Help centre

Receiving and sending Forum updates

Choose Receive Forum updates on the public website to register your interest. Enter your email address, choose whether to receive regular Forum news and confirm your address using the email we send. Each update includes an unsubscribe link. This mailing list is separate from membership of your local forum.

Platform administrators open Forum updates in the superuser console, with verified second-factor sign-in required. Overview shows the current subscriber count, confirmations, departures and a chart for the last 30 or 90 days. Read daily subscriber totals gives the figures behind the chart.

Subscribers offers search, status filters, selection, Edit and Remove. Editing changes the optional name. Remove stops future updates and retains consent and earlier delivery history. The owner of a new email address can subscribe through the website.

In Email updates, choose Write an update, enter a subject and the email wording, and send yourself a test. Save the draft, then reopen it and choose Send update. Confirm the audience before sending. Each subscriber receives an individual message with their own unsubscribe link.

Keep the sending window open while the update is submitted. If sending pauses, reopen the saved update and choose Continue sending. The platform continues with queued emails. Submissions that need review stay held to protect against duplicates. Submitted means the email service accepted the message. Drafts have Edit and Delete controls; sent wording and delivery history remain available in details.

Choose Easy or Advanced mode

Everyone starts in Easy mode in the Operations Hub and demo. Use the control at the top of a screen to choose Easy or Advanced. Your account remembers your choice when you sign in on another device.

On a phone, Workspace tools in the header opens your account controls, mode choice, Saved drafts, Help and Tour. Choose Close workspace tools to give the page its full available height again. The bottom menu continues to open your forum sections.

Easy mode uses larger text and buttons. Everyday forms guide you through one question or a small group of questions at a time. Advanced mode shows the fields together. Both modes use the same records and permissions, and changing mode keeps the answers you have entered.

Help explains the screen, your choices, who can see the result and what happens next. Open Help in either mode and close it to return to your work. Other forms show all their fields together while more guided journeys are added.

Choose Tour beside Help for a guided look around the page. It highlights the controls available on your screen and explains what they do. Use Back and Next to move through the tour, or Close tour to return to your work. The tour keeps your answers and leaves your records as they are.

Everyday forms and workstream progress updates save a private draft on your account after five seconds of inactivity and every fifteen seconds while you write. Close and Save and finish later save your latest answers before closing. Open Saved drafts at the top of the screen to continue or delete a draft, or choose Resume draft when you return to a matching form. Your draft becomes a forum record when you finish the final save. When you reopen a document upload draft, choose the file again before saving.

The public demo keeps draft answers in the current visit. Its final saves follow the demo's existing permissions.

1. Open an everyday task, such as adding an action or planning a meeting.
2. Read each question and add your answer. Use Back to check an earlier answer.
3. Read the check page, then choose the named save button to finish.
4. Choose Close or Save and finish later to keep your private draft. Discard draft asks you to confirm deletion. A failed save keeps your answers in the form and offers Retry. Wait for the saved confirmation before refreshing or closing the browser.

Put your menu tabs in your preferred order

On a larger screen, highlight a section in the side menu to reveal its three-dot menu. Choose Settings for that section to find a guide to its existing controls. Page explanations sit beneath the main headings, and the information buttons give more detail.

Choose Reorder menu in the Operations Hub, then drag a tab up or down or use its move buttons. Dashboard stays first and Settings stays last. Each change saves automatically, and Done closes the editor.

Your order follows your account across forums and devices. On a phone, choose More and then Reorder menu. The first tabs in your order fill the bottom menu, and the remaining tabs appear under More.

Choose Reset menu order to restore the standard layout. The demo remembers a separate order for each persona in your browser.

Claim your forum

Every Parent Carer Forum in England already has a listing, even if it is not using Forum by Sendsorta yet. Claim your listing to turn it into a workspace for your forum.

To claim it, use the contact email address your forum already publishes. We will email you a sign-in link, so there is no approval process or password to set up.

1. Find your forum in the directory.
2. Enter the public contact email address shown for your forum.
3. Open the sign-in link we email you.
4. Your workspace is ready. You will start as Chair and can invite the rest of your team.

What to do in your first two weeks

For your first two weeks, aim to publish one useful update for members. It gives people an immediate reason to visit, and it settles the platform into how your forum already works.

You do not need to move everything at once. Start with one piece of work that is already under way.

1. Invite a second administrator so one person is not responsible for everything.
2. Create an area of work for something you are already working on.
3. Add your current actions, including who owns each one and when it is due.
4. Record the latest promises from your council or health partners, including any dates.
5. Publish an update so members can see where the work is up to and when they will hear more.

Invite your committee and set up roles

Set up roles to match the way your forum works. You can start with a template such as Chair, Treasurer or Data Protection Lead, then rename it and change its permissions to fit your constitution.

Choose Invite in People, enter their email address and choose their role. General members join in the member app. People with a forum role join on the admin site, and their role is ready when they accept. You need permission to assign roles to choose a role in the invitation.

A role controls what someone can do. Seniority is a separate matter. A Treasurer can manage finances while confidential member records stay closed to them, and the technical administrator can be somebody other than the Chair.

If someone is helping with just one project, invite them as an external contributor. They will only see the area of work they need.

When you hand out work, the lists of action owners, workstream leads and area members show people who hold an office in your forum, meaning any role other than General Member. Give somebody a role here and they appear in those lists straight away. Action owners can be eligible people you can see across the forum, including when the action's area has no participants. Assigning an action keeps the area's existing access rules.

People who join by following an invitation link start under the part of their email address before the @, such as "jane.smith", until they choose a name in the app. Choose the pencil beside somebody's name in People to correct it for them, and your forum's audit trail records the change.

Explore your forum with Mindmap Beta

Open Mindmap Beta from the Operations Hub menu to follow PCF, Areas of work, workstreams and linked records from left to right. The map starts at reading size with the areas visible and their branches collapsed. Each area leads to its workstreams and their linked actions, decisions, meetings, feedback, documents, partner commitments, events, progress notes and recorded outcomes. Your account's existing access decides which records appear.

Select a card to trace its path and open its branch. The plus and minus buttons and linked-item counts also open and close branches. Exploring a branch closes its siblings at the same level. Focus on an area to read its workstreams, and use All areas to return. Drag to pan and use the zoom buttons, mouse wheel or pinch gesture to explore. Show everything opens every branch, Fit all fits the visible map, Readable size restores reading scale, and Rearrange compacts the visible branches. The navigator starts hidden at every window size; Show navigator opens its overview and area selector.

Hover over a card or select it to highlight its ancestors and immediate children while other branches fade. Solid lines show the structure, and dashed lines connect linked records. The selected path appears above the map as clickable breadcrumbs. Open details shows the full title and saved details, including other places where the same record appears. Find an item searches all titles and record types, including collapsed branches, and takes you to the selected item. Area activity buttons appear for positive counts of open actions, overdue actions and partner commitments, and events in the next 14 days. Select a matching record to reveal it on the map.

The map keeps its last successful data, expanded branches, focus and view position while you visit other sections in the signed-in workspace. Update reads the current records again, and Last updated shows when the map was loaded. The existing map stays visible during an update and if that update fails. Signing out, refreshing the browser or a reported access change starts a fresh map session.

