This article contains the following:
1. Overview
2. Sending and receiving messages
3. Message notifications
4. What if a teacher turns off Messages?
5. Who can see these messages?
6. How does Clever promote respectful messaging?
Overview
Teachers and students can chat back and forth with Messages right from the Clever Portal! From your students' Messages page, any of their teachers who have enabled Messages will be listed and available to receive a chat from your student's Clever Portal. To find out more, read below!
Sending and receiving messages
As long as one of their teachers has Messages turned on, your student will see the Messages icon in their Clever Portal.
When they receive a message from a teacher, they will be notified at the top of your Portal. Read below to learn about how to set up Message notifications.
From the Messages page, they can view new and previous messages from their teachers and send a reply to continue the conversation.
On the left-hand side, they will see any 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 never turned their Messages on their name will not be listed.
Message notifications
Students can customize their Messages settings to allow for sound and browser notifications. When your student receives a message from a teacher they can choose to be notified by a sound, through their browser, or both!
To start, they will need to navigate to the Messages tab in their Clever Portal. From there, they will select the new 'Settings' button.
Browser notifications
By default, browser notifications will be set to 'off'; however, you can update this at any time!
If you'd like to enable browser notifications, toggle the 'Browser notifications' button to 'on'.
When turning browser notifications on, a pop-up window will open asking if you'd like to 'Allow' or 'Block' these notifications. To continue with turning your browser notifications on, select 'Allow'.
Once you have selected 'Allow' the 'Browser notifications' toggle will be green.
If you choose to 'Block' notifications the toggle will become disabled. To enable browser notifications in the future, you will need to go to your browser preferences and enable them from there. (See these resources for Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge).
When you're done, simply select 'Save' and your settings will be updated!
Sound notifications
By default, sound notifications will be set to 'on', but you can adjust this at any time! From the Messages page, select 'Settings' and toggle the 'Sound notifications' button 'on' or 'off'. A green toggle will indicate that the sound notifications are 'on'.
Whether turning the notifications on or off, don't forget to select 'Save' once you're done. You can always edit these settings as needed!
What if a teacher turns off Messages?
Teachers can turn off their messages at any time.
If a teacher has turned off Messages, your student will be notified and will not be able to chat with that teacher until they have turned Messages back on.
Who can see these messages?
All Message history will be saved for the rest of the school year and can be requested from Clever by a Clever District Administrator.
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!"