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How to Enable Emergency Alerts with Compliance Messages

Updated yesterday

Audience: District Admins + School Admins
Platform: District Web + School Web


📩 What Is a Compliance Message?

A compliance message is a short, one-time system text that must be sent before families or students can receive Emergency Alerts. 🚨 This step is required to meet carrier and privacy regulations.


👤 Who Can Send It?

  • ✅ District Admins and School Admins (permissions included by default)

  • ✅ Custom roles with Emergency Alert permissions added

  • 🚫 Teachers cannot send compliance messages


📝 How to Send the First Compliance Message

  1. Go to Messages in your Admin dashboard.

  2. Find the Emergency + Broadcast section.

  3. Click Send Compliance Message.

  4. Confirm when prompted.

District Admin view:

School Admin view:

Note: Depending on user permissions, this screenshot may also include student messaging configuration above compliance, in the same Messages tab.

📌 Families and students must receive this message before they can receive any Emergency alerts.


💬 Message Details

Compliance messages are sent in English only to ensure message length compliance with carrier requirements.

  • 📱 Sent from short code:

    • District Alerts → 84039

    • School Alerts → 84046

District compliance message:

Welcome to TalkingPoints: This is a message from [district]. Reply HELP for help, STOP to cancel. Msg Freq Varies. Msg&Data Rates may apply.

School compliance message:

Welcome to TalkingPoints: This is a message from [school]. Reply HELP for help, STOP to cancel. Msg Freq Varies. Msg&Data Rates may apply.

When a district or school has sent the compliance message, they will see a confirmation in the app:


🔄 What Happens After Sending

  • The system will automatically re-send the compliance message every 2 weeks to new family or student contacts added since the last send. 🆕

  • ✋ Admins can return to Settings anytime to manually re-send the compliance message to those who still haven’t received it.

Manual Compliance Message Send screenshot:


📱 Family + Student Responses

  • ❌ Reply STOP → No longer receive Emergency alerts from that short code (until they opt back in)

  • ℹ️ Reply HELP → They receive this automated response:

    TalkingPoints emergency alerts: for Help, please reach out to privacy@talkingpts.org


📌 Key Notes

  • Compliance messages are required before any Emergency alert is sent.

  • This step only needs to be done once per district or school. After that, the system handles new contacts automatically.

  • Families and students may miss important alerts if they opt out.


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