Reach families with announcements, messages and SMS

This guide shows how a school reaches its families. The school sends announcements to the groups it chooses and text messages from a template, and checks what the SMS provider accepted. A teacher writes to a parent from the Inbox, and the parent reads and answers on the web or in the SmartClass app.

Who does what

The school:

• Sends announcements to the user types and batches it chooses.
• Prepares text message templates, sends text messages and checks the SMS report.

Teachers write to a parent from the Inbox. Parents read announcements and messages on the web and in the SmartClass app, and answer with Reply.

Important: An announcement and an Inbox message stay inside SmartClass. A text message goes to a phone number through the school’s SMS provider, the school pays for each one, and it cannot be called back once it is sent.

1. Send an announcement

1. In the Communication menu, choose Announcements, then Add Announcement.
2. Enter the Title and write the Details.
3. Under User types, choose who receives it. When you choose Parent, Class levels and Batches appear: choose the class levels first, then the batches. Without batches, everyone of that user type at the school receives it.
4. Choose Save. A saved announcement stays Inactive and reaches nobody yet.
5. In the announcement’s row, open the arrow next to View and choose Publish.
6. Under Publish mode, choose Publish now, Publish later with its Start, or Publish window with its Start and End. Then choose Publish.

When the announcement starts, each recipient receives it: in the feed on their My account page, as a message in their Inbox, on Today in the SmartClass app, and as a notification in the app unless they switched that off. Every recipient needs an active login at the school, and when you chose batches, a parent receives it only while their learner is enrolled in one of them.

Editing a published announcement makes it inactive again, so publish it again afterwards. The page does not show who has read an announcement.

2. Send a text message from a template

Prepare a template

1. In the Communication menu, choose Settings, then SMS templates.
2. Choose Add SMS Template, enter the Template Name and the Message, and choose Save. Insert variable adds a value such as the recipient’s name, which is filled in for each recipient when the message is sent.

Send the message

1. In the Communication menu, choose Send text messages. At headquarters or campus level, choose the school under School or campus first.
2. Choose the SMS service provider and the API Originator. Both come from the school’s SMS settings.
3. Choose Add recipients. On the Student related tab, choose Parents as the group, choose the batches under Select batches and choose Load recipients. Tick the people you want and choose Add selected, or choose Add all.
4. Under SMS Template, choose Select template and pick your template. It replaces the Message, so choose it before you type, then edit the message if you need to.
5. Choose Send SMS. A notification at the bottom of the screen says how many recipients the message was queued for.

One send takes up to 25,000 recipients. A recipient without a usable mobile number does not get the message, and the SMS report marks it Invalid phone number.

Check the SMS report

1. Choose SMS reports at the top of the page, or open Communication, Reports, SMS reports.
2. Set the Date range. Each row shows the Recipient, the Phone number, the Message, its Status and the Activity time.
3. Choose View on a row to see the Provider acceptance status and the Provider message. Resend sends that one message again, at the school’s cost.

Provider accepted means the SMS provider took the message. The report does not say whether the phone received it.

3. Write to a parent as a teacher

1. In the Workspace menu, choose Inbox, then New email.
2. Under To, type at least three letters of the parent’s name and choose them.
3. Enter the Subject and the Message, and choose Send.

The message goes to the parent’s Inbox in SmartClass, not to an email address, as the note at the top of the form says. In the SmartClass app, Messages and then Write a message offers school staff, the students in your classes and their parents.

4. Read and answer as a parent

• On the web, in the Workspace menu, choose Inbox and open the message. Reply answers the person who wrote it.
• In the SmartClass app, open Messages and the message, and choose Reply. Announcements also appear on Today.

To choose which of these notices also reach you as a notification or an email, open Notifications in your account menu on the web, or under More in the app; messages always arrive in the Inbox.