Archive for September, 2010

Ruffing Montessori School

Tandem is a great tool for not only the school but as well as the community.  We recently had a submission from a school that really understood how important Tandem can be to the community.  Below is a link to a short video that Ruffing Montessori created to demonstrate Tandem to the community.

http://www.ruffingmontessori.net/Intand%20for%20Schools_demo/Intand%20for%20Schools_demo.htm

How do you promote Tandem to the community?  Have you created a video like Ruffing Montessori?

Let us know!  We look forward to hearing from you!

Tandem Updates

We love to hear from our customers about how we can improve Tandem and have recently spent some time implementing the requested changes. Here are just a few features that we have recently added to your favorite school event calendar:

1. Copied events can now be marked as tentative or cancelled

2. The day of the week can now be added to event details (i.e. Monday, Tuesday, etc…)

3. An “Event Status” column has been added to indicate either “Active”, “Cancelled”, or “Tentative”. This applies to imported events as well

4. Spell check has been added to the description and notes fields

5. Increase the speed of calendars with a lot of event action history

6. The drop down box for selecting an event time now appears above the textbox instead of below for certain fields

Thank you to everyone for submitting requests!

How Do You Motivate Parents?

We recently conducted a survey to find out how schools are encouraging parents to use Tandem.  Here are just some of their responses:

• Provide instructions on school/district website

• Conduct training for parents

• Send a mass email to parents

• Include calendar info on all sports schedules

• Give each parent a Tandem info card

• Advertise your calendar in your Newsletter

• Advertise your calendar in your Handbook

• Send out an Announcement

• Tell everyone at Back to School Night

• Display the calendar at your Open House

• Include the Tandem web address on printed

Yearly Calendars

• Tell parents on every inbound call

• Include calendar info on flyers sent home

• Link Tandem sports schedules on website

• Word of mouth—keep talking about it

• Make it THE way you operate—get on board or

be left behind

• Post it on the city website

• Discuss the calendar at parent/teacher mtgs

• Link intro video on school/district website

• Distribute the “Calendar Intro & Instructions”

word doc to students and parents

• Mandate that the calendar is THE place to get

information—not over the phone

• Eliminate printed calendar and direct everyone

to your website instead

• Include the online calendar web address on

your activity hotline

• Mention the online calendar at every event

Leave a comment if you can think of any other ways!

Enter To Win Tandem!

For a limited time, you can enter for a chance to win Tandem for Schools. We are offering a one year license to Tandem Standard for one lucky school. This is a great opportunity to get a hold of Tandem for Schools without having to pay for it! To enter the contest, follow the link below:

http://wildfireapp.com/website/6/contests/56187

We already have many great entries but it is not too late to enter! The sweepstakes will run until Oct. 15th, at which point we will pick a winner.

Good Luck!