Jan 23, 2018

You can configure Sobs to send school notices to your students, however there are a couple of different methods:

• You may have a generic email account for each year level; or
• You may have an individual email address for each student

Simply put we configure a user account to receive these notices but we disable the option which would normally include the Staff notices on this message.

Configuring the Student Notice email

If you have a generic account for all students, or at least one for each year level, check first that our application will be able to send an email for distribution to your mail server.  Many schools restrict the student year level email address to internal staff, or admin staff.  This avoids many problems in regard to spam and students emailing.

Click on ‘Staff’ in the Configuration menu and then ‘Add user’ in the top right of the page.  For this new staff member configure a username and password for each student email address you will be posting to – ensure you enter the correct email address for this year level.  You can use the ‘Guest’ security level for this account although there is no requirement to ever give out this username and password to anybody.  If you have 5 year levels then you will create 5 accounts.  Once created login to each account and configure the default year level selection for these accounts, for the year 12 account select the year 12 checkbox in the ‘Show notices’ menu and click ‘Set default’ to make this the default selection for this account.

Click the ‘My profile’ link in the main menu and the ‘Edit’ button next to the username.

Set the option to ‘Email notices’.  Ensure the option ‘Include staff notices’ is not checked.  Save these changes.

If you are unable to use the generic account for students (as would be the case with most schools) the next best option is to send to individual email addresses for each student.  You will need a list of these.

Configure a Staff (or Guest) record for each year level.  Edit this user record and look for the option: “Email Address List”.  Check the checkbox and a text area will appear allowing you to paste in a list of email addresses for the appropriate year level.

Click the ‘My profile’ link in the main menu and the ‘Edit’ button next to the username.

Set the option to ‘Email notices’.  Ensure the option ‘Include staff notices’ is not checked.  Save these changes.

Sending Notices

When Sobs sends the notices it will automatically select all notices marked valid for the selected year level, format them according to the standard formatting rules, and email them to the address specified on the account.

If the user record includes data in the “Email Address List” then the notices will be emailed individually to each email address in the list, but not to the email address on the user record. When loading the list of email addresses you can have them on separate lines, or separated by commas or semi-colons.  Also, when using these lists, it is important to maintain the address lists when students join and leave the school.

Staff notices will not be included.

The notices will be processed and sent at the same time that staff receive theirs.