ARTICLE: Communications within Reach

ARTICLE: Communications within Reach

Communications

The Communications menu allows you to send messages to your users and to create news items that will display on your metrics screen.   Go to: Communications > View My Inbox



Reach provides a useful and convenient messaging capability that can be used to contact any individual user or group of users in Reach by one of four (4) methods:

Email will send am email using the Reach email server to the recipients.
Internal Messages are messages that transfer across the Reach portal and mobile logins only.  Internal messages will appear in the "Notifications" icon in the horizontal header bar.
SMS will send an SMS message (If you have SMS messaging connected to Reach).  See knowledge base article regarding setting up SMS messaging account ARTICLE: SMS Messaging in Reach
Push messages are free messages that are sent from Reach to the Reach mobile app.  There is no cost to these messages, however receiving them is subject to the user having the Reach mobile app installed, and also having notifications activated in their mobile app settings.


Using Templates

  1. You can load save templates for New Messages by selecting Chose Template and select from a saved template.  
  2. To save a message as a template to use again in the future, fill in the Subject, Message Type, Priority and the Message details, then select Chose Template and Add New.  Give your new template a name and save.
  3. If you no longer need a listed template, select the trash can icon to delete from the template library.


The ability to add and delete templates will depend on a user's permission settings.  Those can be configured by role type through System Configuration > Infinity or based on the individual user through People Management > View Contacts and selecting the user's Accessibility tab in their profile settings.

Adding Recipients 


Send to Individuals

You can send a message to any individual user of collection of individual Reach users from the Specific Individuals selection field.  Simply start typing a user's name and their name will appear in the search panel.  Click the person's name to add to the Recipients list.


Send to Entire Groups or a Combination of Users

You can select any group of people that exists in Reach from the Contact Selector screen. Click on the Green people icon to the right of the Recipients field to view the Contact Selector.

1. Use the filter list to select by Dorm, Grade, Role, Group or Location.  You can chose Select all within each filter or select individual selections for a custom combination.
2. Once you select a Filter List, the users that relate to the selected filters will populate in the center column.  You can select all or select individual selections for a custom combination. 
3.  After selecting who you would like to send the communication to from the filtered list, select Add to List.
4.  On the far right column you will now see the total count of recipients.  If selecting students, you can chose to include their associated parents on the communication message by selecting the plus sign to the right of the the student count and then select Add These Boarders' Parents. 
5. If you are wanting to include other filtered audiences on the communication, you can now return the the Filter List on the left column of the Contact Selector and select a new filtered list and follow the previous steps again.  Once you have included all required recipients, select Done to add them to your New Message Recipients field.




Messages sent out through the Communications module are one-way communication.  Recipients are not able to reply directly back to the email, so please be sure to include instructions on who recipients should direct any responses to by providing that information in the body of the message.



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