Announcements

MySchool enables users to send e-mails and publish announcements within their system. The feature is designed to record all communications, save drafts for repeat use, and apply expiry dates to the messages in use throughout the scholastic year.

The following video takes you through the basic functions.

How to access

You are able to view announcements, relative to your profile, on the overview front page of MySchool. The top default window will show all the active announcements.

To publish, review archived, or retrieve draft announcements, then go to the ADMINISTER menu header, and find Announcements. If this is not available then you may not have user access rights, and should contact your MySchool Admin team for support.

It can also be accessed via the quick create icon, .

Menu options

There are three announcement statuses used to filter announcements in the system.

Active announcements are currently visible on the portal, expired announcements are archived, and the drafts have not been sent or posted yet.

Announcements can be moved from expired to draft or active, and active announcements can be manually placed in draft or expired.

The filters on the list apply to the tab which is hi-lighted and the content can be searched by either key words, author, creation or expiry date.

To create a new announcement, click on the button at the bottom right hand side.

New communication

There are four mandatory fields needed to send, but these are not needed for draft versions.

1. Subject

Enter the title of the announcement. This will appear on the portals and the mail as a subject title.

2. Audience

The audience selector opens up the people picker, have a look at this article for further details. Here we choose the target population of the communication, from individual students, entire school and/or external user base.

Once you have selected the audience and want to send them a mail, MySchool will calculate the number of users in the target audience, and the amount of people who have a valid email entered on their profile (Coverage %)

3. Expiry Date

The expiry date enables the announcement to remain visible during a specific time frame, once expired it is moved to the relevant archive.

4. Message

The message box allows the user to format using standard functions available in webmail applications.

There is the ability to attach files to the announcements. N.B : There is a max file limit of 128Mb.

Publish and Send as mail

Choose how the message is to be sent with this option. Either via mail and/or published on the system.

If email is chosen, the system will calculate who has received the mail, any rejections or bounces, and add a read receipt when the mail has been opened. It will list the target audience and the status next to their names.

Once the message is complete, it can be saved as a draft for future use, or further approval, or saved and sent immediately.

Each save will assign the message to the appropriate tab in the announcement menu options on the first screen.

Formatting the mails

If you wish to include HTML formatting code, there are external sites that can help build your announcement templates. A tip to include adaptive headers and footers within the message, is to create a 6 cell table. Copy and paste the images from other sources, and centre them within the middle column.

If you choose to send a mail externally then the logo, and certain fields are standard for your MySchool instance.

Contact us if you wish to change the wording or the logo. 

Advanced Options

In the advanced options, the following options are set to default for administrators.

Essential email is linked to the users own preferences for receiving communications from the system. All users have the ability to opt out of receiving emails, but certain communications need to be sent regardless. By ticking the box, the system overrides personal user preference.

The sender can receive a copy of the communication, and this is sent to their email logged into the system.

In some cases, recipients will be required to send a reply to the communication, and the target can be changed accordingly via the search field.

e.g. The Head of School sends a message, and asks for replies to be sent to the Admin Office instead of their personal account. 

Users can unsubscribe from mailings, by clicking on the footer in the external mail.

Communication logs

A communication log on every profile within the contact tab. It will show the sender, status, date/time, and body of th email. This is restricted to the adminstrate announcements role, so please discuss internally as to who should have these viewing rights.

Where do the users view their messages?

Depending on where the message has been sent the users will receive a mail to their email address entered in the system, and also to their overview screen.

From the overview screen, they are able to view the message, recover the attachment, and mark the message as read or unread. The message can also be printed via the print function.

Announcements are different to the email functionalities found in other modules (attendance, admissions, contact tab etc). One difference is noted with attachments. They are sent as a download link and will remain accessible at all times. If the attachment is sent as an email, the attachment will remain available for 6 days only.