Notices

Notices are Insight messages. Some notices are generated automatically by Insight and others can be composed via the Notice Composer and sent to parents and students.

Notice Composer

Creating a Notice

Notices can be created in Insight using the Notice Composer. The Role Option required to access this is:
Manage > Notice Composer (On)

The Notice Composer is accessed via:
Manage > Notice Composer

Click Add to open a window where you can create a notice. Enter the Date for the notice. The date given to a notice does not affect the time that it is sent; notices, emails and SMS messages are always 'sent' immediately. The Notice will appear on the Notices page for students and parents under the selected date, but will be visible as soon as you save the Notice.

The Expiry Date will cause the notice to disappear from users' inboxes on a certain date. Enter a Subject and a Body for the Notice. A list of mail merge fields can be found below, which can be used in the Body of the Notice. Use the Attachments tab at the top of the page to add attachments to the Notice.

Selecting Recipients

Recipients for notices are selected using the Recipients tab. The Add button on the right of the page is used to select students. The notice will be sent to all Insight accounts linked to that student, which includes both parental accounts and the Insight account of the student.

If the user has the following Role Option then they will always see a list of all academic classes when selecting recipients:
Manage > Notice Composer > Show All Subjects And Classes (On)

Otherwise the user will onlly see classes that they teach, when viewing academic classes. In this case there will be an option on the right of the page (before clicking the Add button) called Show All Classes which can be used to reveal all academic classes in the Recipients window.

Email and SMS

Notices sent using the notice composer can also be copied as emails and SMS messages. Insight requires some configuration before either of these types of messages can be sent. See the Communication setup page for further information about this.

When sending emails or SMS messages you have the ability to Defer until a later date. Insight will not send your message until this date and time in the future. You can also use the Hide notice option to send an email and/or SMS without an Insight notice.

SMS

A copy of the notice can be sent to parents' mobile telephone numbers using the SMS parents option when composing a notice. This option will only appear if the user has the following role option:
Manage > Notice Composer > Allow SMS (On)

The Limit to one per address option will prevent more than one SMS message being sent to a household .e.g. if mum and dad live at the same address and both have Insight accounts, only one of them will receive the SMS message. The person that receives the SMS message is random.

Email

Copies of notices can also be sent as emails to either students or to parents, using the Email Students and Email Parents options. There are no role options to disable these settings, however both can be enabled by default using the following Role Option:
Manage > Notice Composer > Email by default (On)

By default, emails from the Notice Composer will be sent from the email address specified in this preference:
Manage > Preferences > Email > Your Reply To email address
The email address of the staff member that sent the notice can also be added (resulting in both email addresses receiving replies from students/parents) if the staff member has the following Role Option enabled:
Manage > Notice Composer > Use Individual Reply Address

Private Response

The Allow Private Response option adds a Reply button to the notice which students and parents can use. Replies are always sent via email.
Replies will always be sent to the email address listed in this preference, if one has been added:
Manage > Preferences > Email > Redirect all "contact" emails to this address
Otherwise replies will be sent to the email address listed in this preference:
Manage > Preferences > Email > Your Reply To email address

iThe Reply button will be hidden from parents if the Dynamic Parental role does not have the Contact staff option enabled.

BCC to Staff

The notice can also be BCC'd to staff if required, using the CC Staff tab. Every staff member with an Insight account will be listed. A blind copy of the notice can be sent to each staff member by either email or SMS, providing their Insight account has an email address/mobile telephone number associated to it.

The user composing the notice will only be able to send BCCs via SMS if they have the following Role Option enabled:
Manage > Notice Composer > Allow SMS (On)

Mail Merge Fields

Mail merge fields can be used in notices sent from Insight. Simply type any of the merge fields below to pull data into your notices:

Mailmerge field	Ouput
{adno}	Admission Number
{onroll}	Whether the pupil is on roll or not
{name}	The pupil's fullname i.e. John Smith
{listname}	The pupil's surname followed by forename i.e. Smith, John
{gender}	The pupil's gender
{year}	The year group the pupil belongs to
{reg}	The registration group the pupil belongs to
{forename}	The pupil's legal forename
{chosenforename}	The pupil's chosen forename
{legalsurname}	The pupil's legal surname
{surname}	The pupil's chosen surname
{house}	The house the pupil belongs to
{dol}	The pupil's date of leaving
{heshe}	Either he or she, depending on the pupil's gender
{himher}	Either him or her, depending on the pupil's gender
{hishers}	Either his or hers, depending on the pupil's gender
{hisher}	Either his or her, depending on the pupil's gender
{sondaughter}	Either son or daughter, depending on the pupil's gender
{himselfherself}	Either himself or herself, depending on the pupil's gender

Editing and Deleting Notices

Notices can be edited and deleted from the Notice Composer page. In both of these cases, the recipients will see the updated/deleted Notice, not the original Notice. This only applies to Notices within Insight; emails and SMS messages cannot be altered or deleted once they have been sent.

