School Messenger Agenda for Training New Users

Note: This agenda was created as the content for training when Gloria and Russ used to do the training.

Terminology

Target - recipients

Contacts - Staff and student data

Associated Guardians - guardians and contacts

Nightly Updates

Powerschool updates School Messenger data each evening for all contacts with the PowerSchool Receives Mailings flag checked. This is located in the contact (parent) record.

Student Name
Student Account Number
Home, cell, and work phones
Contact Preferred Email addresses
Parent preferred language - discuss with Miriam and Nijaza outside of this meeting
Contact Relationship
Flag for Emergency Contact
Flag for has Custody
Flag for Lives With
Flag for School Pickup
Flag for Receives Mail - most important because PowerSchool is only selecting contacts with the Receives Mail checkbox

Russ Walkthrough

Lists
How to create a list
Broadcasts
Multiple Languages - Miriam and Nijaza - discuss which languages should be included in the PS data updates outside of this meeting
English Only

Julia - Using SchoolMessenger Through the Eyes of a User

Gloria

Going directly into School Messenger from Powerschool - single sign-on
Reports - how many received/didn’t receive
Troubleshooting (contact Admin Assistants)

Q&A

Accessing SchoolMessenger

There are two ways you can use. If you are in PowerSchool, from the Start page, scroll down to the bottom until you see Applications in the left navigation. Click School Messenger. Using this method you will not have to log in to School Messenger separately. Another way to access School Messenger is to use your browser. This method will require you to log into SchoolMessenger.