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Edlio webinar: how to stay connected during school breaks

Added Dec 18, 2017 •

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Semester breaks don’t have to mean radio silence between your school and your community. Keep in touch with your school community over break periods by reaching out to them with Edlio’s built-in mass communication tools! In this 30-minute webinar, we discuss how to use the voice and text messaging, email sender, and social media manager features.

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Good afternoon everyone, and happy holidays. Thank you so much for joining us once again during our My Edlio series. For today, we talk communication. So, as a lot of you know, as the holidays are approaching, a lot of us will be on break, so during that time, we want to walk you through how to keep your parents, your students, and even your staff updated on the latest of your schools and your districts. Okay, now we have multiple ways for you to get this important information out, and for a lot of you, you may not necessarily have these features activated, but if you're looking to get them set up, as usual, just go ahead and contact us or technical support if you'd like, and we would be more than happy to get your school or district set up with the features that we will be discussing today. Okay? So, what I would like to do is actually start off with something that a lot of you are pretty much familiar with using and that would be your homepage alert. So, we can find this under Announce and News & Alerts. So as you know, with just your general announcements, you know, we update that day-to-day, or maybe weekly, on what's happening within the school, within the district, and this is something that, you know, we use pretty often. And then we reserve the alert option for when we have a more important news that we are wanting to keep our community proofed on. So with that, click add news, because again, what we're doing is creating a homepage page popup alert. And for those of you who are unaware of this feature and how it works, it serves as a popup alert that your users see when they initially come to your site. And they have to acknowledge that alert prior to moving on. And again, you create it just as if you're adding regular news. Now, keep in mind that for those of you on a district level, you do have the option to push your alerts out to your schools. If it has not been set up, please contact technical support and they will set it up to where, when you're adding your news or your alerts, you will see a list of schools under Post To. You can send them individually or to all schools, and again, it just makes it much more easier for you, and less tedious when it comes down to sending that content out all at one time and you're sure that everyone across the board, just for the sake of consistency, sees the same message. Okay? So, I'm going to say, you know, my headline here is just something simple. For example, it can say "No school" Some of you are a little more specific, you say Christmas vacation, some say winter break, but your details here allow your parents to be notified when they come to your site on the desktop version, mobile version, iPads, whatever tablets they're using, they will all see this alert there as well. We're adding just a little few details here, and again, this serves as a preview of text on your homepage, so it doesn't have to be too lengthy, and some of you know maybe one or two sentences would suffice there. Some of you just add very general content there, and that's perfectly fine, otherwise, just below that you have three options. So as you know, you have content, formatting options here for those of you who would like to copy and paste text, you're more than welcome to do that. Link to a file. If you're using a flyer, for example, you can drag-and-drop that document here or link to an external site or page within your site. And below that, if you're listing news from an outside source, you can list that source below. So, for example, if you're listing, you know, details from the alert from the district office and you maybe would prefer to add the link to the district site, on the school level, feel free to add those details below. Okay? And then you have the option to add an image or file here. Now this will serve as the thumbnail attached to the alert on the homepage because, as you know, it populates to the news area as well. And for those of you again who haven't used this feature just yet, I'll give you an idea of how it's reflected on your live site. As usual you want to be sure with your images in your video you're using alternative text. Now, when you're scheduling your alert, you do not need to use your delivery options, okay? Once your details have been added just click Save and on the following page there's an option here that says Homepage Popup Alert. By default, this is already set for 24 hours, so you can increase or decrease the time if you'd like. I'm just going to leave it as is, and when I go back to the live site, our alert should be reflected here. Okay? So again, you can use this to, during the summer time if you're wanting to, you know, keep your students or parents updated about summer school. Or there is, you know, details or forms, registration information that needs to be, that your parents need to be made aware of, those are no specific details that you want to use your alert for, again because this is popping out on the district level, you can duplicate this to all schools or on the school level. Again, this not only shows up on the homepage with three options, Don't Show Again, Okay, or Read Full Story, but if I click Don't Show Again, and under the new section itself, winter break is also listed here. So your users will definitely view this information, whether they're reading it in the alert option or when they're scrolling through news. Now the other option you have here is to use the Social Media Manager. So, again, a lot of schools and districts rely on their social media platforms to keep their parents abreast of what's happening throughout the school year, and a lot of you have tons of followers. You've built that community and that's your go-to for the most part if you're not using news or if you're not using your alerts. So we have actually added a feature here where you can push the news out and, you know, that news is also pushed out to either Twitter or Facebook. Alright, so you can click either option, there's also a scheduling option here. So you can, say for example I've added the news to my website Friday evening at 5 p.m., however I want this added to our Twitter timeline or I want this added on Facebook by Monday morning at 7 a.m. You can set them up a little differently. And for those of you wondering, we have Twitter and Facebook, not an Instagram, or even some schools have asked about Snapchat, they do not have desktop versions so that's why you only see the two listed here. Okay? And then also keep in mind that scheduling option can be extremely useful for those of you who have multiple responsibilities and don't have time to, you know, come back in and manually add those details. Just, you know, set it up to be pushed out at a specific date and time. Okay? And then, in the Announce module we also have the Email Sender. Now this is a feature that all users have access to, so even your teachers, for example, can essentially send emails to their parents if they'd like. And as an admin, you can send an email to, or newsletter, to all staff, or all parents, okay? What you need to do is click New Email. We have templates below that you can choose from or you can create a newsletter. Now, the first section I can add text here, second section allows me to pull news from the school site. You can add as many as you'd like. Once they're added you can drag-and-drop to change the order. Third