ADAM newsletter: October 2026
This month is mostly about families. Parents can now book their own meetings with teachers, record how their child's name is said, and fill in an online application one section at a time without losing their work. Online agreements can reach audiences they could not reach before, and staff who sign in with Google or Microsoft can be spared a second code.
Parents can now book their own meetings with teachers
An event can now be set so that families sign up rather than pupils. This suits parent-teacher meetings, including when a child has two families on record — separated parents, for example. Choose this with the new Sign up by option when you create the event. Each booking then belongs to the family that made it, and the teacher can see which family booked. Everything else works as you would expect. The organiser can approve requests, families receive confirmation and reminder emails, and bookings appear on the organiser's calendar and in the attendance-list email. Staff can also add a family to a slot from the attendee list. The Sign-Up reports show each family booking against the child it concerns. Family bookings are kept off the pupil's own calendar and portal, because both parents can see those.
Hear how a child's name is said
ADAM has always been able to play a recording of a pupil's name on their profile, but someone had to upload an audio file by hand, so very few schools used it. Parents and pupils can now record the name directly in the family portal, in a few seconds, with nothing to install. A recording made by a parent or pupil stays silent to the school until a staff member approves it. Staff will find two new screens, Approve Name Recordings and Record Name Pronunciations by Class, under the new Names and Faces menu section, alongside the photograph screens. A teacher can go through a class, listen to what has arrived, approve or reject it, and record any children who are still missing. This needs a new permission, Manage Name Pronunciations, and families need Record name pronunciation switched on in their portal permissions.
The online application saves as you go
The "Your Details" step of the online application used to be one long form, and the browser refused to save any of it until every required field for every child was filled in. A parent could not save half an application and come back later, although the page told them they could. The parents and each child now have their own page in the progress bar, and every page saves whatever has been entered. Missing information is listed on the review screen, grouped by section, with a link to each. A tick in the progress bar now means a section is complete, not only visited.
We also changed how an application starts. ADAM emails the parent a link, normally within a minute. An existing parent's link goes only to the addresses you already hold for them.
Online agreements for more audiences
Several kinds of online agreement could be chosen in the audience list but never actually created or delivered. You can now aim an agreement at pupils by grade, by registration status or by privilege group, and at staff by privilege group. We also fixed a fault where copies of an agreement sent to a narrowed audience were marked as emailed but never sent.
Skip the second code for Google and Microsoft sign-in
If your school's Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 already asks staff for a second sign-in step, ADAM was asking for its own code on top. Two new settings, Skip ADAM Two-Factor Authentication for Google Sign-In and the matching Microsoft setting, remove that extra step. Both are off by default. Super users are always asked for the code. Staff who use two-factor sign-in but have no recovery codes now see a banner prompting them to create some. Without those codes, a lost phone means a call to us.
Smaller improvements and fixes
Reports and academics
- A draft report is now regenerated when its period settings or template change. Before, the old PDF went on being served as if it were current.
- One teacher without a signature on file no longer stops a whole batch of reports.
- Combined summary percentages now arrive in Excel as numbers rather than text.
- The report link no longer appears on the home page for subjects that are not set up for reporting.
- New and revised templates for Sacred Heart College, St Alban's College, St Dunstan's College and Preparatory School, Lebone II College, Steyn City School and Michaelhouse.
Pupils, families and transfers
- If an incoming pupil transfer stopped part-way through its import, nobody could do anything with it. A stalled transfer now shows retry and delete buttons. Submitting the same transfer twice no longer imports it twice.
- Approved and rejected detail-update submissions no longer reappear for review.
- Student cards are produced for pupils without a photograph, and the pupil timetable page is no longer blank.
Family communications and Parent Alerts
- A family with two children sometimes received an alert for only one of them. Fixed.
- A large Parent Alerts run could lose emails once it had many school logos open at the same time. Fixed.
Roll Call, leave and absentees
- On-demand roll calls now show pupils who are away on approved leave.
- A leave request made minutes before departure could not be approved once departure time had passed, so it never reached the roll call or catering lists. Staff with permission to back-date leave can now approve it.
Medical
- The medical report in the family portal no longer shows empty sections.
- The up and down arrows on an examination's measurements moved them the wrong way. Fixed.
We also fixed several security issues.