Work recorded directly against an area appears under Area-wide work. Forum-level feedback exercises and events with no readable linked workstream appear under Forum-wide work. A meeting linked to several workstreams can appear beneath each one. Events include their preparation actions. Feedback exercise names appear alongside linked family feedback; individual form answers keep their existing response-reading journey.

The beta map supports reading and navigation. Use the existing record screens to update the forum's work. The Riverview demo chair uses the same map with its fictional records.

Generating a combined period report

Reports (Beta) follows Areas and Actions in the default menu. Generate new report lets you choose evidence sections, dates and activity filters. Both dates include complete Europe/London days. Combined reports bring membership, ordinary questionnaire coverage, confirmed participation, recorded work, consultation measures and operational activity together.

Choose Draft with AI in a combined preview when your forum has AI assistance enabled. The AI composes the written account around protected figures and recorded details, focusing on reported activity. Routine source checks let you keep reading and editing; a changed source asks you to generate a fresh report. Read and edit Report wording, then choose Approve wording for download before downloading Word or PDF. An edit requires approval again. Supporting CSV keeps the complete authorised period data. Retained copies keep the full data report. The demo uses a labelled local sample.

Membership and questionnaire coverage stay forum-wide at period end. Activity follows the selected Area and Workstream through current source attribution. Work category and primary-grant filters apply to recorded work; sections without that attribution explain the limitation. Bookings, actual attendance, elapsed meeting duration and confirmed person-minutes remain separate. Earlier unknown history and unavailable permission never become zero. Include detailed activity adds a chronological source appendix.

Read the preview and follow its named source links through your current access. New reports use numbered references such as Source 1, with record types, titles, dates and available Area and Workstream context in the Sources section. Selected filters show their readable names. Word and PDF use the same references and include the source list at the end. Supporting CSV keeps the detailed evidence and internal references for tracing. Downloads need current report and source export permissions. The preview rechecks access and hides stale evidence when sources or permission change. Review the content and intended recipients before sharing a downloaded file, which later access changes cannot recall.

Personal definitions keep names, dates, section choices and filters in this browser, separately for each account and forum. Opening a definition rebuilds the report from current accessible records. Existing narrative definitions keep their original format. Edit changes the parameters and regenerates the report. Delete removes the local definition while source records and downloaded files remain available.

An authorised account can choose Save shared definition from a combined preview. Choose My account or Authorised committee accounts. Saved reports opens the shared register, with filters, selection, Edit and Archive. Each person generates the account using their current source access. Archiving a definition leaves earlier retained copies under their own expiry.

Generate and retain a fresh copy reads the evidence again and prepares matching Word, PDF and CSV files. Review the new fixed account after saving. Copies default to seven days and can be kept for one, seven, fourteen or thirty days. The preview shows generation, expiry, access and later work corrections. Regenerate and supersede creates a complete replacement with readable references. Earlier retained copies keep their original wording, figures and exact files, together with a replacement link.

Retained copies check current report and source permissions when opened and downloaded. Access changes, erasure and expired retention can make a copy unavailable. Archive clears its evidence and files while keeping the audit record. Private files have an authorised download journey. Review recipients and handling before sharing a downloaded copy, which the platform cannot recall. The public demo offers read-only examples.

In the Riverview demo, open Saved reports and choose the fictional committee definition to generate its current account. The retained committee example opens its original evidence and private downloads. Its membership, attendance, confirmed work and consultation figures come from the connected fictional records. Calendar wording describes scheduled entries; Confirmed participation supplies actual occurrence and attendance.

What is an area of work?

An area of work is a workspace for one piece of your forum's work. Your committee agrees to do something about school transport, and that becomes an area of work, and everything to do with transport goes inside it.

That means the people doing the work, the jobs they have taken on, what they have decided, their meetings, the documents they are using and the evidence families have given them. It is all in one place, so when somebody new joins, or the person who ran it steps down, the work carries on and its history comes with it.

Most forums have three or four on the go. Each one keeps itself to itself, so if you are in the transport area, transport is what you see.

Starting one takes a name and a sentence about why it exists. You fill in the rest as you go, and the easiest first area is usually something your forum is already busy with this week.

How do I create an area of work?

An area is a broad subject, such as health or education. The best way to work inside it is to create a separate workstream for each piece of work. For example, School transport could have workstreams for late buses, driver training and travel guidance. Add the actions, meetings, notes, decisions, documents and progress updates inside the workstream they belong to.

Record small updates as the work happens. Team members with access can then see who is doing what, follow the timeline and understand what needs to happen next. These records also provide the facts and evidence for reports, helping your forum explain what it did and what changed for families. The area and each record's access settings decide who can read the information.

You will find areas of work in the Operations Hub, which is the part of Forum your committee works in. Open Areas from the main menu, then choose New area of work.

Two boxes are all you have to fill in: the name and the purpose. The rest can wait, so you can have an area up and running in a minute and come back to the detail after its first meeting.

Give the purpose a proper sentence, though. It is the first thing somebody reads when they want to know what you are all doing.

Creating areas comes with its own permission, and so does leading one. Chairs, steering committee members and parent representatives can lead an area from the start, so the Lead list shows the people whose role allows it, and a chair can give that permission to other roles in Settings.

1. Open Areas from the main menu.
2. Choose New area of work.
3. Name it something your whole committee would recognise, like Short Breaks Review.
4. Say why it exists, in a sentence or two. That is the purpose.
5. Add the outcome you are after, if you know it already.
6. Pick a lead, and put in a start date and a deadline if the work has them.
7. Note the forum priority it serves, if you plan that way.
8. Choose Create, and the area is there waiting for people and jobs.

How do I find my way around the list?

If lead editing is temporarily unavailable, you can still open your areas of work. Select Retry in the message above the list to restore lead editing when the connection recovers.

Select the star beside an area to add it to the Starred areas of work table above the search and filters. Workstreams have their own starred table inside each area. Your stars are personal and saved in this browser, and starred items stay visible while you filter the full list. Select the filled star to remove the shortcut.

Areas opens on a list of the areas that are running. On a computer it is a table giving each area's name, status, lead and deadline, and on a phone each area becomes a row that grows to fit its text.

Search by name, filter by status or lead, or choose Overdue deadline to see the areas running late. Sort by name, status or lead in either direction. The Hub remembers your choices while you work, so coming back from an area returns you to the same view.

Tick the box beside an area to select it, or choose Select all matching to take every area your filters show. Change status then updates them all at once, and Assign lead gives them all the same lead. The result tells you which changed, which already had that status and which could not be changed, keeping those selected so you can try again.

Archived areas stay out of the way at first. Set the status filter to All statuses to see them, and everything they hold is still readable, so you can look something up a year later when a funder asks.

An area marked Confidential shows to the people in it and to anybody your forum trusts with confidential access.

What is inside an area?

Open an area and it starts on its Overview, which tells you what is happening, what needs attention and what happened lately. A path at the top, such as Areas, then School Transport, then Meetings, shows where you are, and choosing any part of it takes you back there.

