Parents/Guardians and users who cannot login, due to incorrect credentials or a forgotten username or password, to any SIMS Online Service i.e. Parent APP, Pay 360, SIMS Activities should contact the third-party provider to reset these credentials.

For example: –

• Parent A signed into Parent App using Facebook sign in, the next time they access Parent App they cannot log-in due to incorrect credentials, the parent should check their username and password and reset their password with Facebook, then come back to the Parent App and sign in using the newly created password.
• Parent B signed into Pay 360 using a Gmail email address and cannot login due to incorrect credentials, the parent should, as Parent A, check the email address they are entering is correct and the one they registered with and if necessary, reset their password. 

If after all this has been done and the parents still cannot access the online services, school should look to unregister parents.

If a parent does not receive an activation email and they have checked their SPAM/Junk folder, the school can give the parent the activation/registration code from the Pay 360 or SIMS Product Admin Portal and Parents can enter this in manually.

To do this they go to the website; either www.pay360educationpayments.com/Home/For-Parents or http://www.sims-parent.co.uk, click register and select the 3^rd party they wish to register through, enter their username and password for i.e.  Facebook, or email etc and enter the invitation code when prompted.

What is Spam?

Email is treated as spam if the recipient mailbox believes the email to be unsolicited, irrelevant or sent in bulk to a mailing list of people where recipient mailboxes have marked the emails as Spam, if the mailbox is dormant, or if the receipts email is invalid.

To stop you receiving unwanted emails and to help protect you against malicious emails, many mailbox providers deploy the following methods to filter out messages: –

• Spam protection – sends spam emails directly to the Spam folder and can block them in future
• Filters – automatically sort incoming messages to different folder
• Block Addresses – stop email from email addresses or domains that you select
• Safe Sender – for email addresses or domains that you select
• Image Blocking – prevents spammers from knowing you opened their email and protects you from looking at images you don’t want to see
• Word of mouth – if recipients tell a mailbox provider an email is spam this will impact the sender’s reputation and can cause future emails from the domain to be filtered

From time-to-time spam filters put legitimate emails into your spam folder, which may be because other users have marked similar emails as spam. If you seem to be missing emails or you haven’t got an email you were expecting, check the spam folder first and make sure the senders email address is included as a safe sender.

The nature of how email is used within schools means emails are generally sent in large volumes, over very short spaces of time, (e.g. the school’s closed/ this week’s newsletter etc).

From time to time this can cause issues with mailboxes treating the email as spam. Depending on the policies of the mailbox filtering and users’ preferences this can do one of two things; Send the email to junk or directly delete the email.

Where issues are reported that emails have not reached parents, ESS will escalate this to the respective mailbox provider (e.g. Microsoft, Google, BT etc.).  However, there is only so much they can do to resolve the issue. Instead, the resolution often requires the cooperation from the affected recipient parent as we do not hold a customer relationship with the mailbox provider.

There are several ways schools can reduce the chances of emails being flagged as spam:

• Make sure parents are aware of the school’s email address to avoid the email being flagged as spam
• Ensure that mailing lists do not contain inactive or dormant addresses. This will increase bounce rates and can damage your deliverability as continuing to send emails to inactive or dormant address will eventually flag your emails as spam
• An ‘active listening’ campaign can be a great way to identify if your mailing list is up to date by seeing if parents respond to the email. If parents don’t respond you may have an out-of-date email address
• Paying attention to the contents of the email can also be key. The subject line and the body of the email can be the difference between an email being flagged as spam or not

• Please ensure your mailing lists contain current email addresses
• Let your parents know that school emails will be sent by InTouch or noreply@sims.co.uk
• Ask your parents to add your school InTouch email address <your_school_dfe_number>@sims-communications.co.uk/ or noreply@sims.co.uk as an approved sender
• Ask your parents to please check spam/junk folders for any school emails they may have missed – if they are in spam/junk folders please ask them to mark as safe

To stop emails from SIMS InTouch/Online services being categorised as spam you can manually add your school SIMS InTouch email to your mailbox “safe senders” list.

Below details how to add an email to your safe sender list from the most common mailboxes:

Outlook/ Hotmail

1. At the top of the page, select Settings > Mail.
2. Select Mail > Accounts > Block or allow.
3. To add an entry to Safe Senders and Recipients, enter the email address or domain that you want to mark as safe in the Enter a sender or domain here text box. …

BT Email

1. From the Settings tab, select the Safe senders” folder and click on the Add button.
2. Add the email address you want to mark as safe and click Save.
3. After a confirmation message the email address will be added to your list of safe senders.

Apple Mail

1. Open the email from the sender you would like to add to the safelist.
2. Click on the sender’s email address at the top of the email.
3. A list of options will appear on a drop down.
4. Click on “Add to Address Book”.
5. Your sender will be automatically added to your Apple Mail safe senders list.

Gmail

1. Select Actions from the toolbar at the top of the screen.
2. Select Junk E-mail.
3. Select Junk E-mail Options.
4. Click the Safe Sender tab.
5. Click Add.
6. Type in the email address you wish to add to your safe sender list.
7. Click OK.

Yahoo! Mail

1. Click on the address book icon under the Yahoo! mail logo. (When you mouse crosses it, it will say Contacts).
2. Click New contact.
3. Provide a suitable name and type (or copy and paste) the email address.
4. Click Save.