More reliable routing when the API fails over

Fewer Mystery Errors When the API Switches Over During Peak Nights

Product Update September 2, 2025 PTC Wizard 1–3 min read

Conference night is the worst possible moment for a "something went wrong" error that nobody can explain. In some cases, these errors weren't caused by anything the user did—they happened when the backend routed a request to a new API target mid-session during a failover event.

What was causing the errors

During periods of high traffic—exactly the moments when many families are booking simultaneously—the backend load balancer occasionally switched a session's request routing mid-flight. The receiving endpoint didn't have the session context it expected, and the result was an opaque error message with no actionable guidance for the user.

How it's fixed

We fixed the session routing logic to maintain context continuity across failover transitions. Sessions that were mid-request during a routing switch now complete successfully rather than failing. The fix also improves the error message in the rare cases where a routing event does affect a session—families see a specific message asking them to refresh, rather than a generic system error.

For schools experiencing high concurrent booking traffic, this improvement pairs with the in-place agenda update improvements to create a more stable booking experience across the entire conference window.

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COPYRIGHT, USAGE TERMS AND CONDITIONS

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Terms and Conditions

PTC Wizard (the "Service") provided by PTC Wizard, Inc. ("PTC") with permission of your local school, local school district, teacher, or other responsible education authority (the "Subscriber") is made available to you (the "User") subject to the following Terms and Conditions in the PTC Service Agreement (the "Agreement"). By using and accessing this Service, you are agreeing to be bound by, and to comply with, these Terms and Conditions and any other terms and conditions or terms of service posted on any individual page of this Service.

Changes in Terms and Conditions

PTC reserves the right to change this policy at any time, for any reason, and without notice, including the right to terminate these services. Therefore, it is your responsibility to review these Terms and Conditions from time to time so you will be apprised of any changes.

License

The software product identified above, including but not limited to any software, media, and accompanying on-line or printed documentation (collectively "Software") is licensed, not sold, by Computer Creation Systems ("Licensor") to the School.

The license is only valid for one school and is not transferable. Any violation of the terms and conditions in this license can render the license invalid.

In the event that a license becomes invalid, the school account will be shut down without refund.

For information about licensing this Software for another school, contact Computer Creation Systems, Inc. at sales@ptcwizard.com

Permitted Use

Any staff member of the licensed School or parent with a child currently attending the licensed School is hereby authorized to use the Web portion of the Software ("Web Software") for the purposes of scheduling parent/teacher conferences only. Redistributing, selling, copying, or reproducing any part of the Software over any medium without prior written consent from Licensor is expressly forbidden. You may not download, install, or copy the Software except in the practice of using the Web Software with a Web browser, and only for the purposes of scheduling parent/teacher conferences.

Restrictions

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The license is non-transferable and may not be used by multiple schools without written permission from the Licensor.

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Changes in the Service

PTC reserves the right to change this Service at any time, for any reason, and without notice, including the right to terminate these services. Therefore, it is your responsibility to review these Terms and Conditions as well as any announcements or news on the Service from time to time so you will be apprised of any changes.

Internet Privacy & Security

PTC and your school work together to protect the online privacy of all of your school community members that use PTC, including students, parents, teachers, and administrators. PTC information collection, security, and privacy policies have been authorized by your school or teacher, and PTC strives to manage your school's internet services in a secure manner. For example, PTC uses industry standard SSL (secure socket layer) encryption to transfer private, personal information, the same technology used by online banks. Unfortunately, no data transmission over the Internet can be guaranteed to be 100% secure, and PTC can not ensure or warrant the security of any information managed by the site, whether transmitted to PTC by you, your school, or your teacher. By agreeing to PTC's privacy policy and terms of use, you agree to use PTC at your own risk, and agree that PTC shall not be liable if a security breach occurs, if the site malfunctions, or if information is misused or mismanaged in any way to your detriment or the detriment of a third party, whether by PTC, your school, your teacher, or an unauthorized third party.

Information Collection & Disclosure

You authorize PTC to collect and store data on its computer, server or other system and to compile such data for purposes of analysis and marketing. PTC collects and analyzes data on how the service is used in the aggregate (how groups of people use PTC) for the purpose of improving and enhancing its service. PTC does not analyze information on how particular individuals use the service as part of general reporting procedures or in the usual course of business. However, information on individual usage of the system, including but not limited to individual IP addresses, may be analyzed on a case-specific basis to resolve a technical difficulty or to assist in resolving or investigating any misuse of the service; also, such individual usage information may be furnished to your school if your school requests such information to assist in the investigation of fraudulent, abusive, or criminal activity or any other use of PTC that violates your school's rules or policies.