section allows me to add more text. Now for those of you who would like to just start the process of creating the email you're not really ready to send it off, Save and Exit, that's more so a draft option. And then for those of you who are pretty much ready to send it out, click Preview Email. A lot of you know this is the only place where you'll see a preview option at this time, but this gives you an idea of what this looks like on a mobile device and a desktop. Okay? Now, once you pretty much finalized your email, just click continue, and you have the option to send your email or your newsletter to users. A lot of you, I know just from conversations from time to time, have mentioned using SIS integration, we do have that option if you're interested in including this. Again, contact tech support or reach out to one of the team members or your project manager, we'd be more than happy to get you set up, but then some of you have Excel docs. I would suggest you maybe just convert that to a CSV file and drag-and-drop that file here. And then a lot of you are using your contact lists. Under contact lists, we'll cover that in just a moment, all of your lists are detailed below so you can create them and access them here. So if I only want to send them to 2017 elementary parents, I select that list. And then you can say only my list, those that you've customized will also be listed below. And then of course you have the option to add users manually if you'd like, just separating their email address by comma. Add your subject, use your delivery options and save. Again, this is another way that you can stay in contact and continuously communicate with your parents about what's going on. Some of you have very long breaks, you have multiple breaks throughout the school year and you're just looking for another way to keep your parents up to speed with what's happening, new info, updated info, this is a really great way and another option you have to push out. Now keep in mind your teachers do have that same option. Now I want to speak to the teachers for just a moment. Teachers, when you're sending out your emails, all of your subscribers on your teacher page can be found under contact lists. Every, you know, detail that they have added when they've completed that subscribe form will be listed here. You can customize that, you can delete it, you can edit it. Now, one of the questions that teachers ask a lot about the contact lists is if, you know, the student has transitioned to, you know, another classroom or they moved on to another school, you know, does a parent have the option opt out? Absolutely. But in the same sense keep in mind that you also can go in and manage these lists. Now admins this pretty much falls under, you know, your category as well. You don't have to just rely on, you know, the parents opting out when they receive those emails. You're more than welcome to go in and, you know, adjust the contacts as you see fit. That's one of the benefits of managing the contacts on your own, you don't have to wait for that parent. Because you know, in that case sometimes they may never opt out and will continue to receive those emails. So under Announce there's a couple more things that I do want to cover with you and that is your text and voice alerts. There is a large amount of you who have these features activated, some of you may not have been aware that we have features, you know, that you can use voice and text. And for those of you who were a little unsure about whether or not this was, you know, the right move to make I would suggest, you know, continue asking questions, contacting tech support or your project manager. And this is actually one of those things where, if there is an emergency of some sort, a lot of schools find that the text alerts is the best go-to for them. And it's very easy to use, all you need to do is click New Alert, and the layout for the most part looks the same. So you click Upload New, and again, if you have that CSV file you drag-and-drop it here, or if you're wanting to use, you know, the SIS integration option, or any of the custom lists, or CSVs that you've added previously can be listed here. And then of course you have the option to add the contacts manually, again, in separating them by car message me with the text alerts a lot of you were asking if the parents have the option to opt out? Yes they do, and those details are listed like what you see here. And then of course you have delivery options. And then we also have under announce, Voice Messages. Again, once you click New Message, this alert, the voice message, the layout of it, again, pretty much looks the same. But you're adding your message below. Your script, if you would like the, if you would like to record the message in your own voice you can add a number below for it to call you and then you can record it, pre-recorded if you'd like. And then of course there are delivery options as well. Now there are different packages for these features so if you would like to try it out again just for some time let us know and then we can get you set up, and, you know, get these features used immediately. Now one last thing I want to show you all in regards to using the communication features that we've covered today. If you haven't tested this out, I would suggest going to Page Management, and Homepage Widget. There is a form which is here that you can put to use, and I want to clear it so you all can get an idea of what this looks like on the live site. So a lot of you know you have two options, the form widget and the button. We are going to focus on the form widget. Going to drag-and-drop this to any area of your homepage. You cannot change the size or the design of the widget, what you can do is select which field you want to pull information from. I've selected them all and I'm changing the title here to say something like parents, subscribe to our newsletter. Or it can say something like subscribe to our Voice and Text. You may want to include both. More than welcome to do that here. Select a contact list, if you've created that custom list, you're going to find that list below. Click select and Save. So now when I go to the live site, I have my widget here. So when your parents are entering their information, you know, to subscribe, they're essentially opting in to receive those alerts. I know a lot of you were a little concerned about whether you can just, you know, activate the feature and then start pushing the details out to your parents? If you want to go an extra step and just create the widget and they basically confirm that they're, you know, agreeing to receive them, this is the way to go. So again, in order to stay, you know, in communication with your parents during breaks, or during the summertime, or if you're just wanting to get some of those important details out to them, you have the voice and text alerts, your homepage alert, your email sender, and the social media manager. All of these features can be used when it comes down to keeping your parents in the know. If you have any questions, if these features are not activated and you would like to get them set up, feel free to reach out to us, your project manager, tech support, all of us are ready and willing to get you set up and squared away so that you can start using them immediately. Once again, thank you so much for joining us during this time and our My Edlio series. Hopefully you all are ready for Christmas vacation and enjoying the rest of the holiday season. As always, we are here to answer your questions as best that we can. If you have any feedback or any suggestions for future My Edlio trainings, feel free to reach out to us and get those details to us. Thank you once again, enjoy the rest of your day!

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Edlio webinar: how to stay connected during school breaks

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