How a question from a family gets answered

penleap.com/parent/supportSigned in as Parent

1

2

3

1. 1Notice: One row per question
2. 2Notice: The reference to quote
3. 3Click: Ask something new

Support lives inside the parent's own account rather than in an email address, which means a question arrives already knowing who is asking and which children they have. The reference number leads each row: it is the thing a parent reads out on the phone. A dot beside a subject means the centre has replied and it has not been read yet.

penleap.com/parent/supportSigned in as Parent

1

2

3

1. 1Type in: A subject line
2. 2Click: This decides who sees it first
3. 3Type in: The whole story, in one place

The category is the only field that changes anything: it decides who at the centre sees the ticket first. Everything else is prose. There is no priority field here on purpose — how urgent a thing is turns out to be the centre's judgement rather than the asker's, and a form that lets everyone choose Urgent quickly stops meaning anything.

penleap.com/parent/support/…Signed in as Parent

1

2

1. 1Notice: What was asked
2. 2Notice: The family can close it too

A ticket is a conversation, not a form submission. The parent's own words sit at the top and each reply lands underneath, so nobody has to reconstruct the thread out of an email chain. Close ticket is the parent's, not only the centre's: a family that no longer needs an answer can say so.

penleap.com/dashboard/supportSigned in as Org Admin

1

2

3

1. 1Type in: Find one by number or name
2. 2Click: Waiting on us
3. 3Notice: How many are open at all

The centre does not watch an inbox. Every ticket from every family is here, with its reference, who asked, the category and how long it has been waiting. The dot marks the ones where the family spoke last and nobody has answered yet — which is the only list that really matters first thing on a Monday.

penleap.com/dashboard/supportSigned in as Org Admin

1

1. 1Type in: Write the answer here

Opening a ticket shows the conversation and the person at once. Because the ticket was raised from inside an account rather than from an email address, the centre never has to work out which family this is or which child they mean.

penleap.com/dashboard/supportSigned in as Org Admin

1

2

1. 1Type in: The reply itself
2. 2Notice: What sending will do

The line under the box says exactly what will happen: the parent is emailed. That sentence is there because the alternative — a member of staff wondering whether a reply notifies anyone — is how a family ends up waiting a week for an answer that was written on the first day.

penleap.com/dashboard/supportSigned in as Org Admin

1

2

3

1. 1Click: Make it staff-only
2. 2Type in: The parent will never see this
3. 3Notice: Said plainly, before you send

The same box writes an internal note. The parent never sees it, and the composer turns amber and rewrites its own caption so nobody sends one to a family by accident. This is where the sentence that should not be in a reply goes — the reason a fee was waived, the thing to check before promising a place.

penleap.com/dashboard/supportSigned in as Org Admin

1

2

1. 1Notice: Where it has got to
2. 2Click: How hard it is pulling

Status is where the ticket is up to; priority is how hard it is pulling. Both are set here rather than on the form the parent filled in, which is why a queue of twenty tickets still sorts into something useful — nobody can mark their own question urgent.

penleap.com/parent/support/…Signed in as Parent

1

2

1. 1Notice: The question, still here
2. 2Notice: Where it got to

No forwarded email, no reference to paste. The reply is on the same page the parent opened, under their own words, and the ticket's status has moved on with it. A family that changes email address does not lose the history.

penleap.com/parent/support/…Signed in as Parent

1

2

1. 1Notice: Closed, not deleted
2. 2Click: Come back to it later

Closing does not delete anything. The conversation stays readable, and a family that needs to come back to it starts a follow-up that carries the original reference with it. Nobody has to explain the story twice, and the centre can see it is the same thread continuing.

penleap.com/parent/notificationsSigned in as Parent

1

1. 1Notice: Everything the centre has sent

A reply also shows up here, alongside marked work and announcements, so a parent who has not opened the support page for a fortnight still finds out. This is the same feed every other kind of update lands in; support is not a separate world.