PLEASE NOTE: This feature is available only to those with Administrative access as it is typically used for school-wide announcements and/or emergencies.
Before we begin, it's important to note that text messages do not support attachments and are limited to no more than 150 characters.
1.You will need to go to SmartSend which is located in the Communicate tab.
2. You will need to decide who you are sending the message to. There are two ways to do this: selecting from available groups, and adding individuals manually.
If you’re only sending a message to a few people, you can add individuals manually by searching for their last name using the Quick Add field on the far right. Don’t forget to hit “Enter” on your keyboard if you add an address manually.
3. When you select a Group, you will also enable an additional field called “Excludes” that allows you to exclude individuals from the group they are a part of. For example, if you want to send a Text to all of your staff but one is on leave, you could ‘exclude’ that individual from the “All Active Staff” group and only send your message to the remaining members. Whenever you add a recipient, you’ll see a small label appear further down on the page to help visually represent who the message is being sent to.
4. You can remove recipients by hitting the “x” on the right side of their respective labels.
5. Once you’ve finished composing your message, hit “Send Now” in the bottom right corner.
SmartSend Pro gives users the ability to “Schedule” their message, which allows messages to be planned in advance. Selecting “Schedule” introduces three new fields:
“Current School Time” displays what time it is at your school. The “Calendar” is a dropdown menu that allows you to select what day you’d like your message to be sent on, and the “Time” menu lets you select the time of day your message will be sent.
Once you’re done, hit “Schedule Now” to schedule the message.
SmartSend Pro also gives users the ability to review sent or scheduled messages in the “History” and “Scheduled” tabs, respectively.
Message History is listed in descending order with the most recently sent message at the top of the page. Selecting a particular entry will allow you to view details about the email as well as the actual message that was sent. The table of entries can also be sorted by clicking on any of the column headings, or by entering text in the search fields directly below them.
The list of Scheduled Messages uses a similar interface but does not include a search field below the column headers.