Ambassador Accounts - An Overview

As an Ambassador, in addition to the standard parent features you will have access to a second area of Classlist, the Admin portal. This appears with a green banner at the top of the page instead of blue. You can switch from your parent to your admin account by clicking the switch to the left of the school name at the top left on mobile.

Ambassadors are the most senior parent admins on Classlist with full access to all the features. See which admin roles can do what it our admin roles table. Check your responsibilities under GDPR regulations here.

School Structure

The first thing you will want to get sorted as an Ambassador is your school's structure. Your school's structure is the basis on which Classlist forms Groups for Classes and Years. When a parent joins, they can specify which classes their children belong to, this will begin to populate the structure with pupils, and forms the basis of who can communicate with who. An example is given below. 

Inviting Parents

There are several ways to invite parents to join Classlist

• Integration with school systems such as ISAMS. This new feature is available to new school when they first launch and is in the process of being rolled out to existing schools that want to do this (spring/summer 2025).
• Send emails out in bulk by working with the school using a csv upload
• Invite via email from the Admin portal, (collect email addresses beforehand if you can)
• Generate a qr code for parents to scan (you could email this to new parents or display it at a new parents meeting).
• Share a link for parents to join (this could go in your newsletter or via any existing social media channels. You may find that you need to send this out multiple times to maximise the amount of parents that sign up this way).

Tip: Other Classlist users have shared their ideas to get people to sign up.

If you are collecting emails, you can enter them on the Add & Invite page, simply enter a list of emails and click the send button. You can also enter a personal message to accompany the invites if you wish.

Once a parent has been invited, they will be regarded as a 'Non-Member' until they have signed up. As a non-member, they can receive Announcements and Event invitations. A list of parents who have been invited but not signed up can be found on the 'invite parents' tab. We recommend you check through the non-members list at least annually and remove anyone who is no longer at the school.

Announcements

Announcements can be sent from the Administrator side of Classlist, they can be sent to a particular group or class, or the whole school. A copy of the Announcement is also emailed to all recipients if they haven't seen it via the app within the first hour after sending (unless users have opted out of receiving emails). Announcements can feature an attachment, making it a great way to send out documents, flyers or even homework that children may have missed. Announcements can also be scheduled to be sent later.

Announcements will also be sent to Non-Members, who are parents that have been invited to join Classlist, but not yet signed up, this is a great way to stay in contact with parents and in this regard, Classlist works like an incredibly versatile mailing list. 

The Classlist Dashboard (see further down for more details) will also keep track of your announcements, letting you know how many have been sent, as well as how many you have sent as an individual. The feature will also keep track of how many have been opened within the current month and the month previous (giving you a handy target to beat!)

Each individual Announcement can also be tracked on Announcements page from the Ambassador side of Classlist. The tracking of an individual announcement is monitored both in email and Classlist views. 

Events

All admins have the ability to set up events on Classlist and invite parents to attend. Events can also be made public with the option to share a link with the wider community. Events can be ticketed or not ticketed and tickets can be set up to be free or purchased (with very competitive platform fees), we even have an option for donations to your PTA!

Raffles

In addition ambassadors and Staff Admins can run raffles (subject to the laws in your country).

Website

Ambassadors can also set up and make changes to the public facing website if this feature is enabled for your school.

Monitoring the Community

Once you start to get a number of parents signed up to Classlist you may from time to time be required to moderate content. We have found that issues are very rarely raised, but when they are you, as an Ambassador, have the power to moderate it.

Approving Parents and Assigning Admin Roles

As an Ambassador you have the ability to approve parents. If a parent requests to join your school's Classlist site, they must first be approved by an Administrator. You can appoint other Ambassadors and Class Reps to help deal with approvals. You can also invite a member of the school staff to help administrate the site.

This procedure has been added in the interest of security, allowing you to vet each parent as legitimate before they can access your site. The process of approving parents is simple, you just need to click the 'Approve' button once you have confirmed their identity. If parents have been invited by email from Ambassadors/Staff Admin Plus or (in certain cases) class reps and they sign up with the same email then they will be automatically approved.

Deactivating Parents

You can also 'Deactivate' parent accounts, for instance if parents wrote content that was inappropriate, or if they leave the school. 

If a parent has not left the school, Ambassadors should generally only deactivate another parent's account if they have breached the Classlist Terms and Conditions or Member Guidelines. It would be inappropriate for an Ambassador to deactivate another parent's account due to personal issues with them or for behaviour that occurred outside Classlist. 

It would also be inappropriate for an Ambassador to remove admin status from another member who has a role at the school or parent association for which they need admin status, unless they misused their privileges on Classlist.   For instance a disagreement outside of Classlist is not a reason to remove someone's admin rights, unless you have concerns they will misuse their Classlist admin rights. 

Overall, please try to behave within the code given in our Member Guidelines: "Classlist believes in the traditional concept of a community as a group people who help and look out for each other. We hope that Classlist members embrace this approach and behave in an inclusive and supportive manner towards each other."

Managing Parents and Administrators

The Reps & Admins page on the Admin Side allows you to keep track of all the parents with an Admin status. 

The Dashboard

Finally, now that you have seen an overview of the things an Ambassador account can do, you might be wondering how you can keep a track on things. The Dashboard is the answer. It presents useful information in a way that is easy to understand while motivating your ambassadors to achieve more through Classlist. The page itself is broken down into a number of useful statistics perfect for managing your community.

Remember, if you need any more help, our helpdesk has some incredibly useful hints, tips and guides!