The Actions and Decisions & commitments buttons at the top open the area's full lists of jobs, decisions and partner promises. Below them come counts of active workstreams, partner responses you are waiting on, outstanding actions and upcoming meetings, and suggested next steps, such as following up a partner whose reply is due, which you can put away once they are dealt with.

Requires attention lists anything overdue or stuck, Current work lists each workstream with its lead and next step, and Recent activity shows what the area has done lately. A calendar entry appears as Scheduled meeting date passed once its scheduled start date and time have passed, including entries with no agenda or notes. Occurrence and attendance still need confirmation. Future meetings appear under Meetings. In Calendar, click a meeting to open its details. Agenda opens its agenda, where authorised Area managers can add items or build from current work. Participation opens confirmation and attendance directly, including for an empty agenda. Back returns to the same Calendar day and layout and refreshes meeting data. If participation access cannot be checked, choose Retry participation access. Choose an area of work and then an optional workstream when creating or editing a meeting. The workstream receives the scheduled calendar entry and its saved notes, while agenda items can still link other workstreams. Saved meeting and discussion notes appear as Meeting notes updated, dated when the notes last changed. Each activity has a type label and an Open activity link to its source record. On larger screens, the two Overview columns share the space equally. Area tools holds the AI summary and the AI member update.

On a computer the sections run as tabs across the top. On a phone an Area section picker takes their place.

1. Overview shows where the work stands and leads to the area's actions, decisions and partner promises.
2. Workstreams follows each piece of work from what families told you to the change it produced.
3. Meetings keeps each agenda, the people who came and what was agreed, and you can add an action, a decision or a commitment from an agenda item. Open a meeting in Calendar or the Area's Meetings section and choose Files and meeting packs to upload presentations, notes or meeting papers. The agenda page offers the same control. Choose Add file or pack, give it a title, attach the file and save. PowerPoint, PDF, Word, Excel, text and image files are supported up to 20 MB each. Files remain available in the Area's documents and follow its document access settings, including Confidential. People with document permission can edit, replace or remove a file through its Actions menu or details. To type notes into the meeting itself, choose Edit meeting and use Notes.
4. People shows who is in the area, including anybody you invited from outside your forum.
5. Resources gathers the area's documents and the forms it has sent to members.

How do I add people to an area?

The People tab is the area's address book. It shows you who is in, and it is where you bring somebody in or take them out.

For somebody already in your forum, choose Add existing member, pick their name, then pick the access role they will have in this area. The list offers people who hold an office in your forum, meaning any role other than General Member, so give somebody a role in Settings first if they are missing. Roles work area by area, so the same person can lead your transport area and simply lend a hand in the conference area.

For somebody outside your forum, such as a council officer or a specialist helping you for a term, choose Invite external person. You give their email address, pick their access role, and say how long the invitation stays open, anywhere from a day to a month. They get an email, and once they accept they appear in this list like everybody else.

People invited from outside see the area you invited them to. The rest of your forum's work stays where it was.

How do I give out and finish actions?

An action is a job with an owner and a due date. Add one from the area's Actions list, from a meeting's agenda item or from a workstream, and it carries the place it came from, so the meeting, the workstream and the owner's own list all show it.

Actions go to people who hold an office in your forum, meaning any role other than General Member. Somebody who already owns an action keeps it if their role changes, and you can hand it to somebody else whenever you like.

When a job is finished, its owner or a manager chooses Mark done from the menu beside it. A message confirms it with an Undo button for ten seconds, in case it was the wrong one, and the counts and the workstream's history update straight away.

How do I attach files, links and events to an action?

Open an action's details and choose View attachments. The action owner and authorised action managers can choose Add file, Add link or Attach event. Files can be supported documents or images up to 20 MiB, and web links use a complete HTTPS address.

Each action can connect to several events. The same action appears under Related actions on each event, with its original workstream, owner, dates and status. You can also choose Add existing actions from an event's planning page. Related actions stay separate from preparation task totals.

Use Edit to change an attachment label or web address, Replace file to upload a new version, or Remove to remove a connection. A working file stays available while its replacement uploads. Removing an event connection preserves both the event and the original action. Retained file history follows the forum's existing retention rules.

Files and web links follow action access. Event connections preserve access to each source, so an attachment gives colleagues access only to records they can already read. Attachments remain available on completed and cancelled actions.

Where do I see everything that needs doing?

Actions sit inside the area they belong to, so Actions in the main menu gathers them into one board. Every job you are allowed to see is there, from every area, in columns: Open, In progress, Blocked and Done.

Drag a card from one column to another to move the work along. Dropping a card on Done finishes it, and a message gives you ten seconds to undo that if it was the wrong one. On a phone, choose Action status to see full-width cards for Open, In progress, Blocked or Done. Use each card's menu to change its status. Filters opens a scrollable panel for title, area, owner, overdue and cancelled choices, and Clear filters resets them.

Each card names its area, the person who holds it and the date it is due. Choose the owner to hand it to somebody else, or the date to change it, and the change is saved where you stand. Every card also carries a menu that makes the same changes, so you can work through the whole board from there.

Filters across the top narrow the board to one area, to one person, to your own work, or to whatever has run late. Done shows the last month of finished work, with a way to read further back. Cancelled work arrives when you ask for it.

To add an action, open Areas, choose its area of work, then open a workstream and add the action there. Actions are your forum's to-do list, and the board brings them together so you can keep work moving.

How does parent feedback turn into a change?

Create a workstream for each separate piece of work, and keep adding useful records as it develops. Actions show who will do what. Meetings and notes explain what people said. Decisions record what was agreed. Documents and progress updates keep the evidence with the work. Together they give team members with access a clear timeline and provide the facts used in reports.

A workstream is the thread tying what families told you to what changed because of it. The area's Overview shows up to four active workstreams, and each title opens that piece of work directly. View all workstreams opens the Workstreams tab with all statuses included, while View active workstreams shows the work that is still open.

Every workstream has a status: Exploring, In progress, Waiting on others, Reviewing impact or Closed. Any status can follow any other, because a piece of work sometimes needs another go.

The top of a workstream shows its status, visibility and lead, followed by its aim, what is happening and the next step. Edit aim and Edit next step open short editors, and the next step can include a follow-up date. Edit details opens the wider editor.

To correct a progress update, choose Edit from its Update actions menu or open the update and choose Edit. Area managers can also choose Delete, which asks for confirmation and removes the update from the workstream and recent activity. Audit history, documents and any original email remain.

Work tools opens separate pages for the aim, actions, family feedback, meetings, partner commitments, items needing attention, results, documents and links. These pages show records for this workstream. Documents holds uploaded files, and Links holds external addresses. Meetings includes directly linked meetings and meetings whose agenda discusses this work, with each meeting appearing once. Choose Add existing meeting in Work tools or the Meetings page to select an earlier or upcoming meeting from the same area of work. The workstream is added to its agenda once, keeping the existing agenda order.

Workstream activity shows updates and changes, with the author when their name is available. Choose an activity filter to focus on one kind of record, and choose Show more of the history to read earlier entries. Area managers can add updates here.

