Make Parent Notification Easy: Linking your Form with a Google Add-On Mail Merge

I promised a follow-up to the post about QR codes and Google Forms teaming up. This is probably the best feature of Forms and I’m so excited to share it with you.

I wanted a way to let parents know when their child came to class without their homework, 1) for documentation purposes, 2) I honestly wanted to bug the parents so maybe they would bug their child about getting their homework turned in. I figured getting an email each day letting you know your child didn't turn in their homework could lead to some parental intervention. 

While I wanted this, there was no way I was sitting down at the end of each day and sending 1 to 379 emails to parents about their child's missing homework. Talk about streamlining the process – a simple Google Sheets add-on makes this process simple, easy, and requires almost nothing from the teacher after set-up. 

So, without further ado, here is how you get your form to send an email each time a response is received.

{I am showing this from a teacher perspective – sending emails to parents each time an assignment is missing. But this could be used for SO many things: responses to items parents signed up to bring for a class party, email reminders about volunteer sign up times, etc.}

What your set-up form looks like to others.

First, you will need to set up your form. For those steps, you can read my post here. This post talks about setting up the form, but also linking it with a QR code for ease of access.

After setting up your form:

1. Access your results spreadsheet. To do this, click on "View Responses" from your Form. This opens up the spreadsheet where your Form responses are kept. 

Your responses from your Form. 

2. At the top toolbar, click on “Add-ons” and then “Get Add-ons..”

3. Search for “FormMule”. You are looking for “formMule-Email Merge Utility”. Click “+Free” to install the Add-on

4. After it installs, you will need to re-click on Add-ons and Click on formMule à Setup àChoose source data and set merge type.

5.  Under Choose source data and set merge type go to the drop down menu and select “Form Responses 1” Make sure the option on the left, under Form trigger is set to “On”. This is what makes the form send an email after each submission.

6.  Click Next: Templates and Send Condition

7. Under “How many unique email templates do you want to use” choose 1. You can rename your template if you want. Make sure Send Condition is set to “—Send for all rows”

8. This next screen allows you to build your template that will be used for your email responses. If you have ever done a mail merge, this will be familiar. Set up your items below:

To: use the column title you used for the Parent’s Email address

CC: (leave Blank)

BCC: If you need to BCC: yourself, put your email address there and in the Reply To section

Subject:  For the subject, you can make this a generic “Missing Assignment” title or you can specify it by naming it “First and Last Name: Missing Assignment.” If you do that, make sure you click to submit that column title from the options on the right (instead of just typing :First and Last name)

Body: Type what you want in the body. I included my template below if you need an idea.

Parent/Guardian:

This is an automated email.

<< FIRST and LAST name>> did not return his/her assignment, <<Title of the missing assignment>>. He/she will be required to stay after school to make up the assignment.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Amber Bond

7th Grade Math

XYZ Junior High

9. When you are finished building your template click “Preview and send all.” this will take you to a new screen that shows you a preview of your template. If everything looks good you can click “Send Now” at the bottom and an email will send for all of the submissions already in your spreadsheet.

A preview of what the emails your Form sends will look like. 

From now on, an email will send automatically after a submission is made in the form. 

Your results spreadsheet will now have a new column with the date and time the emails were sent as well as saying who they were sent to and from. 

That’s all there is to it! I absolutely love this feature Google provides. When my students don’t have their homework, they know to go and scan the QR code attached to my Missing Assignment form and fill it out. This sends an email directly to their parents and keeps a record for me.

A common concern is “Well, the student can just put any old email address in there. How do I know they are actually trying to email their parents?”  And to that I say…you don’t. Without micromanaging (which is what this whole process is trying to avoid) you don’t know if the student, in that moment, is emailing their parents.  However, you can periodically check the spreadsheet (which records what email the student it putting in) and then inform the parent that their child is trying to be a bit sneaky. Not foorproof, but so much better than manually entering in students names and email addresses.

I hope this helps make your life a little bit easier! Happy tech-ing!

QR Codes + Google Forms = True Love

As the title says, love is in the air. QR Codes plus Google Forms, here to make your life a little easier.
I recently got certified as a "Google Level 2 Educator." I'm not entirely sure what the implications are of that title, but I learned a lot about Google programs, apps, extensions, and more. This is a trick I learned that will make some of the logistics of your day so much easier. Before I give you the steps, let me tell you how I use this:

1) Keeping a record (including time and date) of who comes to tutoring when and for what. This process gives me a constantly updated spreadsheet of who came to tutoring on what day and what they did and I don't have to do a thing to keep up with it!
2) Anytime a student is missing an assignment (typically homework) I keep a record of it for end-of-semester grade talks and potential retention meetings, or just your run-of-the-mill parent conference. This handy-dandy process gives you another spreadsheet of date, time, student name, and assignment missing and I don't have to do a thing to keep up with it!

**The one item that can be added on to this that makes it from awesome to super awesome-sauce, is a parent email that notifies the parent each time - whether it is that their child stayed for tutoring, or that their child is missing an assignment and, you guessed it...you don't have to do a thing to keep up with it! I'll follow up with that in my next post!


So here's what I'm talking about: a google form accessed by a QR code. A form that keeps track of parent communication, tutoring attendance, or missing assignments. Here's what you do:

1. Go to Google Forms and create a new form. Title the form "Missing Assignments" (or your choice)
2. Add questions with "Text" as the question type for each piece of information you want:

• Student Name
• Class
• Title of the Missing Assignment
• **Parent Email (they may not know their parents email, this could be an issue. Or, they try and type it in wrong. Even if they put in the wrong email purposely you still have documentation)
• For the email portion, click "Advanced Settings" and click "Data Validation" and "Email" 

**Only do this step if you want to send emails to let parents be notified. If an email is not necessary, you can skip this step. To see what to do to send out the emails, read my follow-up post here. 

3. Add an additional question with "Date" as the response type

For each "question" make sure you click "required question" When finished it will look like this:

To see what your form looks like, click "Live Form" on the tool bar. The page you see is what others see when they go to fill out your form.

Click to see what your form looks like to everyone else. 

     

What people see when they go to your form. 

When I create a new form, I like to do a "test" to make sure everything is working well. Go ahead and enter a few false entries on the form. After you type a few responses, go back to your Forms page. At the top toolbar you will see an icon that says "View Responses." This will take you to the spreadsheet that Forms creates to track the responses you receive from your form.

 My favorite feature is the time stamp. With so much documentation required in teaching, it's nice not to write the time and date. Thank you Google.

So, that's how you set up a form. The spreadsheet is created for you and saved in your Drive. To send the form to others you can use the blue "Send Form" icon at the top to email it. However, because QR codes are pairing up with Forms in this post, a more efficient way to use your form is to attach it to a QR code. That way multiple users can access the form without copying down a complicated URL. To do that, follow the steps below:

1) Click on "Send Form" and copy the link.
2) Use that link to create the QR Code
**If you don't know how to create a QR code, use my post here and follow the steps to create a QR code that links to a website.
3) Attach your code to whatever you are using it for. Below are two examples of posters I have in my room where the QR code links to a Google Form.

Used to keep track of who attends tutoring. Students scan with their phone when they come in and submit the form. No work required by me!

If a student comes to class without their homework they use their phone to scan the QR code and complete the form. That gives me a record of who does not have their homework each day (and keeps track of repeat offenders).

 So, there you go. QR Codes teaming up with Google Forms to make your life easier. I am doing a follow-up post (click here) that shows you how to take that spreadsheet and send a form email out from it each time a form response is recorded. This is how I let parents know, in real time,  that their student did not turn in their homework. Check back for that! Happy tech-ing!