Tech Focus
Using Email Messenger to Contact Students and Parents/Guardians Part One
The messenger service available in NASIS provides a range of messaging services including voice, email and Parent Portal messaging to students, parents/guardians, school staff members and other messenger contacts. Messenger is used for notifying students and/or parents of general information, attendance or behavior events. In addition, a school can easily send messages to school staff members. Ad hoc filters will be used in conjunction with Messenger to easily define recipients.
Email Messenger is available as part of the core product of NASIS. Voice messenger requires additional hardware and phone services and is available as an add-on feature to the standard version of NASIS.
Because of the wide range of messaging services in NASIS, this month’s article will focus only on how to use the Campus Email Messenger to contact parents/guardians with regard to general and high priority messages. We will feature the Teacher Messenger and Staff Messenger in next month’s newsletter.
Email Preferences
To send an email with Messenger, Email Preferences are required for routing email. You can verify if this is set up at your school by checking System Admin>Preferences>Messenger>Email Preferences tab.
Three items need to be set up in this tab to send emails:
First, the Portal URL. In this field you want to enter in the Portal URL that is assigned for your school.
The second and third items are the Sender address and the STMP host. All districts are set up by default to use the SMTP host as mail.messenger.infinitecampus.net. An example of the Sender Address would be messenger@infinitecampus.com. However, the sender address can be configured to whatever the school wants. It appears in the FROM field when the contact receives and email and is used when the contact replies to the message. If mail should be routed through a different SMTP server, change the SMTP Host and the authentication settings. The image below shows the fields and the proper settings.
Census Setup for Messenger
Messages are categorized into five different types:
General
Attendance
Behavior
High Priority
Teacher
You will need to set the preference for each type of message that a contact would want to receive. This is done on the Person record located in Census>People>Demographics Tab>Personal Contact Info. Check each box across the email line according to what kind of messages you want your parents/guardians (or any related person) to receive.
General and high priority can be used to send messages to parents/guardians in regards to current or upcoming events at school like report card dates, conferences, band concerts, etc. Emergency notices can also be sent for things like closings for bad weather or any other high priority items that may arise at your school.
Teacher messages can be sent as well, notifying parents of missing assignments, failing grades and general notices. Attendance and behavior messages are associated with the add-on Campus Voice Messenger service and not the email tool. Check all boxes that would pertain to the type of messaging services you want to use.
In addition to Messenger Preferences, non-students like parents/guardians will need to be set as Messenger contacts via their relationships. This is done on the Relationships tab in Census>People>Relationships tab. Make sure that each student has at least one parent/guardian selected and the proper check boxes check to reflect that relationship along with the messenger box.
Creating a Messenger Template
The text of the message created in NASIS may be personalized for each recipient using the data elements from the application. The personalized message can then be sent via email.
To create a new message:
- Expand the Messenger Folder and select the Message Designer
- Click the New Template button
- Enter a name for the template. This name should be descriptive of the message as it will be selected by name when the time comes to send the message.
- Enter the text of the message as it should be formatted for email delivery. To insert data elements from NASIS, click the
 icon and select the field from the selection window.
- Messages may be saved to the user’s account or shared with user groups for which the user is a member, by selecting the group in the Organized to dropdown.
- Click Save when finished.
Creating Ad Hoc Filters for Sending Messages
Ad Hoc Filters need to be created to define the recipients of your email messages. These filters should be created based on the type of message that you want to send. For example, you can create a filter that will define all students, students in a specific grade level, students that participate in an activity like band, choir, sports activities, etc. This filter will be selected when sending messages to students, parents/guardians.
Sending a Message
Once a Message Template and Ad Hoc Filter have been created, the message can be sent to those students or their Messenger contacts that you defined on the Relationship tab. Complete the following steps to send a message:
- In the Index Outline, select the Message Builder. Index>Messenger>Message Builder.
- Select the Ad Hoc Filter(s) that define the recipients.
- Set the mode of operation for the Ad Hoc filter. If you are using more than one filter to define your list of students, then the Union operator will merge the lists into one large list. The Intersection operator will find students who exist on both lists and only send messages to them.
- Select the template.
- Select the recipients (Students or their Messenger contacts).
- Enter a subject for the message.
- Select the message type to determine which contact method will be used for each individual recipient.
- Choose the delivery services (check the email box).
- Enter the date for the message to be delivered.
- Enter the time when emails are sent. Remember, the servers that run the messenger are located in Albuquerque so you may have to adjust your send time to reflect the time zone difference.
- The Dial Window can be left blank. (This is used with the Dialer portion of messenger not discussed here).
- To send a test message, select test message. The system will prompt the user for an email address and any fields used in the selected template.
- To continue with the message delivery process, click Preview Message.
- The preview screen will show the message, the number of distinct recipients for the message, and the number of messages that will be sent by this delivery method.
- To review recipients and remove individuals if needed, click Review recipients. The user may then remove specific recipients from the queue.
- To queue the message, click Send Message. Messages will be sent at the delivery time.
Reviewing Reports and Status
To review the status and delivery results of messages, select Sent Messages. From the window that opens, select the message and click view delivery report. A PDF will open showing the delivery status for each recipient and totals for the Messenger job.
Cancelling Messages
Email messages are sent nearly instantaneously and cannot be canceled once sent.
Messenger is a quick and easy way to contact your students and parents/guardians, as well as a great way to communicate important school details. If you have any questions or concerns about setting up messenger at your school, please feel free to contact NASIS support!
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