Sending Announcements

Classlist Ambassadors, Class Admins and Community Reps can create announcements for the entire school or any group (eg classes/years, Ambassadors and Reps group, parent groups) using their Admin Accounts.

Your announcement will appear in the Parent Board activity stream and in the email inbox of all the classes/years selected as recipients, unless a parent has specifically opted out of emails for announcements in their notification settings.  You can also attach files to announcements. 

NB: If you post a message to the whole school using the Parent Board instead of creating an Announcement, please be aware that the post will not go out by email to parents the same day but will be grouped with other content and sent out on a Thursday with the Weekly Digest (unless parents have opted in to receive immediate email notifications for whole school posts). This is to avoid posts generating email overload! A whole school post will still be visible immediately in the Parent Board feed.

The announcement will also be sent to non-members (parents you have invited, but who haven't yet joined. They can unsubscribe if they don't wish to receive future announcements). This is a great way of reaching all your parents as soon as you get started on Classlist.

Creating an Announcement:

How to create an announcement 

• Make sure you are in the (green) admin mode
• Open the Announcements page in the sidebar navigation on a desktop, or find Announcement in the Create shortcut menu on the app (as above)
• Select the audience for your announcement from the drop down menu. Announcements can be sent to selected groups (eg class/year groups, the Ambassadors & Reps group) or the whole school
• Write your notice in the text box (using the formatting tools if you like)
• Click the paperclip if you would like to add an attachment
• Click 'Send'.

The announcements page also lets you view a record of past announcements sent by school ambassadors and class admins, detailing who sent them and when.

Announcements are capped at up to 10,000 characters. Other methods of communicating on Classlist include putting posts on your group wall, or using Classlist's private messaging feature.  

Commenting on your own Announcement 

If you send an Announcement to a year or class of which you are not a member as a parent, you will only be able to reply to comments in the admin mode. You can view other members' comments on your Announcement from your notifications page in the parent mode, but if you try to post a comment you will see the 'Whoops' page, like this! If this happens simply tap on 'homepage' and switch to admin mode where you can view and comment on your Announcement on the Announcement admin page. If your Announcement was to a group of which you are a member, you can comment in either parent or admin mode. 

Tracking Announcement Statistics

Once an Announcement has been sent out, Classlist begins recording a number of useful statistics for you to keep track. From the Announcements tab you can see how many people you sent the announcement too, as well as the number of people that opened the accompanying email or those who viewed it on Classlist. 

You can keep an eye on your overall announcement openrate by looking at the Classlist Dashboard. 

Whole School Posts

Admins can post to the whole school via the Parent Board too. That will be notified to app users.  Whole school posts don't generate emails unless the member opted in.

NB You have the choice of whether you allow parents to post to the whole school.  You can change that on the School Profile page.