Choose More beside Edit details to open the Workstream menu. It holds Settings, Export and Move to another Area. Settings holds the name, who can see the workstream, the next member update date and its topics. Changing who can see it needs publishing approval. Export turns the thread into a report you can share with a funder or partnership board.

To move a workstream, choose Move workstream from its row Actions menu or its settings. Choose another active area of work in the same forum, review the attached records and confirm. You need permission to manage work in both areas. The lead and the owners of open actions need access to the destination, and the confirmation lists anyone whose access needs arranging. You can cancel, arrange access or reassign the work, then try again.

Actions, decisions, commitments, documents and forms move with the workstream, keeping their owners and sharing settings. Earlier meetings and discussion notes stay in their original area and are detached from this workstream. Its timeline records the move. Moving confidential material also requires confidential access in both areas.

Because the story is recorded as you go, members can see how far a piece of work has got, and you can show anybody who asks how a worry raised around a kitchen table ended up changing a service.

How do I pause, finish or archive an area?

An area is always in one of four states. Active means it is under way, Paused means it is resting while you wait on something, Completed means the work is done, and Archived files it away. Change it from the menu in the top right of the area's own screen, or select several areas in the list and choose Change status.

Archiving checks with you first. Everything travels with the area, so the jobs, the decisions, the meetings, the documents and the evidence are all still there to read.

Archiving has a permission of its own, separate from being able to edit an area, so your forum can let several people run an area while the decision to close it stays with the chair.

An area can always come back. Find it with the status filter and mark it active again.

What does confidential mean?

Some work needs a smaller audience: a complaint, something about a member of staff, one family's own case. Switch an area to confidential, either as you create it or later through Edit, and it shows to the people in it and to anybody your forum trusts with confidential access.

A confidential area is marked Confidential wherever it appears, so everybody who can see it knows to treat it that way.

The setting covers what is inside the area as well as the area itself, so a confidential decision stays with the people entitled to read it.

What do the AI tools in an area do?

Area tools, on an area's Overview, holds two AI tools: the AI summary of the area and the AI member update. Both of them write a first draft for a person to check.

The AI summary is worth a look whatever your forum has decided about AI, because the platform does the counting itself. How many jobs are open, done, late or stuck, how many decisions are approved, how many partner promises are still outstanding: those numbers come from your own records, and each one is listed with the job, decision or meeting behind it.

Once your forum switches AI on in its settings, a short piece of writing joins those numbers, under a heading reminding you to read it before you share it. With AI switched off you keep the numbers and the records, and the summary tells you so plainly.

The writing keeps itself fresh. When the last summary is more than 15 minutes old, a small spinning circle appears beside it while a new one is written, and the new one replaces it a few seconds later.

The AI member update takes the decisions the area has approved, the jobs it has finished and the outcomes it has recorded, and drafts an update written for members. It arrives as a draft in the usual review queue, so a named person approves it before a single member sees it.

Recurring meetings and invitation responses

In an area's Meetings tab, choose Scheduling and invitations. People with meeting management access can add a series of 2 to 52 weekly, fortnightly or monthly meetings. Choose the repeat time zone, then enter the first meeting, its duration, privacy and agenda. Monthly meetings keep the original day where the month has one. Each occurrence has its own record.

Edit changes one meeting. Cancel remaining series marks future meetings cancelled and keeps their notes, links and history. Past meetings and occurrences already confirmed Held stay as they are. Confirmed participation remains a separate record. To change the repeat pattern, cancel what remains and add a replacement series.

Open an ordinary meeting in this list and choose Invitations and responses. Invite area participants adds invitations in the app. Add guest records an outside person's email and optional name. Copy their private response link from the live Hub and send it using your usual email. This screen records invitations and replies. Your email service handles sending and delivery.

Guests can read the basic meeting details and respond through their private link without an account. Responses close at the scheduled start or cancellation, and details expire seven days after the start. Removing the invitation immediately revokes the link and removes its contact details. Separately confirmed attendance stays available. Saved audience invitations keep their existing journey.

Signed-in members choose My meeting invitations under Current work, or open the meeting reminder, to respond to their own invitation. A response records a plan to attend. The organiser confirms actual attendance separately.

What is Outreach?

Outreach keeps your forum's relationships with schools, health services, charities and community groups in one place, so the whole committee knows who you know, who looks after each relationship and what happens next.

Open Outreach from the main menu. The Overview shows tiles for your own follow-ups, overdue follow-ups, follow-ups needing an owner and organisations without an owner, and each tile opens the list behind it. Contacts, Organisations, Initiatives and Follow-ups sit alongside it.

An organisation needs only a name to start. Add as many contacts to it as you like, including a shared inbox, and each one stays a contact of your forum, separate from its membership.

Create initiative guides you through its name and purpose, choosing organisations and contacts, and reviewing your choices. You can choose specific people or shared inboxes under each organisation, or choose contacts later. Back keeps your draft, and a refused save keeps your choices for retry.

The initiative opens after creation with your chosen contacts grouped under their organisations. Add organisations or contacts opens the same picker with existing choices selected. Edit changes the initiative or an organisation's progress. Removing participants preserves directory records, earlier activity, outcomes and outstanding follow-ups. Archive keeps the initiative's history; edit its status from the archived view to restore it.

Chairs and steering committee members have Outreach from the start. A chair can give other roles permission to view it, manage it or export it in Settings.

How do I record contact and plan the next step?

Open Follow-ups in Outreach to review open work, your own follow-ups, overdue work and records needing an owner. The Actions menu offers Mark done, Reschedule, Reassign and Cancel follow-up. Mark done gives you ten seconds to undo. Open a follow-up to see its organisation, contact, initiative and notes together.

Select follow-ups to reschedule, reassign or cancel them together. Failed changes remain selected for retry. Completed and cancelled views retain the earlier records and their history.

Open an organisation and choose Record activity. Say whether it was an email, a call, a meeting, a visit or a note, when it happened and what was said, and add the next follow-up in the same form with an owner and a date.

Follow-ups are actions, so they appear in the owner's list on the Hub dashboard as well as in Outreach, and the owner gets a reminder in the Hub when one falls due.

Every organisation has a relationship owner. Select organisations or contacts and choose Assign owner to give them all to one colleague at once, and that person looks after the relationship for each organisation's contacts.

Start with an organisation, then add its professional contacts or shared inboxes. An empty Contacts list offers Add organisation when one is needed. On phones, use Outreach section to move between the lists and Follow-up view to choose the work you want to see.

Organisations has search, filters and selection above the list. On a phone, More filters opens the additional choices. Use row Actions to edit, assign an owner or archive, and use the selected Actions menu to manage several organisations. Failed updates remain selected for retry. Archive retains contacts and relationship history, and Include archived helps you find the organisation again.

Initiatives group organisations around one purpose, such as a round of visits to secondary schools. Each organisation keeps its own progress within an initiative, so the same organisation can take part in several.

Open an initiative and choose Follow-ups to see its next steps. Open work, completed work and cancelled work stay together in that initiative. Managers can mark a follow-up done with Undo, reschedule it or choose another owner. On phones, use Initiative section to switch between follow-ups and the selected organisations and contacts.

