Smart Parents Evening

4 steps 6 min Updated 29 October 2026

Overview

Smart Parents Evening lets you set up parents' evening events and split each one into equal appointment slots. You choose the date, start and end times and how long each appointment lasts, mark any slots as breaks, and choose whether each slot is In Person or a Video Call. Once parents have booked, you can see every booking slot by slot and download the lot as a spreadsheet.

Events and bookings are stored by Realsmart's parents' evening service rather than in your website itself, so the screen only works when you are signed in to wp-admin through your school's Realsmart single sign-on. Anyone who can write posts, including editors and administrators, can use it.

Getting set up

Step 1: Open Parents Evening

Sign in through your school's Realsmart single sign-on, then select Smart Parents' Evening in the left-hand menu. You will see the Create Event and Create Multiple Events buttons above a list of your existing events.

Parents Evening screen with Create Event and Create Multiple Events buttons at the top and a yellow notice reading "No events found." where the events list will appear

Step 2: Enter the event details

Select Create Event. On the Create New Event form, fill in:

Name — e.g. "Year 3 Parents' Evening".
Location — e.g. "School Hall".
Email — a valid email address for the event.
Date — must be in the future; the earliest you can pick is tomorrow.
Start Time and End Time — these start at 16:00 and 20:00; the end time must be after the start time.
Block Length (minutes) — how long each appointment lasts. It starts at 10.

As you type, Slots Preview shows the Total Slots and the start time of each one. The Next button only becomes available once every field is valid.

Step 3: Set breaks and video-call slots

After selecting Next, you see a summary of the event under Event Information and each slot under Available Slots.

Click a slot to turn it into a Break Slot. Click it again to make it a Regular Slot again.
For each regular slot, use its drop-down to choose In Person or Video Call.

Selecting Back clears any breaks and Video Call choices you had set, so finish the details and timings first.

After creating the event, open Manage Bookings and check that each slot shows the type you chose. Video Call choices are not always saved against the right slots, and Manage Bookings cannot change a slot's type — if they are wrong, contact Realsmart support.

Step 4: Create the event

Select Confirm & Create Event. A message confirms "Event created successfully." and you return to the events list, where the new event appears under its date.

Features

The events list

Where to find it: Smart Parents' Evening

Events are grouped by date, earliest first. Each row shows:

Column	What it shows
Name	The event name
Location	Where it takes place
Date	The event date
Start Time / End Time	The event's hours
Block Length	Appointment length in minutes
Total Slots	Booked slots out of all slots, e.g. 4/24
Created At	When the event was set up
Booking Page	A Link that opens the event's booking page for parents, and a Copy button that copies its address to share

Each row also has these buttons:

Edit Details — change the Name and Location, then select Save Details. The date, times and block length are shown as Timing (read-only) and cannot be changed once the event exists.
Duplicate — makes a copy of the event, after you confirm.
Delete — removes the event after you confirm. This cannot be undone.
Manage Bookings — opens the slots and bookings for the event (see below).

Creating events for several teachers at once

Create Multiple Events creates one event per teacher in a single step, all with the same timings.

Under Select Teachers, tick each teacher, or use Select all. The search box filters the list by first or last name.
Under Event Name Template, set how each event is named. {title}, {first_name} and {last_name} are replaced for each teacher. A Preview shows the first few names.
Under Event Details, set the Location, Date, Start Time, End Time and Block Length (minutes). These apply to every event created.
Select the Create … Events button, which shows how many events will be created.

A message tells you how many events were created and names any that failed.

Setting	What it does	Default
Event Name Template	Name given to each teacher's event	{title} {first_name} {last_name}'s event
Location	Where every event takes place	Empty
Date	The date of every event	Empty
Start Time	When appointments start	16:00
End Time	When appointments end	20:00
Block Length (minutes)	Length of each appointment	10

The teacher list comes from your school's staff records held by Realsmart. Events made this way have no breaks set; use Manage Bookings afterwards to add them.

Managing slots and bookings

Manage Bookings shows Slots & Bookings for one event. For each slot you see its number, times and whether it is In Person or a Video Call.

A slot nobody has booked shows No bookings and a Set Break button (or Unset Break if it is already a break). The change is saved straight away.
A booked slot shows the Child Name, each parent's Name, Email and Phone, and any Additional Notes the parent added. It also has a Remove Booking button, but this does not currently remove the booking — contact Realsmart support if a booking needs cancelling.

Download as CSV saves a spreadsheet of every slot with the columns Slot Number, Start Time, End Time, Break, Online, Child Name, Parent Name, Parent Email, Parent Phone and Additional Notes. A slot booked by two parents appears once per parent.

The booking shortcode

A [pebs_booking] shortcode is reserved for a future booking form on your own website, but it does not display anything yet — adding it to a page shows the text [pebs_booking] itself, so do not put it on a live page.

Troubleshooting

The page says "No events found." even though we have events

The screen can only load events when you signed in to wp-admin through your school's Realsmart single sign-on. If you signed in any other way, sign out and back in through single sign-on, then open Smart Parents' Evening again. If it still shows nothing, contact Realsmart support.

The Next button stays greyed out

Every field on Create New Event must be valid, including Email. Look for red messages under the fields — for example "Date must be in the future" or "End time must be after start time".

I cannot change the date or time of an event

That is expected: Edit Details only changes the name and location. Create a new event with the right timings, then Delete the old one — but check Manage Bookings first, because deleting an event cannot be undone.

Create Multiple Events says it failed to load teachers

The teacher list comes from Realsmart's records for your school. Sign in again through single sign-on and retry; if it keeps failing, contact Realsmart support.

Your account needs to be able to write posts — editors and administrators can. Ask your website administrator to check your role.

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