Families often struggle to feel connected and engaged with their child’s school when communication feels impersonal. When messages come from an institution, families may be hesitant to engage, creating a barrier to developing a meaningful connection. At the same time, school staff may need to communicate in a more personal way, particularly around sensitive topics.
The new Admin Personal Messages feature addresses this challenge by allowing school administrators, counselors, nurses, and other staff to communicate directly with families and students from their TalkingPoints personal inbox. This helps to foster trust, build relationships, and ensure a more personalized approach to communication.
With Admin Personal Messages, staff have greater flexibility in how they send messages. They can easily switch between their personal and school inboxes, allowing them to choose how the message should be sent based on the context. Whether sending a quick check-in from their personal TalkingPoints inbox, or an official school-wide announcement, Admin Personal Messages enables staff to set the right tone and approach for their communication.
To make this easy for busy school leaders and staff, Admin Personal Messages is available both on the School web product and the Admin mobile app as a feature designed for staff at the school level.
Who will have access to Admin personal messages?
This is available by default for users assigned the TalkingPoints’ base role of ‘School Admin.’
Any school-level user with permission to send and receive personal messages will be able to access personal messages from within the school web and admin mobile products.
This permission will be enabled by default for the TalkingPoints base role ‘School Admin’
This permission can be granted to any school-level custom role
District product users can grant this permission using custom roles for appropriate staff (eg. attendance clerks, nurses, guidance counselors, etc). Creating custom roles is a feature specific to the District product.
Where can partners access Admin personal messages?
Personal messages will be available in the ‘Messages’ module in both the School web and Admin mobile app.
How does it work?
School-level users with permission to send and receive personal messages will be able to send a message to any student 13+ and family contact attached to the school, including manually added students. When these are sent:
Messages are sent from a unique phone number; separate from school messages
Messages are sent to families from the user’s personal signature
Families will receive the messages and be able to respond directly to the user via Family App or SMS text. Family responses will be delivered to the user’s ‘Personal messages’ tab within the ‘Messages’ module on School web or Admin mobile app. From ‘Personal messages’ they will:
See incoming messages
Receive push notifications on admin mobile when a new personal message is received
If the user also has permission to send school-wide messages, and message “on behalf of the School,” then they will be able to select which account they’d like to send a message from using the “From” field. Users who don’t have such permission won’t have the option to select a different account. Messages sent “on behalf of the School” are sent from the shared school inbox and responses will be visible to all school admins.
Schools and districts will retain oversight into all messaging occurring within the platform. Therefore, admins with access to all messages will be able to see messages sent via Admin personal messages.
Can a user just have access to personal messages? Meaning they can’t see any other conversations?
Yes, custom roles can be created that only allow a user to send and receive personal messages within the School web and Admin mobile app. Messages sent to and from the school admin inbox will not be visible unless the user has explicitly been granted those permissions through a different role assignment.
Who in a school or district might want to use Admin personal messages?
Admin personal messages may be a good solution for:
Staff who need to have individual, two-way conversations with any family contact attached to the school. Using personal messages, the user can exchange messages outside the shared TalkingPoints school inbox.
The following types of users in a school would be good candidates for using personal messages: principals, vice principals, attendance clerks, guidance counselors, nurses, etc.
When are Admin personal messages not the best fit for certain staff roles?
Admin personal messages may not be the best solution when:
The individual staff member works across multiple sites within the district. In these situations, TalkingPoints’ Non-Rostered Staff base role, or a district group staff assignment may be better options.