How are outreach contacts looked after?

Open a contact's name to read its details before editing. Managers can choose Edit or Archive in row Actions and on the detail page. Archived contacts retain earlier activity and follow-ups, and Include archived makes them available again. Use Edit to restore a contact.

Outreach is for professional contact details. Keep family case histories and sensitive personal information out of its notes.

Mark an organisation or a contact Do not contact and it stays out of new follow-ups. Archiving keeps its history and can be reversed.

Import contacts from a spreadsheet by downloading the template, uploading your file and matching its columns, and you check a preview before anything is saved. Exporting needs its own permission and is recorded in the audit trail.

Outreach contact details stay inside the Hub, apart from member pages, notification text and the AI assistant, and Data protection in Settings can find, export or erase a contact on request.

If you are the Chair

Your home screen gives you a quick view of how things are going. You can see overdue actions, decisions waiting for you, your budget position and upcoming reporting deadlines in one place.

Keep partner promises up to date, including who made each promise and when it is due. If a deadline passes, the commitment will be brought back to your attention instead of getting lost.

Anything published to members needs approval first. You can approve it yourself or give that responsibility to someone else.

If you are the Treasurer

Finance opens on current grants. Read the award, paid expenses, approved expenses awaiting payment and money left to spend for each grant. Balances reflect the expenses you can see. Search by grant or funder, or choose Closed grants or Expired grants to find earlier awards.

Select a grant to see its Overview, Budget, Expenses and Schedule. Choose Add expense from Finance, a grant or a budget heading. The form carries over the grant or heading where you started. You can choose a recent supplier, attach a receipt or invoice, then save a draft or submit the expense for approval.

Open Awaiting approval or Missing receipts from Grants to find expenses across the forum. A named receipt alert opens the expense directly. Expense details show the receipt, budget split and approval progress. Mark paid records a payment you have already made.

Changing a submitted expense's budget split starts a fresh approval round. Approvers can review the updated split and sign off again.

To correct the wrong receipt, open the expense and choose Replace receipt beside the file. The original stays attached until the replacement uploads. Choose Remove receipt to detach an unrelated file, or replace a receipt after payment if needed. Correcting a receipt while an expense is awaiting approval starts a fresh approval round.

Schedule lists expected payments and funder reporting dates. Select a date to open its grant and scheduled entry. Export expenses from Expenses, and find approval rules, year-end close and the audit trail in Finance settings. Permissions control the actions you can use, and exports are recorded in the audit trail.

Finance access is separate from access to member data. Being able to manage money does not automatically give you access to members' contact details or diagnoses.

If you are a Parent Representative

You will see the boards and service areas you represent, along with the parent feedback linked to them. You will not see the forum's other internal work unless you need access to it.

Before a meeting, use the briefing papers and parent feedback summary to prepare. Afterwards, record what was discussed and any promises that were made, including who is responsible and when each one is due.

This creates a clear record you can return to months later, so important promises do not get forgotten.

If you look after data protection

Consent is saved as a separate, dated record. It is never assumed just because someone joins or completes a form.

You can respond to a subject access request, record a data breach and apply retention rules from the platform. You do not need access to confidential discussions or finances to do this.

The audit trail records who did what and when. Existing entries cannot be edited or removed.

How do we bring in feedback from Padlet?

If your forum collects feedback on Padlet boards, the Feedback section of the Operations Hub brings each post in so you can add it to the workstream it belongs to. The section is in beta, and chairs can use it from the start.

Padlet gives API keys on its paid plans, and the Padlet account the key belongs to must be an admin of every board you connect. Forum only reads your boards, keeps each post's words without the name of the person who wrote it, and keeps the key encrypted, showing only its last four characters.

Each post takes the name of its section on the board, or the board's own title, so feedback arrives grouped the way your forum set up its boards. New posts arrive every 15 minutes, or straight away with Sync now, which tells you which boards synced and which need attention.

Add a post to an existing workstream, or create a workstream for it, and an area of work too when none fits. The post then appears under Family feedback on that workstream, where you can read it in full or return it to the Feedback list.

Disconnecting a board stops new posts from arriving, and keeps everything it already brought in, including feedback added to workstreams.

1. Open Feedback and choose Boards.
2. Choose Add key, paste the key from Padlet's developer settings, and choose Save and check connection.
3. Choose Add a board and paste each board's link.
4. Choose Sync now, then add each post to a workstream.

Send a form and see who has replied

Create a form, share it with members and see who has opened or completed it. You can also send reminders from the same place.

Forms have clear labels above each field. Members can reach Submit while scrolling through their answers.

If you make a form anonymous, it stays anonymous after it opens. Replies are released together after the form closes and at least five people complete it. Names and individual reply times are withheld. Members decide what to include in free text. The separate invitation list supports completion progress and reminders.

When you want to analyse the answers elsewhere, export them to a spreadsheet.

Measure a consultation

Open Mindmap Beta from the Operations Hub menu to explore your forum’s connected work. Compact view opens with a full canvas inside the workspace. Search opens the area and item list when you need it, and Standard view restores the map header and permanent sidebar. Areas appear as coloured neighbourhoods, workstreams appear as diamonds, and linked records appear as smaller circles. Your account’s existing access decides which records appear.

Select an area to focus on its workstreams. Select a workstream to reveal its linked actions, decisions, meetings, feedback, documents, commitments, events, notes and outcomes. The details panel lists every parent and child connection. Selecting a related item follows that connection on the map. A shared record appears once with several connections, and its details show all readable parents.

Drag the background to pan, scroll or pinch to zoom, and use All areas to return to the overview. Drag an item to pin its position. Dragging an area moves its workstreams and records together, including collapsed items. Dragging a workstream carries its records. These movements preserve the branch shape, and dragging a record changes its position within that branch. Release pin allows the item to settle again. Pause motion stops settling and moving connection markers while navigation stays available. Reset view under More restores the default positions, pins, zoom, selection and opened branches after confirmation. More holds motion, reset, browsing, help and Full screen. Full screen also uses the space occupied by the workspace header and navigation; Escape returns you to the workspace. The map opens with its navigator hidden.

Search finds readable titles and record types across collapsed branches. Browse all items provides a keyboard-accessible list, with search to narrow longer results. Full titles and saved information stay available in the details panel. Expand details provides more reading space, and Compact details restores the smaller panel. Arrow keys pan the focused canvas, plus and minus zoom, and F fits the map. Reduced motion follows your device preference.

Your private layout is saved per account and forum and follows you across devices. The demo saves layouts in this browser per persona. Returning within the signed-in workspace shows the cached map immediately. Forum content stays in session memory; positions and display choices are cached locally and saved to your account. Update and background checks apply current authorised records in place while retaining your arrangement. New items appear near their parent, and removed or inaccessible items disappear. Ordinary network failures keep the last successful view and offer Retry update. Sign-out, account changes and confirmed access loss clear the affected content. Checks run on browser return and every five minutes while visible. If another device changes the saved view, choose Save this view or Load saved view. Saving failures retain your arrangement and offer Retry saving.

