Forward internal messages to email?

Shannon Lowe

I'm grateful for the updates to messaging over the summer, but it still doesn't have quite the functionality it needs for busy teachers and parents. If anyone has figured out a workaround to the problem below, I'd love to hear it!

Here's the biggest issue: Many parents don't log in to the system regularly, especially when they have older students. So we can't use internal messaging to reach parents, because there's a good chance they won't see it in time (or at all). For this reason, we've opted to use it only for student communication. When our teachers want to tell something to both students and parents they have to first create an internal message to students, and then jump through the process again, creating an email to parents. It's clunky and time-consuming for teachers.

I know there is an option to create a notification for parents, where they'll get an email or text alert that they have a message (but the notification doesn't contain the content of the message). Parents have to stop what they're doing and log in to the system to read it. In a perfect world, parents would have time to promptly log in to check, but let's face it, parents (myself included!) are often too busy to follow through on this unnecessary extra step.

To improve functionality, it would be so great if you could set up a notification in which inbox messages to parents were forwarded, in their entirety, to the parents' email, and in such a way that when the parents respond to that email it goes back to the teacher (either via email or messaging!)

I've proposed an update to this on the idea board, if you want to vote on it! Search for “Forward content of inbox messages to users' emails". Thanks!

Tina Pappas

Hi Shannon, we have our notifications configured so that when a parent receives an inbox message they get emailed and/or texted the message. You can configure the notification prosperities so that the body of the message is included. So far it's worked well for us. Here's a link to the KB article to customize notifications.

Jess Moxsky

Tina Pappas:

Hi Shannon, we have our notifications configured so that when a parent receives an inbox message they get emailed and/or texted the message. You can configure the notification prosperities so that the body of the message is included. So far it's worked well for us. Here's a link to the KB article to customize notifications.

The only reason I hesitate to recommend putting the body of Official Notes in email notifications is because the whole point of Official Notes (as I understand them) is to keep communication secure and limit access within the K12 system. Once the message is added to the body of the notification, you create the opportunity for that communication chain to take place outside the system rather than inside the system. It is, of course, up to your school how you handle that. But it's something I do like to caution folks about because Official Notes have great reporting and security features that you lose when parents continue the conversation via email.

Tina Pappas

Agreed, and I'm sorry I wasn't more clear. We only do this for inbox messages and bulletin board announcements.

Shannon Lowe

Jess and Tina, this is hugely helpful. Thank you so much!