How PickupLink works
One setup by the office, then the same four steps every school day: email, tap, verify, release. Here is each step in detail, including what happens when something goes wrong.
Once: the school sets itself up
A school administrator creates the school at the sign-up page and enters its address and timezone. They add grades, each with its dismissal time, and classrooms with their homeroom teacher. Students and their guardians come in from a CSV export of the student information system or are typed in by hand; each guardian is a parent, grandparent, relative or emergency contact with a "can pick up" flag. Teachers and office staff receive an emailed invitation to set a password.
In Settings, the administrator can draw a geofence: a box on a satellite map covering the pickup lane and the queue leading to it. They can also change how many minutes before the bell the check-in email goes out (15 by default), when check-in opens, how long it stays open after dismissal (90 minutes by default) and how accurate a phone's location must be to count.
Every school day
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Before the bell
Parents get an email.
Fifteen minutes before each dismissal time, PickupLink emails a check-in link to every guardian who may pick up a student in that group. The email is plain and short. The link opens the parent’s check-in page without a password and works until the pickup window closes, so a parent who is early can open it and wait.
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On arrival
The parent taps "I’m here".
The browser asks to share a precise location. PickupLink accepts the check-in when the location is shared and, if the school has a geofence, the phone is inside it. A parent with two children at the same dismissal time checks both in with the one tap.
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The same second
The teacher sees who arrived, by name.
The student’s row on the live board switches to "Parent arrived" with the guardian’s name and the time. Boards update over a push connection, so there is no refresh and no polling. The board can play a chime, show a browser notification and speak the student’s name so the classroom hears it.
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At the door
One tap releases the student.
The teacher or staff member brings the student out and taps "Mark picked up". PickupLink records who released the child, which adult collected them and when. The record is on the student’s report and in the school’s audit trail.
How the location check works
When a parent taps "I'm here", the page asks the phone for its position with high accuracy. The check-in passes when the reported accuracy is within the school's limit (150 metres by default) and, if a geofence is set, the point is inside the box. Location is checked once, at that moment, and is never tracked in the background: there is no app running on the phone between pickups.
If the phone cannot get a fix, for example indoors with location services off, the page explains why and shows a map of where the phone thinks it is. The parent can then choose to check in without location. That check-in is accepted but flagged on the teacher's board as not location-verified and written to the audit log, so staff know to confirm the parent is actually there before releasing the child.
The live board
Teachers see their own classroom. Office staff and administrators see the whole school, with the same controls. Each row shows the student, their dismissal time, attendance, the guardian who has arrived and how long they have been waiting, and who released them. Rows are ordered by arrival so the next car is always at the top.
The board also handles the exceptions. "Parent here" logs an arrival for a family whose phone is dead or who never got the email; the arrival is recorded in the guardian's name and marked as logged by the staff member. "Dismiss now" opens check-in immediately for a whole classroom or one student and emails their guardians at once, which covers early release days, weather dismissals and a parent who calls ahead. Attendance is taken on the same board; only students marked present are dismissed that day.
After dismissal: reports
Every student has a report covering the last 30, 60 or 90 school days: attendance rate, pickups on time versus late, average and longest wait after the bell, and who checked in and who released them on each day. Administrators use it to spot the families who are always 20 minutes late and the classrooms whose line moves slowly.
Signing in and security
Parents never need a password: the emailed check-in link is a one-time secret that expires after the pickup window, and a parent can request a fresh one any time from the parent sign-in page with the email the school has on file. Teachers, staff and administrators sign in with a password, an emailed one-time link, or Google. All traffic is over HTTPS. Every impersonation from the operator's console and every staff-logged arrival is written to an audit log with who, when and why.
Common questions
What if the parent’s phone has no signal at the school?
The check-in page needs a data connection for the tap to reach the school, the same as sending an email. If the phone has no signal at all, the parent tells the staff member at the pickup line, who presses "Parent here" on the board so the arrival is recorded in the parent’s name.
Does the classroom need special equipment?
No. The live board is a web page that runs on whatever the teacher already has: a laptop, a tablet, an interactive display or a phone. It needs an internet connection and nothing else.
Can a parent check in from home to save time?
Not when the school has drawn a geofence: a check-in from outside the pickup area is refused and the page shows the parent where their phone reports them to be. Without a geofence the school relies on the arrival time and the staff at the line, as it does today.
Keep reading
Set up your school in a minute and run tomorrow's dismissal on PickupLink. No card needed: schools are billed by invoice.