Changes to messaging on eyparent
With the launch of the updated eyparent app, we have changed how parents and nursery employees communicate. We he split our old messages into Messages and Conversations. This will make communication between the nursery and parents clearer and more efficient, helping organise updates, announcements, and direct interactions in a more structured way.
The parent app will be the first to have these enhancements, with plans to extend them to other products in the future. This article will focus on what these changes mean for eyparent users. For a more general overview, take a look at this article.
What are Messages?
Our new Messages have most of the same features as the old one, as they allow nurseries to send important updates directly through the system. However, our new Messages are not sent via external email, meaning parents have to view them within the eyparent app in the Communication section.
What are Conversations?
Conversations is a new direct messaging feature designed for quick and easy communication between parents and nursery employees. Unlike Messages, Conversations allow real-time, two-way messaging, making it simple to stay in touch with one-on-one or group communication.
What does this mean for parents?
Parents can access both forms of communication directly within the eyparent app. Using the 
icon, parents can see Conversations and Communications (Messages) in separate tabs for easy navigation.
- Communications: Parents can view important announcements and updates from the nursery. Parents can only reply if the nursery turns on that permission.
- Conversations: Parents can start direct chats with select nursery employees, making it easy to for them to ask questions or share updates when needed.
Nurseries can set up a designated Management Team to be available in Conversations. This team will include specific employees who parents can directly message, whether one-on-one or in group chats. Parents can start conversations with any member of the Management Team or the whole group. Although parents will only be able to start a conversation with members of the Management Team, other system users can create a conversation with parents, which will be available on their web login and the parents eyparent app.
What does this mean for nursery staff?
Our new Messages function much like the old messaging feature, only that they are now sent as one-way internal messages, and parents can only reply if the nursery turns on an option in System Settings. Nurseries will still be able to format the message as you would an email, and attach files to share important documents. Also, as Messages can be sent to multiple parents at once, emails can still to use [[placeholders]] to customise the message for the recipient.
With Conversations, any user with access to the web system can start a conversation with parents (and can include other employee(s) as participants). However, only employees in the Management Team are visible on the eyparent app and can have conversations initiated with them by parents.
All users with the Nursery Manager role have been automatically added to the Management Team group. Where there are no Nursery Managers on the system, then Company Admins have been added to the team by default. The Management Team group can be edited to add or remove members, see our Management Team editing article.
Management Teams are specific to each nursery branch.
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