Questions and answers
Straight answers
What AskBobbie is, what it costs, what it can read, where your data goes, how WhatsApp and children work, and how to leave. Straight answers, each one short enough to read at the school gate.
What Bobbie is
- What is AskBobbie?
- AskBobbie is a family assistant for the school years. You give the school one email address, forward what you get, or send photos and voice notes on WhatsApp, and Bobbie reads it all into one calendar: trips, payments, what to bring, what to sign. You check each thing with one tap, ask Bobbie questions in plain English, and every grown-up in the house sees the same picture.
- Who is it for?
- Parents and carers of school-age children in the UK, from nursery to sixth form. It suits a household with two or more grown-ups particularly well, because everyone sees the same calendar and nobody has to be the one who remembers.
- What does it cost?
- During early access it is free. When that changes we will tell every household in the app first, with at least a month's notice, and nothing you have put in will be lost. There will always be a way to export your calendar.
- Is there an app?
- Bobbie runs in the browser and installs to your phone's home screen like an app, on iPhone and Android, with the share sheet working so you can send it photos and PDFs. Bobbie is also on WhatsApp, which is where most families end up talking to it.
What it reads
- What can Bobbie read?
- School emails and their attachments, newsletters, PDFs and Word documents, photos of paper letters, screenshots of class group messages, and voice notes. It finds the dates, the money, the things to bring or wear, the forms to sign, and which child each is for. It does not read anything you have not sent it.
- Does it work with ParentPay, Arbor, ClassDojo and the rest?
- Yes, through the emails those systems send. Add your Bobbie address as a second email in ParentPay, or set a forwarding rule for the school's messages, and the letters arrive the same as any other. There is no direct connection into those systems, and none is needed.
- How accurate is it?
- Good, and honest about when it is not sure. Everything Bobbie reads waits in your Inbox for a tap to confirm, with the original letter beside it. Mail from someone in your household goes straight onto the calendar; mail from the school waits for you. If Bobbie was unsure, it says so and shows you why.
- Can I send things by hand?
- Yes. Type or say anything to Bobbie ("Ivy has swimming on Thursdays", "the dentist moved to the 14th") and it goes on the calendar. Or add a thing directly in the app the old-fashioned way.
Leaving
- How do I cancel?
- There is nothing to cancel during early access. If we introduce a charge, it will be a monthly plan you can end from Settings with one press, and the free way to keep using the calendar will be spelled out.
- Can I export my calendar?
- Yes. Connect Google Calendar and switch on "Show the AskBobbie calendar in Google": the family's confirmed things are then in your Google account and stay there whatever you do with Bobbie. Or ask Bobbie to list the term and copy it.
- What if you shut down?
- We would give every household at least a month's notice in the app and by email, keep the export working throughout, and delete everything at the end as the privacy notice promises.
Your data
- Where does my data go?
- Your emails and photos are read by Anthropic's models on our behalf to find the dates and money, and are never used to train them. Files and raw emails are deleted thirty days after they arrive; the calendar items read from them stay until you delete them. The full list of who touches what is in our privacy notice.
- Do you sell data or show adverts?
- No, and we never will. No advertising, no tracking cookies, no data brokers. The service is paid for by the households that use it.
- Can I delete everything?
- Yes, from Settings, in one step. Your account, your household's items, files and conversations are deleted, and backups follow within thirty days. Or email [email protected] and we will do it for you.
- Is it secure?
- Everything travels over HTTPS, files sit on private storage that only your household can reach, and you can turn on two-step sign-in with an authenticator app or email codes. Every grown-up has their own login, and anything that worries you can go to [email protected].
Getting letters in
- Do I have to give the school a new email address?
- No. Either give the school your Bobbie address (as a second contact, so your own inbox keeps getting the letters too), or leave the school alone and set one forwarding rule in your own mailbox so the school's emails reach Bobbie as well. Both take five minutes and are in the help centre.
- Which email providers work?
- All of them, because forwarding is done by your provider, not by Bobbie. Gmail, Outlook and iCloud can forward only the school automatically; Yahoo and BT have limits, and the help centre says what to do instead. Giving the school the Bobbie address works with any provider.
- Does Bobbie read my whole inbox?
- No, and it never asks to. It reads only what you send or forward. That is a deliberate choice: the school's letters, not your life.
- Can I send a photo of a paper letter?
- Yes. From WhatsApp, from the share sheet on your phone, or with the camera button in the app. A crumpled letter photographed on the kitchen table reads fine.
- What about voice notes?
- Send one on WhatsApp or record one in the app. "Leo's dentist is the fourteenth at four" becomes an appointment on the fourteenth at four, for Leo.
The calendar and the Inbox
- Why is there an Inbox at all?
- Because an AI's reading of a stranger's email is a suggestion, not a fact. Everything Bobbie reads from the school waits with the original beside it for one tap from a grown-up. Your own words skip the queue.
- What if Bobbie gets something wrong?
- Open it, press the pencil, fix it, save. The original letter is underneath so you can check. If it keeps getting the same kind of thing wrong, tell us; that is how it gets better.
- Can I add things by hand?
- Yes: tell Bobbie in words, or press the plus on the calendar. Things you add yourself go straight on, no Inbox.
- Does it do repeating things, like swimming every Thursday?
- Yes. "Swimming every Thursday until December" becomes a series, and you can edit one Thursday or all of them.
- Does it handle dinners and shopping?
- Yes. Plan the week's dinners, put their ingredients on the list, tick things off in the shop, copy last week. And ask "what's for tea?" from anywhere.
Grown-ups and households
- Can both parents use it?
- Yes, and they should. Invite the other grown-up from Settings; they get their own login, see the same household, and set their own round-ups. A grandparent or childminder can be invited as a Member who sees everything but cannot change the set-up.
- We are separated. Can we both have it?
- Yes. Two households, or one household with both of you in it, whichever suits. In one household you both see the same calendar and the same Inbox; in two, each of you forwards what you receive to your own.
- What are Parent and Member?
- A Parent can change the household, the children and who is in it. A Member sees everything, asks Bobbie anything, confirms things and ticks things off, but cannot change the set-up.
WhatsApp and children
- How does WhatsApp work?
- Bobbie has a WhatsApp number. You link your phone once by sending it a code from Settings, and from then on your number is how it knows it is you. Send photos of letters, forward messages from the class group, ask what's on, or say "inbox" to go through what is waiting.
- Can my child message Bobbie?
- Yes, without needing an account. A parent links the child's phone from Settings. Anything the child sends goes to the grown-ups to confirm. Whether Bobbie answers the child at all is the parent's switch, and even then it never talks about money and never changes anything.
- Why did a WhatsApp round-up arrive in the app instead?
- WhatsApp only lets a business write first within a day of you last messaging it. If you have not written to Bobbie in the last 24 hours, the round-up shows as a card on your Today page instead, and you can switch that round-up to email if you would rather.