As December arrives, out comes a new Synergy update for parents. The new ParentVue feature allows parents to record their children’s absences without calling the school’s attendance office. Although it does not sound like much, this change has proven to be more convenient and helpful for both parents and the attendance staff.
More convenient and flexible for parents
“The parents can make the report on their phones through the ParentVue app. You can record the student’s attendance, you can do partial attendance, or all day,” said school attendance secretary Kelly Cantu.
For parents, the new feature offers more practicality than the old method of voicemail. They no longer have to wait through automated prompts and memorize all the required information they have to say. Instead parents can now submit their children’s absences in less than two minutes through the ParentVue app.
“I absolutely prefer reporting absences through the new feature. Calling is extra work. The report absence button was easy to find, and it doesn’t look like it will take more than a minute to report an absence,” said parent Gauri Reyes.
The new update also gives parents more flexibility. They can now send future absences at any time by selecting the date instead of waiting until the day before the absence.
“With this new feature, I can report an absence any time because the date is clearly shown in the system. In the past, I had to wait until the day before to avoid confusion,” said Reyes.
Parents receive a confirmation email right after submitting the absence. The new systems reduces uncertainty about whether the report was submitted. Previously parents were not informed of any confirmation after calling to report absences.
“It’s definitely more convenient and faster. I’d also be interested to know if it helps our attendance office, too,” said Reyes.
Fewer mistakes and Faster processing
While the new update has made reporting absences easier for parents, it has also improved efficiency in the attendance office. It allows the staff to put in information with fewer mistakes. This improved the attendance office’s workflow greatly, permitting them to record absences in the system much faster than before .
“After the new feature was released, the workload was less because more people can work on the online attendance, while on the phone only one person can do it,” said Cantu.
Calling the school’s automated attendance system to report absences can often be inconvenient for many parents. Without another person on the other side of the line, callers have to memorize every requirement asked for certain required information. For example the student’s ID number, full name, grade, parents’ full name, etc. One small mistake can prevent the attendance from recording the absence in Synergy.
“I think the new update has really helped since once the parent sends the absence report, the student’s name and ID appear. It was hard for us before because sometimes we couldn’t get the right information to put in the report for the right student, since there could be a language barrier or just not answering all the requests properly,” said attendance secretary Amy Blake.
