Class Lists & Email in CIMS
Don't waste time making your own class lists, you can download them already made using the lists option:
Even though you will find all the parent email addresses in there, it's better not to rely on these, as once you've downloaded them you don't know if they change... Better to email parents (and students) directly from CIMS (Home - Search - Tutor Group):
Email Groups in Gmail?
Your GMail Contacts can be accessed from the Google Grid, from there you can manage/create your own email groups.
Official college advice is to NOT to to this, but to use CIMS for all parental and student communication that is en masse, ie whole class. This is because the CIMS list is always the most up to date and reflects changes parents have made to it (eg change of job email address, a switch from gmail to yahoo et cetera) and also will reflect leavers and new family details at key points of change in the school year, around August and January.
Important
Remember to Bcc emails when emailing a large group!
If you choose to create your own email group you need to make sure that you check it against the official CIMS details periodically .
Create your own email group...
To create your own groups you will need to either manually add each parent as a parent one by one, or you can speed this up by exporting just one random contact as a CSV file, open that up and paste in the relevant information from another class data sheet you can download from CIMS (lists), copy and paste the information you need over to the CSV sheet under the relevant headings. You probably only need to use these headings:
Name Given Name Additional Name Family Name Notes
You can ignore the rest of the headings. It can be a good idea to paste the child's name under Notes for reference. When you're finished, close and save, leave it as a CSV file when prompted.
Now you can import that CSV sheet into your Google contacts, once imported they will be conveniently automatically added to a new label (so you don't need to pick them out of your existing contacts) that you can rename and use as your very own email group.
You need to wait a while before this group will appear in the Bcc field in your emails, if you quit and reopen your browser it might speed this up...
