Incoming Messages

1) To view replies and incoming messages, click  Incoming from the side menu of your homepage.

2) From here, you will be able to change the date range in which you have received messages. At the top of the page, you will see the Show Messages from dropdown. Use this menu to show messages from Today, the Last 7 days, the Last 30 days, This Academic Year, or All.

3) Once you have selected the required date range, you will be returned with all incoming messages and replies within that timeframe.

4) As the messages are displayed in chronological order, use the Status column (on the far left) to display only Unread messages, should you wish to do so.

5) Other columns you may find useful on this page are:

Click image to expand.

---

Top Tip: By default, the page view will display 10 rows. You can use the bar at the bottom of the page to display more results.

There are 15 possible filter types, and each one searches the values of the column for any row(s) that have the desired value. The filtering is not case sensitive. For example, if you needed to see all the incoming messages regarding one student, you would filter the Regarding column by clicking on the  filter icon and selecting Contains. Once this is done, enter the full name of the staff member or student.

Opening an incoming message:

By clicking any row you can see the entire conversation with that contact displayed towards the bottom half of the page. You will also have access to attendance marks for writing back to your school's MIS, and open a history pane for that contact.

• The dark green messages have been sent by the school, and the lighter green messages are responses from parental contacts.

Options (Cog Icon)

Click the  Options (cog) icon next to any message to perform the following actions:

• Translate: If the parental contact has responded in their own language, Messenger will allow you to translate this back to English. For further information, please click here.
• Add Reply: This allows you to reply to the parent if necessary.
• Forward: If the message is for the attention of another staff member, you can forward it to them via Messenger.
• Update Attendance: If the message has provided you with information regarding the child’s attendance, choose this option to update their attendance code to write back to your MIS, along with the parent’s message.
  • Once your MIS confirms this has been updated, you will see the below message added to the conversation chain:

In-depth view of contacts

You will also notice that information at the top of the Conversation is displayed regarding the parent that the messages are from, and which child they are contacting you about:

• Both the parent and student’s name are clickable.
• Clicking on the parent’s name will display a pop-up box showing information about this parental contact.
• You will see a list of all messages sent from this parent. For instance, if the parent is linked to more than one student, the pop-up box will display all messages for all linked siblings.
• From this page, you can also click on  to view this data in Excel (or a suitable equivalent).
• Clicking on the student’s name will allow you to view the same pop-up, but this time displaying all messages regarding the child. If the child has more than one parental contact, this option will allow you to view and export all messages from the parents linked.

Messenger can translate incoming messages to provide seamless communication between staff and parental contacts. If you don’t already have the option to translate incoming messages, but think it would be useful for your school, please get in touch.

• To view incoming messages and replies, click  Incoming.
• If you have received a reply in a different language, simply click on the message and this will expand the conversation. From here, click the cog icon next to the message and then click Translate.