SchoolPost: Parent Data Handling and Pre-Set Publications
This guide explains how SchoolPost handles parent contact information and provides a crucial best practice to ensure your publications are always sent to the up to date parent contacts. When creating publications from pre-set groups like a year group, it is important to understand that these recipient lists do not automatically update.
Best Practice: The Final Step Before Publishing
To ensure every publication reaches the correct recipients, always refresh the contact list as the very last step before you publish. This simple action forces SchoolPost to pull the most recent data from iSAMS, guaranteeing that any updated email addresses, contact types, or other details are included in your publication. This prevents emails from being sent to old or incorrect addresses.
Understanding the Issue
When creating publications in SchoolPost, especially those with pre-selected year groups, it's crucial to understand how parent contact information is handled. For any Pre-built publications, they do not automatically update with changes to a parent's personal details (such as email address, contact type, or their relationship with a child).
This means that if a parent updates their information in the iSAMS, the change will not be reflected in a publication that has already been built. The publication will continue to use the contact information that was current at the time it was created.
Example: L6 Consent Forms
Consider the publication, "A Message from Mrs. Adams about L6 Consent Forms" (see screenshot).
This publication was built on September 11, 2025.
It was pre-set to target all Lower 6th parents, resulting in a recipient list of 210 contacts.
If a parent, such as Julian Abrams, changes their email address from:
'studio@julianabrams.co.uk' to,
'studio-2@julianabrams.co.uk',
after September 11, the publication will still attempt to send the email to the old, incorrect address.
Solution: How to Refresh the Recipient List
To ensure your publication uses the most up-to-date information, you must manually refresh the recipient list.
Open the pre-built publication you need to update.
Go to the Recipients section.
Click the Year groups dropdown menu again.
Re-select the same year group you had chosen before (e.g., Lower 6th).
This action forces the system to reload the latest data from the school's database, including any updated email addresses, contact types, or other details. Once the page has refreshed, the publication will be ready to send to the correct recipients.
