This article contains the following:
1. Overview
2. What is the teacher experience?
3. What is the student experience?
4. What is the family experience?
5. Turning Messages on or off
6. Accessing Messages
7. FAQs
Overview
With Messages, Teachers can now communicate with students parents directly from the Clever Portal! From the Messages tab, teachers can search for a student or parent and send them a message. From the student/parent Messages page, any of their teachers who have enabled Messages will be listed and available to receive a chat. Teachers can turn their Messages on or off at any time. To find out more, read below!
Coming soon: If a district has turned on the Family Portal, teachers will be able to message with parents, too!
What is the teacher experience?
To get started, teachers will:
- Navigate to the Messages tab at the top of their Portal and select 'Settings'. Once there, they can customize how their account will be displayed to students.
Clever Tip: Teachers can change how their name is displayed, and upload a custom picture or image by selecting the upload icon.
- To begin a chat with a student, the teacher can simply type in the student's name in the search bar or select the student's name from the list on the left-hand side.
Teachers can also filter their students by class. To do this:
- Click on the Classes drop-down menu to find the desired class. Once a class is selected, only students from that class will appear in the list of students below.
- To send a message, select Send or press the return key.
- Once the message has been sent, the student will receive a notification in their Portal letting them know they have a new message from their teacher.
- When a student sends a message to a teacher, the teacher will receive a notification at the top of their Portal.
- A numerical value will appear to display the total number of new or unread messages.
- Once the teacher clicks on Messages, they will be directed to the Messages page.
- Unread messages will remain in bold on the left-hand side, with a blue marker signifying that they are unread.
- When the teacher clicks an unread message from a student, their chat thread with that student will open and they can read the message the student sent.
- As a result, the red notification number at the top of the screen will decrease to the total number of unread messages that remain.
What is the student experience?
As long as one of their teachers has Messages turned on, students will see the Messages icon on their Clever Portal.
- When they receive a message from a teacher, they will be notified at the top of their Portal.
- From the Messages page, students can view new and previous messages from their teachers and send a reply to continue the conversation.
- On the left-hand side, students will see all of their teachers who have Messages turned on. From there, they can start or continue a chat with any of these teachers.
Please note: If a teacher has not turned their Messages on their name will not be listed.
Teachers and students can now add message notifications! Read more about adding browser and sound notifications when users receive a message: Teachers and Students.
What is the family experience?
As long as one of their teachers has Messages turned on, families will see the Messages icon on their Family Portal.
- When they receive a message from a teacher, they will be notified in the navigation bar of the Family Portal and the appropriate teacher message will be highlighted within the Messages tab:
- From the Messages page, families can view new and previous messages from their teachers and send a reply to continue the conversation. Families will see all threads from teachers who have enabled Messages in the Messages tab. If a teacher has enabled Messages, the family member can start or continue a chat with these teachers at any time.
Please note: If a teacher has not turned their Messages on their name will not be listed.
Turning Messages on or off
District Admins do not have the ability to disable messaging for individual teachers. However, teachers can turn their messages on or off at any time!
- To disable messages from being sent or received, teachers will select the 'Settings' link next to their name. Once there, they can toggle the switch to the 'off-position' and select 'Save'.
- A student will be notified when a teacher has turned off Messages and will not be able to chat with that teacher until they have turned Messages back on.
Teachers can turn Messages back on at any time from the 'Settings' link to begin chatting again!
Accessing Messages
All Message history between a teacher and students/families will be saved for the length of the school year. A Clever District Administrator can request access to a specific chat by reaching out to Clever Support or their district's Success representative.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQS)
How can a teacher confirm a message has been received?
- When a message has been viewed by the recipient, the word Read will appear underneath the message.
Who has access to message history?
- All message history will be saved until the end of the school year and can be requested from Clever by a Clever Admin.
Can messages be deleted or edited?
- Messages cannot be deleted or edited.
How can teachers view unread messages?
- Unread messages will remain in bold on the left-hand side, with a blue marker signifying that they are unread. When you click an unread message, your chat thread with the recipient will open and you can read the message.
- Once read, the red notification number at the top of the screen will decrease to the total number of unread messages that remain.
How does Clever promote respectful messaging?
- If a student sends a message that contains a swear word, a dialogue will display that prompts the student to confirm they would like to send their message. They can choose to select Don't send and edit their message or to select Send and the message will be delivered to their teacher.
At this time, Clever cannot detect swear words that appear within another word or if appended by a punctuation mark. Example: "word!"
Why does a message have an alphanumeric string instead of a name?
- If a student's name is an alphanumeric string instead of their actual name, it is because the student has been unenrolled from your class or they have left the district. We provide access to these historical messages as they may have content that is of value to teachers.
