL also provides remote access to each system without interrupting normal service. This provides the ability to offer remote technical support, software maintenance and hardware preventive maintenance and diagnostics.

Teacher's Assistant (TA)

TA provides parents and students with quick and easy access to grades and future assignment reports from the teacher's classroom management system. Test and quiz scores, homework grades, missing assignments and future assignments can now be accessed 24 hours a day from anywhere in the world through a touch tone phone or via the Internet. These reports provide parents with the information they need to share responsibility for student performance and play a more active role in helping their children succeed. At the same time it increases student accountability, resulting in improved grades.

TA is compatible with many commonly used gradebook programs and can import information from several different gradebooks if the school's teachers are using more than one brand, relieving the burden of selecting one "standardized" gradebook vendor. Information from the electronic grade books is translated into phone messages, which the teacher can choose to send out as an automatic telephone call or have placed in a voice mailbox for a parent to retrieve at a later time. TA allows messages to be sent in either English or Spanish with options for additional languages.

Registrar's Assistant (RA)

RA phone registration streamlines the process of registering students for classes and eases the task of administering registration. It eliminates the need for numerous meetings and a myriad of written documents. Administrators load the system with class schedules and registration rules. Students use any touch-tone phone to select their classes and, when necessary, may change their schedule as many times as required.

Automated registration with RA treats everyone equally - no favorites, no discrimination. It facilitates parental involvement in student class selection and student and parent satisfaction with the results increases substantially. Additionally, your counselors are freed to spend more time counseling because routine scheduling tasks are resolved through the RA.

Core requirements, prerequisites, pathways and tentative schedules are supported. They can be transferred into the RA or can be entered directly. The system provides extensive flexibility in producing interim and final reports to monitor the registration process or, if desired, the data collected can be transferred to your favorite automated class scheduler to produce the final schedules.

Operator's Assistant (OA)

OA aids the school secretary in answering and processing incoming calls. This can be as simple as delivering prerecorded messages or as sophisticated as a fully automated office attendant, depending on the desires of the school. Schools with the proper telephone equipment can use OA to answer incoming calls, transfer calls, deliver messages and take messages.

OA notifies users of new voicemail messages with a pop-up network message, a call to a personal phone number or pager, or with a message waiting light included on many modern phone systems. Even schools without phones in the classroom can notify teachers and staff of waiting messages via the Internet.

Integrated reports with the other modules within the PLS allow system usage to be optimized for the unique usage patterns of each school. For example, Integration with the SL module lets district personnel send and replicate messages on individual PL systems throughout the school district. In return, messages can be easily forwarded from individual schools to the district office. Thus a school emergency security box could easily forward messages to a district staff member 24 hours a day.