Work recorded directly against an area appears under Area-wide work. Forum-level work appears under Forum-wide work. Events include their preparation actions. Use the existing record screens to edit the forum’s work. The Riverview demo uses the same map with its fictional records.

Prepare an event

Open Events and select an event to see its preparation. Add suggested tasks creates editable tasks for the venue, catering, presenter and event publicity once for that event. You can also add your own tasks, assign forum role holders and set due dates.

Each task is shared with Actions, its owner's My work and the linked workstream. Completing or editing it in one place updates the same record everywhere. Cancel task keeps the record in the history, and the status filter lets you find it again.

Change workstream optionally connects the event to one workstream. Saving moves every preparation task to that workstream and its Area of work. Clearing the link keeps them as forum actions. Existing owners and completion history stay with the tasks; assigned people need access to the destination Area before outstanding work can be moved there.

Task owners and the linked Area team can read internal planning while the event is being prepared. Draft wording, protected audiences and publishing controls retain their own permissions. Published follows the event's actual publishing status, and scheduled or withdrawn events show their current status.

Deleting an event draft cancels unfinished preparation and retains task history. Unlink its events before deleting a workstream. Workstream moves carry the event link and preparation with the work. The demo uses the same screens and keeps its read-only protection.

Publish news, events and progress

Use Publishing to share news, explain progress and share consultation results with members or the public. Create events in Events and questionnaires in Forms.

On your first visit, choose Write your first post, start with a welcome, progress or results structure, or view an example. Examples stay as previews until you choose a structure and save your own draft.

Save your draft to open its details. What happens next explains the stage and shows the actions available to your role. Submit for review, read and approve the wording, then publish now or schedule it for later. A forum administrator can manage publishing permissions.

Choose who can read your post. Members can read published member posts in the app, and public posts can be read by anyone. Saved audiences are available where enabled. Member notifications follow their preferences, and Facebook has its own approval and delivery.

Use search, stage and audience filters to find posts. Open a draft to edit it, read review feedback or delete it. Published wording is reworked through withdrawal, draft and review. Archive keeps a withdrawn post and its history. Selected drafts can be deleted and selected withdrawn posts archived; failed records remain selected for retry.

When writing in your browser, paste from Word or a web page to keep supported headings, lists, tables, colours and emphasis. The toolbar also offers Match the app style and Paste as plain text. Choose or remove any unavailable images before saving; if an image upload fails, your writing stays in the editor.

Forum website pages can include formatted writing sections alongside headings and buttons. Preview the page at desktop and phone widths before publishing. Members can read the same formatting in their app.

To share a public news item, event or consultation result on Facebook, connect your forum's Page in Settings, then open Facebook post from the publication. Review and approve the Facebook wording separately. An authorised publisher can send it after the website item is published, or choose a posting time in Europe/London. You can include one uploaded image.

Publishing shows Facebook delivery and any recovery action. After removing a post, edit and approve new wording to share it again. Withdrawing the website item cancels pending delivery and requests removal of an existing Facebook post. Disconnecting the Page cancels pending delivery; existing Facebook posts remain on the Page. Connection is available once platform setup and verification are complete.

How a member changes the name they show under

A member's name appears beside their messages, their replies and anything they offer to help with, so it is worth having it read the way they would write it themselves.

Somebody who joins by following the link in an invitation, or by asking to join, starts under the part of their email address before the @, so "jane.smith@example.org" reads as "jane.smith". The app asks them for their name on the Membership tab as soon as they arrive, and they can change it there at any time afterwards.

You can also correct a name yourself. Open Settings, then People, and choose the pencil beside the name. The member keeps the ability to change it in their app, and your forum's audit trail records that you made the change.

What members see

Members get one place for local news, events, open consultations and updates on the forum's work. Upcoming events and consultations stay available as news is added. Event details show the recorded start date and time with the reader's local UTC offset. Notification links open the relevant update, assigned form or conversation after sign-in. Unavailable content explains that your access may have changed. Installed phone apps receive native tap handling through their next app update.

They choose the topics they care about, so they only receive relevant updates.

Membership is free for parent carers and always will be. Your forum pays for its members through one subscription.

Following up offers to help

Members can offer to help through My membership and see the progress recorded on their own offer. They can withdraw an offer whenever they choose.

In Settings, open People and choose Offers to help. You can also reach it from Participation. Reading the queue requires access to member records. Managing it also requires permission to manage people.

Open an offer or choose Edit to record progress, a coordinator and a follow-up date. Check the member's contact permission before contacting them. Closing an offer keeps it in the Closed filter. Use row checkboxes to close several offers together. Agreeing an opportunity keeps role appointments as a separate decision.

Ending protected appointments

In Membership, open Check the answers and choose Manage appointments. The register shows current and earlier appointments. Access to the register and member names follows your existing permissions.

A person who manages protected appointments can choose End appointment in a row or its details. Select checkboxes to end several appointments together. Give a reason and confirm. The appointment ends immediately and its history remains in the register. Use Appoint somebody to grant replacement access.

Tracking PCF sales and marketing in the superuser console

Platform administrators use Sales and marketing in the superuser console to track their own relationships with PCFs. On phones, open More and choose Sales and marketing. Each administrator's contacts, activities and follow-ups are private to their account, with verified second-factor sign-in required.

Choose Add PCF to start a relationship from the forum register. Record its sales stage, marketing source, campaign and next action. Each PCF can have several contacts, and Make main contact chooses the person shown in your list.

Record activity saves a dated email, call, meeting, demo or note, with its outcome and campaign. You can set your next action and follow-up date at the same time. Due today and Overdue show the follow-ups needing attention. Complete follow-up records the completed work and clears it from your queue.

Platform status shows the PCF's existing enquiries, forum activation and billing position. Review and add contact lets you confirm an enquiry sender's details before saving them as a sales contact. Forum setup continues through the console's Forums section.

Edit and Archive are available in relationship Actions and details. Archived relationships keep their history and can be restored. Contacts and activities have Edit and Delete controls; contacts referenced by an activity stay available until those links are removed. Selected relationships can be archived or restored, and selected contacts can be deleted where their history allows it.

The marketing summary counts active relationships by their current source, campaign and sales stage. Record outreach manually as you work with each PCF. This personal CRM is separate from the Outreach section that forums use for their own partner relationships.

How billing works

We invoice your forum once a year. You pay by bank transfer using a purchase order. We do not take card payments or store card details.

Your band follows the number of people who hold a membership of your forum, from parent carers to the team that runs it. Prices exclude VAT, and a year paid annually costs ten months of the monthly rate.

Where an invoice goes unpaid we will talk to you first, and we may suspend the forum so that it stops accepting new members. Your records stay readable and exportable throughout, and we keep them whatever is owed.

Paying for it from your participation grant

You may be able to pay for Forum from your Parent Carer Participation Grant as a participation or administration cost. Check your grant conditions, or ask your adviser at Contact if you are unsure.

We can also give you a short summary to share with your committee or include with your grant report.

Exporting your data, or leaving

You can export your data at any time while your subscription is active. It belongs to your forum.

