Using the Music Monitor scripting, overlaid on the inbuilt capabilities of the FileMaker software, you have the ability to easily send a lot of communication from Music Monitor.
Generate an Email to One or More People
When you have a person's file open, for example a student, a staff member or other contact, or a debtor, you will see a Mail icon in the top bar.
If you select the icon, you will see a number of email options.
- Email selected student - This will generate one email, to the student email address, and will BCC the primary contact email.
- Email found set - This will email all of the people in the list you are currently viewing. You will be asked whether to email the parent, the student, or both, and then an email will open with all the selected email addresses in the BCC field.
- Copy/paste email - This will not generate an email, but will just display all the email addresses for you to copy for use elsewhere.
You will also see this icon in the Student Activity files, such as Ensemble Enrolments, Tuition, Workshops, etc., so you can email an individual or found set of students from those screens.
Teacher Guide
Template Letters and Mail Merge
Music Monitor has several scripts that generate batches of emails with merged information from fields in your data, and/or custom attachments. Examples include:
- Enrolment Letters - emails students and merges in student name, subject, teacher and teacher contact details.
- Absentee Letters - emails parents and merges in the details of missed lessons.
- Re-enrolment Letters - emails parents and merges in details of student's current enrolments and instrument hire.
- Exam Approval Emails - emails parents and merges in details of exams for which the student will be entered if approved.
- Email Student Schedules - emails the parents, CCs the students, and attaches the week's schedule as a PDF.
- Email Weekly Schedule to Teachers - emails the teachers and attaches their weekly schedule as a PDF.
- Produce and Send Customer Invoices - emails the debtors and attaches the selected invoice as a PDF.
Note that due to limitations in the capability of FileMaker, the body of the email will be carried across as plain text, and most formatting you do in the Music Monitor window will not be reflected in the email.
Send SMS
To send SMS via Music Monitor, you need to have an SMS system that will generate outgoing messages in response to emails.
Setup
SMS by Email generally works by sending an email to an address in the format
- [phone-number][@SMS-Gateway].
- For example, +61400111222@smscompany.com.au
You need to enter the SMS Gateway, which is the part from the "@" onwards, in Settings > General Settings > Organisation > SMS Gateway.
Send SMS
When you select the Mail icon and Send SMS to found set, Music Monitor will use the mobile numbers in your files to generate an email in the required format to trigger your SMS system to send those messages.
Export Numbers for Use Elsewhere
You can see above that there is an option to Copy/paste SMS from that Mail menu as well.
That allows you to use the numbers in another system in a more customised way, if directly generating the messages out of Music Monitor isn't right for what you're trying to achieve.
Note that most systems require your phone numbers to have no spaces between the digits, so see Removing Spaces & Symbols from Mobile Numbers for guidance on how to tidy them up before exporting.