Comms Hub: How do I send an email message?

Comms Hub

Overview

This article explains how you can email one or more pupils, parents, contacts and/or staff from Comms Hub.

When creating a message, contacts with a court order will be displayed; however, they will be greyed out as they are not contactable.

You can only send messages within the current academic year (you can't send them before or after the current academic year).

Prerequisites

  • Your user account must have been permitted to send an email message by a user with one of the following user roles / permissions: Account owner, Account Admin or Full Edit.

Demonstration

End of Year Rollover guidance

During the End of Year Rollover period, a banner appears at the top of the page.

The Academic Year determines which groups, pupils, contacts and schedule dates are available:

  1. Check you have selected the correct Academic Year before you send messages.
  2. Switch between the previous and new Academic Year until 31 August. 
  3. Academic Years in Comms Hub run from 1 September to 31 August the following year.
  4. After 31 August, the banner no longer appears. 
  5. You can only send messages using the groups, pupils, contacts and schedule dates within the current Academic Year.

Instructions

  1. Select:

    1. Compose from the Comms Hub Home page / Dashboard:
    2. Or select Communications, then select Compose. 

    This opens the Compose New Message window:

  2. Select your recipients:
    1. To add one or more pupils (or pupil-related contacts as recipients), select Add pupils and/or contacts:
      1. Select one or more Pupils / Groups.
      2. Select Next.
      3. Check the Quick Selection options to select one or more recipients (Contacts) for the selected pupils:
        1. Primary Contacts - send to contacts who the primary contact. 
        2. Parental Contacts - send to contacts with parental responsibility.
        3. Non-Parental Contacts - send to contacts without parental responsibility.
        4. Emergency Contacts - send to contacts who should be contacted in the case of an emergency (sometimes referred to as P1s).
        5. Include pupils as recipients -  send to the selected pupils (if you have a record of their email address).
      4. Manually override any exceptions as required for each pupil (select a pupil and select / deselect individual contacts).
      5. Select Continue.

    2. To add a member of staff, select Add staff:

      1. Optionally, check Show former staff members to include any members of staff who previously worked for you in the staff recipients list. Former staff members are shown in the list with a Former lozenge after their name:

      2. Select one or more members of Staff.
      3. Select Continue.

      Remember, you can add pupils, contacts and staff members together. You are not restricted to sending a message to one group of people. 

  3. Select a message Category.
  4. Enter a suitable Subject to appear in your email. 
  5. Select Email for Send Via. The Email fields are displayed:
  6. Enter the contents of your email into Message.
  7. Optionally, format the Message using the text formatting tools. These work like other text formatting tools on your computer or tablet. 

  8. If you want to customise the message, for example, by automatically using the pupils name, select the lightning icon, and select the merge fields you want to insert at the appropriate point in the text:

    When a merge field is included, it is displayed in a purple lozenge:

  9. Optionally, add up to 10 attachments: 

    1. Drag and drop one or more files onto the Attachments part of the page. You can addup to 10 attachments. The total size of these attachments must not exceed 6MB in total. The files you can attach are PDF,PNG, JPG or GIF.
    2. Or, select the Attachments part of the page and use the File Manager on your device to select the file(s) you want to attach.

    If you are sending email attachments, consider the size of these as some recipients' email systems will not accept messages containing large attachments.

  10. Select Send Now or Schedule for later (see Comms Hub: How do I schedule a message to be sent at a later date?)

Outcome

Your email (including attachments) will be sent to the pupils, contacts, and/or staff you selected. If a recipient doesn't have an email address recorded, the message will not be sent to them. The status of sent messages can be viewed in Sent items (see Comms Hub: How do I know what I've sent?). 

Related information

Updated