If you decide to leave, you can ask us for an export for up to 30 days after your agreement ends. After that, we delete the remaining data.

Enabling Membership and Audiences for your forum

The platform administrator enables setup for each forum separately. In the superuser console, open Forums, choose Manage beside the forum, then choose Enable setup under Membership and audience setup. Type the forum's slug to confirm. The page shows the saved state and offers Disable setup when enabled.

An authorised forum administrator then refreshes the Operations Hub to see Membership and Audiences. The forum's existing roles and protected access determine what each person can do. Questions and classification reviews remain separate steps. An audience is ready to use when an authorised person saves it.

Membership opens with a short explanation of why your forum asks questions. Choose Start setting up questions, then follow Choose questions, Check the answers and Make questions available. You can also choose a named step directly. Use ready-made questions from the catalogue or choose Write a question. The guide asks who the question is about, what it says and how members answer, then shows a summary before Add it saves the question. Back keeps what you entered, and a failed save keeps the draft so you can correct or retry it.

Enabling setup leaves collection settings unchanged. Choose ordinary collection separately in Membership; restricted collection also needs platform readiness. Disabling setup hides the admin setup and targeting controls after the Hub refreshes, while existing member information, withdrawals and approved deliveries retain their own rules.

Choosing members for an audience

An audience is a named list of members who share something in common, based on answers they have given your forum. For example, it could be parents of children under five, members living in KY12, parents of children with speech and language delay, or members who prefer email. The list updates as their answers change. Saving it does not contact anyone.

Open Audiences and choose New audience. Read the examples, then choose Let's get started. Choose Use a template for a common group or Create from scratch for a guide that helps you choose one filter at a time.

A template is a starting point you can change. Choose your forum's question, then enter the ages, postcode district or answers you want. For an age range, the youngest and oldest ages are both included. Enter 0 and 4 for children under five. A template explains when a suitable question needs to be added in Membership first.

From scratch, choose whether a filter is about the member or choose Filter by Children or Young People. Next, choose a question, how its answer should match, and the value or answers you want. For contact choices, one or more selected answers means Email or SMS; every selected answer requires both. Add another filter when you want to narrow the audience further.

Members must meet every filter in the guided list. All the child filters must describe the same child, including an adult son or daughter or someone else the member cares for. Any one matching child includes the parent once, even if two children match. Choose Change this filter to adjust a value before saving.

Check the description, continue to name and review, then save your audience. It is ready to use immediately. Its overview shows Current audience, and Show matching members displays names when you have permission to manage members. Change history holds earlier saved filters. A chair can disable saved filters, and messages follow each member's current contact preferences. Edit the filters opens the detailed editor for more complex combinations.

The Audiences list has search and status filters above its table. Open an audience by its name, or choose Edit in its Actions menu to change its filters. Select a checkbox to show Edit, Remove and Open above the list. Select several audiences and choose Remove to remove them together. The Actions menu also offers removal. On a phone, the same controls appear with readable rows.

Choose Remove in an audience's Actions menu or on its detail page to take it off the current list and stop offering it for new forms and messages. Confirm the named audience or selected count. Earlier forms, messages and saved history remain, and you can read them using the Removed filter. Removal cannot be undone; disabling saved filters is a separate chair action.

How do I see questionnaire coverage?

Open Settings, People and Questionnaire coverage. A role with coverage permission alone can open Questionnaire coverage directly in Settings. The view shows ordinary published member questions and counts account-linked approved people once each. Offline people whose eligibility is unknown appear separately.

Each question separates current answers, answers to an older version, declined, unknown, withdrawn and missing information. The current answer rate uses the eligible account-linked population. A question with no eligible people has an unavailable rate. Protected and supported-person questions stay under their existing access rules.

Choose a date to read observations by the end of that day in London time, or use the current view. The coverage start shows when complete observations begin. Earlier history stays unavailable. Replacing a question preserves its earlier recorded meaning; current access and publication rules also govern historical views.

Search the questions, refresh the figures or open People to review the underlying records. When your role and forum setup allow it, Manage questions opens Membership. These figures update from recorded information. Authorised erasure clears personal observations and advances the history coverage start.

How do I record paid and volunteer work?

Choose Recorded work from My work, an assigned action, a meeting agenda or an event. People with an explicit recording permission can also choose My recorded work in the member app. Ordinary membership alone provides no recording permission.

Choose the person when you have permission to record on their behalf, then enter the work date, minutes, paid or volunteer capacity and category. You can link a readable activity, Workstream or one primary grant. A permission covering one Area requires a source in that Area.

Review any suggested activity duration and explicitly confirm the person's contribution before saving. Three people each confirming two hours produce six person-hours, while the meeting duration remains two hours. Completed actions and schedules contribute hours only after a confirmed entry.

Search and filter recorded entries, open their details and choose Edit or Remove. A correction or removal needs a reason and retains history. Select several entries to Remove together. Failed entries remain selected for retry. Removed and unconfirmed entries are shown separately from confirmed-hour totals.

Period totals split paid work, volunteer work and categories using London work dates. Linked activity follows its current Area and Workstream. One primary grant receives each entry once; unallocated minutes remain visible. Separate permissions govern named records, totals and exports.

A possible-overlap message asks you to review other readable work entries for the same person and date. The platform retains the saved contribution while you check its evidence. Refresh when work or access changes.

How do I confirm activity and attendance?

In Calendar, click a meeting and choose Participation in its popup, or open a meeting agenda or event and choose Participation. Separate permissions govern recording, participant names and totals. Bookings and meeting invitations describe planned participation; actual attendance is recorded from evidence.

Choose Change activity state and confirm Held. The form uses recorded actual times or defaults to the scheduled Calendar dates and times. Check these times and adjust them if the activity happened at a different time. You can also record cancellation or postponement with a reason. A past scheduled activity stays unconfirmed until someone confirms it. A postponed activity can link to a readable replacement with an existing participation record.

Role holders and invited or booked people appear automatically on Participation, alongside recorded participants. For a held activity, tick the capacities each person attended in and choose Save attendance once for your changes. Ticking a capacity means Attended. A person counts once even with several capacities. Unticking all capacities leaves attendance unconfirmed. Use Edit to record Did not attend or Unknown, and add known participants or external walk-ins when another person needs recording. External walk-ins start with unknown attendance and receive no membership or account access.

Additional anonymous attendees are a separate headcount. Confirm that this count excludes everyone recorded by name. Anonymous attendances contribute to total attendance, while unique known participants use the recorded people. Unknown attendance remains separate.

Search and filter the roster, use row Actions to Edit or Remove, or select several rows for attendance actions. Remove keeps the correction history. Authorised retention users can erase an external identity across the forum, leaving attendance facts without the name. Member identities follow their existing retention journey.

Period totals use London dates, actual starts for held activities and scheduled starts for other activity states. They deduplicate known people after the selected source scope. Area and Workstream filters use current attribution and exclude events with no such attribution. Open a listed source to inspect its permitted records. Refresh the period when records or access change.

How do I read membership counts and history?

