Here's our quick and easy guide to using your Primarysite SchoolApp (a guide for the school)
Welcome to our step by step guide for using your TheSchoolApp.
In this guide we will cover:
- How the app works with your school website
- How to give app access to contacts
- How to send private and public messages
- How your parents receive private messages
This document will help you achieve all these things in an easy step by step process. If you have any questions, please get in touch.
Getting started
To get started, please log in to your school website, go to ‘Admin’ and then ‘User Management’ and check you and your staff have the permissions needed to send app messages. Only users that have been assigned the role of ‘Superuser’ or ‘App Admin’ to their log-in for your Primarysite website will be able to send messages via the app.
The ‘App Admin’ role is specifically designed to be available for Gold Plus schools and will allow people who are not superusers to manage their contacts and app messages within their Primarysite website.
If a user has this app admin role or the superuser role, they will see ‘Contacts’ and ‘App messages’ in the ‘Communication’ dropdown.
How the app works with your school website
Depending on how contacts are imported into your Primarysite website, ‘App Messages’ enables you to send private and/or public app messages.
Please be aware that if you would like to send private app messages, you will need to have MIS (e.g. SIMS, RM Integris, Scholar Pack) integration set-up on your website. If this is not already in place, please do give us a call on 01636 616 630.
In order to send private messages to selected contacts or to a specific group, you will need to give ‘App access’ to those contacts before messages can be created and sent.
How to give app access to your contacts
On the ‘Communication’ drop down menu, click ‘Contacts’ and check that your data has pulled through from your MIS correctly.
- Please note: MIS integration runs twice daily at Primarysite. The updates begin at 9am and 3pm (GMT). This is not instantaneous. If you have recently updated any contact data in your MIS you will need to check this has pulled through before you can see your changes.
You can then start looking for the contacts you would like to give app access to. You may find the filters helpful if you want to narrow down to focus on a particular class/year group or search for a contact by pupil, contact name or contact details.
Next click on ‘Manage app access’.
The ‘App access’ column is now editable. Simply check each box next to the contact(s) you wish to be invited to receive private messages.
Once you have made your selection, click the ‘Save changes’ button at the top of the table.
A summary will pop up and ask you to confirm your selection. If you are not happy, you can undo changes or add more contacts by clicking ‘Cancel’. Once you are ready to give app access, click ‘Confirm’.
This will trigger a text message to be sent to those individuals who will be invited to download TheSchoolApp and verify their phone number through the authentication process.
- Please note: Contacts you want to invite need to display a phone number under ‘Contact details’
- If you have updated any mobile numbers within your MIS, you will need to grant app access for these contacts again as their mobile number has changed.
App Contacts Limit
Please note, to help speed up the process of sending app messages, giving app access is restricted to two contacts per pupil.
When there are no contacts nominated, all check boxes will be available to be selected.
Should two (or more) checkboxes already be ticked in the app access column for a particular pupil, then the checkboxes for their other contacts will be disabled (a lighter grey colour).
If only one of the contacts for a pupil has been nominated, then all the remaining contacts will be selectable for that pupil when managing app access.
If a pupil has 3 or more contacts that have been given app access (either from having been given the app access before PrimarySite made the change or from having been given this by our support team), they will still all remain ticked, however if you revoke one of them, you would not be able to give that contact app access again yourself.
If you have given app access to two contacts of a pupil and then remove it from one of them, the checkboxes for all the contacts of that pupil who have not been given app access will be enabled again.
We will however enable the PrimarySite support team to give app access for additional contacts when there are already two or more contacts with app access for the same pupil if there is a serious requirement by the school for this to happen.
Once an invited contact has authenticated, a green ‘tick’ will appear next to their record in the ‘App activated’ column.
Please note: You will be able to send private messages to contacts as soon as they have given app access. You do not need to wait until authentication is complete. It just means the contact won’t receive those messages until they have authenticated.
In case you have made a mistake, or a contact does no longer want to receive messages or no longer has a child at your school, it is also possible to revoke app access for a contact by simply unchecking their name again.
You will no longer be able to send private messages to this contact.
SETTING UP YOUR GROUPS
It is important that these groups are set up for the new academic year, as these will replace the groups you currently have set up. MIS integration automatically pulls through your Year and Class groups.
TheSchoolApp gives you control to manually allocate your pupil’s into any other groups you wish. For example, Breakfast or After School Clubs, Choir or Year 5 football.
Please note: Whilst you can add any pupils’ contacts to these groups only contacts who have been granted app access will receive any app messages sent.
If you are sending an app message to a particular group, we recommend you mention the group name in the subject of your message, as it will not pull through the name of the group to the message, the parent receives.
How to send Private and Public messages
To send a message, you will need to be logged into the school website.
You will then need to go to ‘Communication’ and select ‘App Messages’
Now you will be ready to send a message.
There are three recipient options for sending messages:
- Selected contacts with app access – This option enables you to send private messages to individual pupils’ contacts, a year, class or manual group you have set up such as Breakfast Club. You can mix and match contacts you have given app access to.
- All contacts with app access – This option is to send private messages to all contacts who you have given app access to and completed the authentication flow.
- All contacts with app access plus guests – Any messages sent using this option are public and received by everyone who has downloaded TheSchoolApp including public users.
Once composed, click on ‘Continue’.
If you are sending your message to ‘Selected contacts with app access’ you will next choose your recipients.
Please note: If you have chosen either of the “All contacts” options, the ‘Select recipients’ step will be bypassed and you are moved straight to the message summary.
You will see your contacts pulling through on the left-hand side, with a filter button and a search button, to help you select contacts quickly from your data.
As you select contacts, you will see the empty list on the right-hand side start to populate. Once you are happy with your selection pressing the blue continue button, will move you onto Step 3.
You are now presented with a summary screen that shows a preview of your app message and a table showing your previously selected contacts.
To make changes, you can navigate to the previous pages by clicking the ‘Back’ button. Once you are happy with the summary, press the blue send message button. You will be taken to the message report page and can see that the message status displays ‘Sending’.
If you click the blue ‘Return to Sent Messages’ link you can see a table of all sent messages including the date they were sent, their subjects and the type of recipients.
Clicking the blue ‘View’ link will take you back to the message report.
The message report shows a copy of the message on the left-hand side and the details of the date, time, and type of message sent. When an authenticated contact has opened your message, the message status will update to ‘Read’ in the table.
How your parents receive individual messages
When you send a message to ‘Selected contacts with app access’ the contact receives a push notification on their phone that displays your school name as well as your message subject.
A red badge will appear/ update on the contact’s app to indicate there is a new message to be read.
The subject of your message will appear in the push notification received from the school app and the name of the school will also be displayed
When the contact wants to read the new message, they are asked for the PIN they have set up during authentication.
Once the contact has successfully opened the message, it will appear as ‘Read’ in your message report.
The message itself will display as in your preview and includes the pupil name(s) you selected for the contact, so the contact knows which pupil the message relates to.
Messages sent to ‘All contacts with app access’ need recipients to be authenticated but do not ask for a PIN when opened. They also do not display a pupil name.
Messages sent to ‘All contacts with app access plus guests’ are received by authenticated contacts you are aware of as well as anyone else who decides to download TheSchoolApp from the app stores and follow your school. No PIN is required, and no pupil names display.
We recommend you use this method of communication only for public announcements.