PTC does require that all users create a screen name and password, which is stored on the site, and may collect other basic information such as name, address, email, etc. depending on the needs of your school or the service. This information is not given or sold to any third parties, unless required by your school as part of their information management efforts. For example, if your school uses a certain third party company to manage their classroom scheduling and attendance system, necessary information may be shared with that company to assist in those administrative tasks.

GDPR - Data held by PTC

We act as data processors for any data held on our system by you, your school, or end-users of your school (such as parents or teachers). Personal data includes, but is not limited to: student data, teacher data, and parent data. It is your obligation as the data controller to ensure there is lawful basis for processing. We do not share this data with third-parties, though we may access this data as part of making improvements to our service and providing support to schools when requested.

We also act as data controllers when we create aggregated statistical data which may be derived from personal data, but is not considered personal data in law as it cannot be used directly or indirectly to identify a person.

What personal data we hold

Student Data: first name, last name, database id, teacher associations
Contact Data: title, first name, last name, relationship to student, email address, phone number, database id
Teacher Data: title, first name, last name, email address, phone number, database id

Where data is held

All data held on the PTC System is within the United States. We host data using Amazon Web Services cloud infrastructure. We maintain daily backups which are encrypted using AES-256. Please click here for a list of sub-processors.

How data is kept secure

We employ appropriate technical and organisational security measures for the types of data we store.

We apply the latest patches to our servers keeping your data safe and secure with multiple levels of password protection - the servers themselves and the database each are password protected. Additionally the servers are behind firewalls.

Subject access requests from end-users

As data processors, we are obliged to pass on to the school any subject access request by an end-user and not respond directly to the end-user. An end-user could be a parent, student, teacher or administrator of the system. We will assist the school in responding to any subject access request. What happens if you stop using the system This section takes effect as of 25th May 2018 While it's rare for a school to stop using PTC Wizard, we only retain personal data for as long as necessary. You can retrieve a copy of all personal data using the export features within the administration panel while the system remains active during your trial period or paid licence period.

We delete personal data within 1 year following termination of your licence or after 1 year of inactivity if you have a trial system. We terminate the licence 60 days after the renewal date if no payment has been received for the renewal.

Features to help comply with GDPR

Syncing data with your school management system

Whenever you choose to sync data from your school information system (SIS), we add new data, update existing records with the latest information from your SIS, and delete records which are no longer relevant or no longer appear in your SIS. Most SIS suppliers are implementing controls to restrict sharing personal data via their API's where you, as the data controller, do not wish it to be shared with third parties. Please contact your SIS supplier directly with any questions.

Exports for data portability

It's possible to export data added to the PTC System to satisfy data portability. You can export all bookings for a particular parents' evening or event from the Appointments or Bookings pages retrospectively. This process can be repeated for each parents' evening & event for which you wish to export data for. It's also possible to export a list of parent details, including links to students.

Data held about Schools

We act as data controllers for any data we collect about customers in order to provide the Parents Evening System service and support to your school. Customer personal data includes, but is not limited to: technical contact details, finance contact details, phone call details, and the content & attachments of any emails sent to us.

Pricing & Subscriptions

PTC reserves the right to change the pricing at any time for any reason. Subscriptions to PTC Wizard that are not paid in full and active will be subject to new pricing terms and/or a reactivation fee for further use.

Service Level Agreement (SLA)

PTC support hours are 9am-5pm EST. Support is available by calling the toll free number 855-782-9492 or emailing the support desk support@ptc Wizard.com. During support hours, customers can expect to receive the first human response within 1 hour.

Most support tickets are resolved within 1 hour. However, we have 3 levels of support issues that carry different resolution times:

Questions: Usually answered immediately. In the event that an agent is unavailable, someone will respond as soon as possible, usually within 1 hour.
Bugs: Depending on the severity of the issue, bugs are usually resolved within 24 hours.
Outage: Our servers have 99% uptime. In the event of an outage, we guarantee resolution within 12 hours.

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