Open People in Settings, then choose Membership history and counts. Approved in force counts active and suspended memberships once each, including recorded offline members. Active, suspended, invited and ended memberships are shown separately. A person holding several account-linked roles appears in each role count, while remaining one person in the total. Account-linked and offline totals are shown separately for reconciliation. Billing continues to use active account-linked members.

Choose a summary date to see the membership state recorded by the end of that day. Dates use your device timezone. The list below continues to show current records. The summary shows when it was generated and when complete recorded history begins. Earlier changes remain unknown, and a complete count is unavailable for dates before that starting point.

Open a person's name to read their recorded changes and role history. Record creation and latest activation are labelled separately. A missing activation date stays unknown. You can edit a name or remove a person when your role allows it. Removal ends their membership and roles; retained history stays available. Select several rows to remove, suspend or reinstate memberships together. Failed changes remain selected for retry.

Your existing information export includes your recorded membership history. Account closure and authorised erasure clear personal history under the forum's retention rules. Earlier totals affected by erasure become unavailable, while current counts continue from a fresh observed starting point.

How do I migrate an approved member register?

Open Settings, People and Import approved members. A dedicated importer can open Member imports in Settings. Choose a CSV of up to 500 rows and 1 MB, name the source system and review the column mapping. A stable source record key and member name are required. Known joining dates use YYYY-MM-DD; a blank date stays unknown. Membership state is active, suspended or ended. Unused columns are discarded.

Stage and preview before applying. The preview distinguishes new people, unchanged source records, changed source values, possible duplicates and invalid rows. Similar names remain separate until you review the evidence. Edit a row to correct it, select a reviewed update or attach the source to an existing person. Account-linked changes continue through account management.

Select the reviewed rows and choose Apply reviewed rows. Successful rows leave the draft; failed rows remain available to correct and retry. Repeating the same source key keeps the same person. Exclude rows you do not want to apply. Archive removes staged copies and retains applied source provenance. Draft previews expire after 30 days, and authorised import activity or retention maintenance clears expired copies.

An authorised duplicate reviewer can open an offline member's details and choose Review as a duplicate. Record the original evidence and choose the current person to retain. Earlier histories remain recorded, and current totals follow the retained person's membership state. Imported sources and duplicate reviews show provenance and an Undo route where later identity or activity evidence allows it. Account access, questionnaire answers, roles and communication choices remain under their existing controls.

How do I record members who use other channels?

Open Settings, People and Offline members. Choose Add offline member, enter the member's name and add a joining date when the forum has evidence for it. The record starts as an active approved membership. An unknown original joining date stays visible, and the platform records when you created the record.

The register offers search, state and account filters, selection and member details on a computer or phone. Edit changes the name. Suspend and Reinstate record current membership changes. Remove ends the membership and keeps its permitted history. An authorised retention lead can erase an unlinked offline record when the forum's retention rules require it. Linked records use the existing account retention journey.

When an offline member begins using an account, choose Link account and select their active account membership in the same forum. The member opens Membership in the member app and confirms that the proposed membership is theirs, or declines it. Both records count separately until confirmation; afterwards they count once and retain their earlier recorded history. Matching names and email addresses remain separate people until an explicit confirmed link establishes identity.

Offline membership recording and account linking keep communication choices, questionnaire answers and operational access under their existing controls. Role appointments continue through People. The summary counts offline membership alongside account-linked membership, and billing continues to use active account-linked members.

Record and approve timesheets

Timesheets is available to every forum. Open Timesheet setup to follow three steps: choose submission periods, enrol a contributor with their reviewer, then open their timesheet. The schedule preview explains the first period and its deadline. Submission frequency becomes fixed when reporting begins. Saving a contributor's enrolment starts their submission obligations on the date shown.

Open Timesheets in the Operations Hub and choose Record your first activity to begin recording paid or volunteer work. Include meetings, preparation, administration, family engagement, training and travel. The weekly grid shows activities and days on larger screens. On a phone, choose a day to enter its time and see daily totals. Enter 45m or 1h 30m, or choose a duration shortcut. Favourites and Use last week's activities remember activity details while you enter the actual time worked.

Add to week places an activity in your unsaved entries. Confirm the actual time and choose Save changes in the panel below the editor. Your entries are saved when the confirmation appears. Review and submit period sends your completed period to its reviewer and locks its entries. For a period with zero hours, choose Submit period and explicitly confirm Submit no time. You can withdraw a submitted sheet to edit it.

Approvals opens on Awaiting my review. Choose Overdue submissions, Returned or All periods to follow up on other states. Open a complete timesheet to review its daily entries and totals. A returned timesheet displays the reviewer's feedback beside its period and in details. Choose Edit this period to return to the weekly editor, save corrections and choose Resubmit timesheet.

The assigned reviewer can reopen an approved sheet with a reason. Corrections need approval again, and the earlier submitted versions remain in history. Your reviewer needs access to every source in the sheet, and a different person approves your own time.

Download a timesheet as CSV or PDF from its details. Expand Submission and approval history and choose Open submitted version to read or download an earlier submission. Reports groups time in progress, reviewer-approved time and submissions to follow up. Authorised reviewers can open approvals for the report dates and adjust the list's filters. Settings > Notifications controls your timesheet updates and overdue reminder.

Signing out of your account

Signing out closes the screens and dialogs you opened during that session. Signing in again starts from the app home screen. This also applies when your session ends in another tab.

Save any changes you want to keep before signing out or changing accounts.

How your forum's data is kept separate

Each forum's records are kept separate. This separation is built into the database, helping to prevent one forum from accessing another forum's data.

Files are kept in private storage. Protected publication images are opened by signed-in readers who have access to the publication. Exports need a specific permission and are recorded in the audit trail.

Your forum is the data controller and we are the data processor for information in your workspace. You can review our data processing agreement before uploading any real information.

Membership information and the people you support

Your membership record belongs to you. When your forum offers membership questions, you choose what to share and can take an answer back. Information about a person you support receives additional protection and records the authority under which your forum holds it.

Your forum chooses when questions are available. You can still open Your information from Membership while questions are closed, and Copy your information gives you a copy to save somewhere private.

Protected answers and audience membership are available only through the access your forum has explicitly granted. Information about who is in an audience stays with the people authorised to read it.

Please remind members to keep free-text answers free of details that could identify a child.

How the AI features work

AI features are off until your forum chooses to turn them on. They can draft and suggest, but they cannot approve spending, assign roles, publish or delete anything.

Member contact details and special category information are not included in AI requests. A named person reviews every suggestion before it is used.

We never use your data to train an AI model.

How to request a demo

Email info@sendsorta.co.uk to arrange a demo of Forum by Sendsorta. Tell us which forum you represent and what you would like to see.

We can show you areas of work, finances, publishing, forms and the member app, and answer your questions using the fictional Riverview forum.

What can I see in a demo?

We can show you how Forum works for chairs, steering committee members, parent representatives and members.

Tell us which roles you would like to see when you email info@sendsorta.co.uk to request a demo.

1. Chair: see the whole forum, including governance, finances and approvals.
2. Steering Committee: see strategic work, assigned actions and funding oversight.
3. Parent Representative: see one service area, its evidence and its commitments.
4. Member: see the app as a parent carer would.