For: District Admins, School Admins, and Teachers of AFC+, School Engagement, and District Engagement partners
Once your CSV is ready, you can attach it to a message and let TalkingPoints do the personalizing for you. This article walks through the whole process, from attaching your file to hitting send.
Need help building your file first? See Formatting Your CSV for Custom Merge Fields.
Step 1: Attach Your File
Open the message compose window.
Click the + menu.
Choose Custom merge fields. It uses the same icon as regular merge fields, but you'll find it inside the + menu with your other attachment options.
[SCREENSHOT NEEDED: The + menu showing the Custom merge fields option — see "image 3.png" in source doc]
Select your CSV file from your computer.
Your file is checked right away for any problems. If something needs fixing, you'll see it before you can continue. (See Troubleshooting Custom Merge Field Errors for what each message means.)
[SCREENSHOT NEEDED: Upload validation/error screen — see "image 4.png" in source doc]
Once your file passes the check, you'll see a summary: how many students were found, who they are, and which merge fields were detected.
[SCREENSHOT NEEDED: Upload summary screen — see "image 5.png" in source doc]
Step 2: Write Your Message
Back in the compose window, write your message like normal. Wherever you want personalized information to appear, type the field name in brackets — for example, [balance_owed].
As you type, an Insert Custom Shortcut button appears, showing you every merge field from your file so you don't have to remember the exact spelling.
[SCREENSHOT NEEDED: Insert Custom Shortcut button in compose window — see "image 6.png" and "image 7.png" in source doc]
Good to know: You won't see a preview of the finished, personalized message before sending. Each family sees their own version only after the message goes out.
Step 3: Send
When you're ready, send your message as usual.
If you added a field to your file but never used it in your message, you'll see a warning first, asking you to confirm that's what you meant to do.
[SCREENSHOT NEEDED: Unused merge field warning — see "image 8.png" in source doc]
A Few Things to Know
Which inboxes this works in: You can use Custom Merge Fields from any inbox — your school's main inbox, your personal inbox, or the Attendance inbox. The one place it won't work is the Attendance Dashboard's custom group feature, since that also builds its own special recipient list.
Staff messages and emergency alerts: This feature isn't available for staff messaging or emergency alerts.
Who receives the message: Once your file is attached, you can't edit the To field. Your file decides who gets the message. Any student ID that isn't part of your school will be skipped.
Families with more than one student: If a family has two students on the same message, they'll get a separate message for each student, each with that student's own information filled in. This works the same way it already does for other personalized fields.
Viewing Your Sent Message
Once you've sent a message with custom merge fields, you can find it the same way you'd find any other message:
In your Inbox, All Messages, or Scheduled Messages, you'll see the field names in brackets, like
[balance_owed].
[SCREENSHOT NEEDED: Message list view showing merge field tokens — see "image 9.png" in source doc]
Open an individual student's message thread to see exactly what that family received, with their information already filled in.
[SCREENSHOT NEEDED: Individual student thread showing merged text — see "image 10.png" in source doc]
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