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Send messages to families

[For All Staff] Learn how to send and view parent communications using brightwheel's Messaging feature.

Sabrina avatar
Written by Sabrina
Updated over 3 months ago

Guardian communication is essential and one of the core features of brightwheel. Our premium messaging feature is easy to use and wonderfully efficient at keeping in touch with parents throughout the day. All messages sent from the school will alert all parent contacts associated with the student's profile.

ℹ️ If you don't see the messaging option or get the message, "Your role does not allow sending messages to parents," please contact your program admin to confirm you have correct permissions.

💡 Tips and Tricks

  • Use the Talk-to-Text feature on your mobile device to speak your message. Click the microphone icon🎙️ next to the keyboard, and it will transcribe your speech and save time! For more details, refer to these Apple and Android articles.

  • If you need to add a link/hyperlink to the message, simply paste the full URL and it will be clickable

  • When adding an attachment to messages, ensure it meets our Allowed File Types

Send a Message in the App

💡 Non-admin staff can take the steps below to send messages to families. Administrators and Managers can review our Admin to Parent Messaging steps. Students must be assigned to a room to send the family a message, unless they are a prospective student.

  1. Click the Messages icon (bottom left on iOS or top tab on Android)

  2. To reply to an existing thread, tap the thread in the Parents tab

  3. To start a new thread, click the new message icon in the bottom right corner

  4. Input the message contents

  5. To add an attachment, click the paperclip 📎 icon, + Add file, or the plus icon.

  6. Click Send Message or the airplane icon

Send a Message on the Web

  1. Click to open Messaging page from the purple sidebar menu

  2. To reply to an existing guardian thread:

    1. Locate the thread on the Parents tab and open it

    2. To add an attachment, click the paperclip icon and drop a file into the popup window or browse to add. When finished, click Add

  3. To start a new guardian thread:

    1. Click + New Message

    2. Choose Parents

    3. Select one, multiple, or all students and click Next

  4. Input the message contents

  5. When ready, click Send Message

ℹ️ Message attachments can only be sent from existing message threads on the web, you will not see this option when creating a new message.

View Parent Messages

Easily view and filter all messages sent to parents at your program either in your brightwheel app or on the web. You can even mark messages as read or unread!

On the Web

  1. Navigate to the Messaging page

  2. View message thread visible on the Parents tab (open by default)

  3. Use the Order By filter to sort messages by Unread or Most Recent

  4. Use the Room, Student, and Student status filters to narrow down threads as needed

On the App

  1. Tap the purple Messages icon at the bottom of your Rooms page

  2. View message thread visible on the Parents tab (open by default)

  3. Tap Sort by unread to show unread messages at the top

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