This tab allows you to send email messages and text messages to parents, pupils and staff, depending which of these facilities have been set up for your use. Most schools restrict who can send text messages as the credits cost money, and some schools also restrict who can send emails to parents.

As SchoolBase Online enables those who are entitled to send emails and texts to do so from wherever they may be, not just in school, using all the selections they would have access to in school, this makes it a very flexible and convenient solution to the problem of communicating with your parents, pupils and staff in difficult circumstances, e.g. when the school has been forced to close or the bus is late back from the school trip.

Emailing Parents

When you press the 'Email Parents' button, if you are allowed to send an email to parents and this has been set up at your school, you will see the form above. The default selection for adult contacts belonging to the selected pupil(s) is primary parents, but if you wish to change this selection, open the Adult selection criteria as shown below. This works exactly the same as offline.

The Priority 1 and Priority 2 buttons refer to whether you want to email mother, father or both. By default, Priority 1 is the person on the left of the adult record, and Priority 2 the person on the right, but this can be changed when editing an adult contact record. Once you are happy with who the message will go to, click Continue to email.

This form allows you to create the message you are going to send. It has all the usual features of an email program. You can set a message priority, which defaults to standard, but can be set to high (will show a red exclamation mark when received) or low (will show a blue down arrow when received). Request a read receipt will cause the recipient's email program to send you an automatic reply when your message is read (if the recipient allows this).The To: field shows the recipients' email addresses, and can be edited, although this should not be needed as the parents' email addresses are loaded from SchoolBase. You can add CC and BCC recipients if you wish, and change the reply-to address (where replies from your recipient will be addressed) but the from address is set to the email address associated with your staff account on SchoolBase and cannot be edited here. Fill in your subject line and the body of your message (text only). You can add attachments (files to be sent with your email message) if you wish, then when ready press the Send button.

You will get an acknowledgement message from SchoolBase Online to confirm that your message has been sent.

There are several differences between those using FBS mail and those using Outlook.

For those using Outlook first:

If you select a block of parents to email the resultant email is sent as a blind copy. The ‘send to’ is the sender of the email. If you want to send a summary copy you need to type in the address of the person or persons to copy to.

For FBS Mail users

If you select a block of parents to email each parent will receive their own copy of the email addressed to them. If you tick the copy to Staff button (not available in the outlook version) you can select the staff to copy using all of the ‘email staff’ functionality.

Text Parents

Texting parents is much like emailing, except that you do not select Priority 1 or 2, the text message goes to all telephone numbers ticked as SMS in the adult record. Also the text message interface (below) is much simpler than the email interface as a text message is just a 160 character message, with no priorities, CCs, read receipts, attachments etc.

You can use any smart phone and from there you can send an SMS message to a tag group. It really could not be simpler. When the SMS is sent, the sender is sent an email with the details of who the text message was sent to by way of confirmation.

Email Pupils

Text Pupils is just like text parents, with the messages going to the phone number stored in the SchoolBase pupil mobile field, so no need for Adult selection.

Email & Text Staff

There are staff selection criteria in email and text staff allowing you to select those staff members associated with the selected pupils, as well as selecting staff members by name.