SMS (text message) Opt-In Improvements

10/4/2021

We just released updates to Enhanced Parent Communication (EPC) to make it easier for parents to opt-in for SMS (text messages). Just to review, senders must collect opt-in from recipients before they can send repeated text messages. This is required by telecom providers, and is necessary to achieve reliable delivery of messages. If recipients don’t opt-in, then it’s likely messages will be marked as spam, and won’t be delivered consistently.

For the last month or two, we’ve been working on SMS opt-in. We built the “Communication Preferences” and “Family Announcement Delivery Settings” pages and integrated them into the parent/student onboarding process. We encourage users to fill out those pages, and opt-in for text messages.

Unfortunately, parents/students don’t always fill out those pages. To view SMS opt-in status for your organization, see the Email Addresses (Login Setup) page. Columns show each user’s SMS opt-in and App Notification status. This lets you see who can receive messages (text messages or app notifications) for announcements. Feel free to filter the grid when looking at this data.

Admin Main > Communications > Email Addresses (Login Setup)

Telecom providers allow senders to send a single text message asking for opt-in. So this release we implemented an outbound text message, to nudge parents/students with sms-capable phone numbers in the system. The hope is that they’ll reply START to the message, and enable text messaging.

We built functionality to send text messages to users who haven’t opted-in yet (and who don’t receive app notifications through the TeacherEase mobile app). With a few clicks, all customers can be contacted. Due to telecom regulations, this can only be done once per recipient.

Admin Main > Communications > Email Addresses (Login Setup) > Send SMS Welcome

We hope you like this new functionality, and that it helps you better communicate with your community.

The Common Goal Team