Users may be given access to each other's notices if required, using the following Role Option:
Manage > Notice Composer > Show other users notices (On)

Inbound Notices and Parental Replies

If a staff member has sent a notice to one or more parents using the Allow private response option then parents will be able to reply to the notice. Replies will appear as Inbound messages on the Notice Composer page. If a parent has sent a message to the staff member via the Linked adults and agencies page, then this message will also appear in the Inbound section.

If the staff member does not have the following role option enabled then they will be able to view the parent's reply, and send another message in response if desired:
Manage > Notice composer > Show other users notices (Off)

When a staff member replies to an Inbound notice, the reply will appear as a new message to parents.

Student and Parent View

Students and Parents can access Notices via the Notices page. The Role Option required for this is:
General > Notices (On)

The Notices page is found via:
General > Notices

The notice page will show a list of the messages that have been sent to the user via the Insight Notice Composer. Some automatically generated notices may also appear here. One month's messages are shown at a time. The arrow buttons at the top of the page can be used to view previous or future month's messages.

Notices will be ordered chronologically, either earliest to latest or vice versa depending on the following preference:
Manage > Preferences > Notices > Order Notices Newest First

It is also possible to display a Notices section on the Snapshot page, which has its own set of Role Options and settings.

Automatic Notices for Users

Insight can produce many notices automatically for users, in various circumstance as described below.

Calendar Events

Several SIMS calendar events can be displayed on the Notices page in Insight. You can select the events that you would like to display using the following preference:
Manage > Preferences > Notices > Show These SIMS Events (On)

Each type of event that can be displayed will be listed. Turn the events on or off as required.

Messages from PARS

Messages sent from the External Contact screen in PARS can be displayed on the Notices page in Insight. Only the recipient of the message selected in PARS will be able to see the corresponding Notice in Insight.

This feature is enabled using the following preference:
Manage > Preferences > PARS > Include PARS Communications In Notices (On)

Parents Evenings

Parents will automatically receive a notice if a Parents Evening has been created that their child could attend.

If the parents evening is open for booking and the parent also has the following role option (allowing them to make parents evening bookings) then the notice will contain a link that will take the parent to the booking screen.

Unexplained Absences

A Notice will automatically be generated for unexplained absences (N codes) for students, if the following Role Option is enabled:
Attendance > Report Absences (On)

The Notice will show a list of dates on which the student has N codes. The title of the Notice will always read "Unexplained Absences" but the body of the Notice can be edited. The body of the Notice will begin with the text from the following preference, followed by a list of dates on which the student has N codes for their attendance:
Manage > Preferences > Notices > Notice To Use For Unexplained Absence

Users will be able to click on some or all of the dates to access the Report Absences page for those dates if the following Role Option is enabled:
Attendance > Report Absences > Allow reporting of historical absences (On)
Dates which are upto this many days in the past will be clickable:
Attendance > Report Absences > Maximum age of absence in days

The dates of recent attendance codes can be hidden using the following preferences:
Manage > Preferences > Attendance > Hide marks in attendance summaries in the validation range (On)
Manage > Preferences > Attendance > The number of days taken to validate attendance marks for attendance summaries (-1 for current week) (The number of days' attedance marks to be hidden)

Data Collection

A notice will be shown prompting the user to view the Personal details page to check their details if the user is a parent and has the following role options:
General > Personal Details (On)
General > Personal Details > Allow new contact entry (On)

Linked Documents

A student's Linked Documents can be displayed on the Insight Notices page. Linked Documents can only be displayed if they are set as Public in SIMS. Enable the following Role Option to display Linked Documents:
Notices > Show Public Linked Documents (On)

In this case Insight will create one notice for each Public Linked Document for the student. Insight users can download the document. You can set a start date, meaning that Insight will not display any documents that were uploaded to SIMS before this date, using the following Role Option:
Notices > Public linked documents earliest date

Linked Documents in SIMS have a Type field. Certain Types can be prevented from appearing in Insight by entering them into the following Role Option. If you want to hide multiple Types, separate each with a + symbol
Notices > Do not show the following document types

iIf you want to show only specific Types of Public Linked Documents (as opposed to hiding some Types) it is recommended to use the Subjects feature instead for Linked Documents.

Medical Events

Medical Events can be recorded in SIMS, on the Student Details page. These events can be displayed on the Notices page in Insight if the following Role Option is enabled:
Notices > Show medical events (On)

Push Notifications

If students and/or parents use the Insight app then they will receive a push notification when they receive notices from the Notice Composer in Insight, or when they receive messages from PARS. The message used for push notifications is defined in the following preference:
Manage > Preferences > Notices > Push message to use when new notices are created

In order for push notifications to be triggered for messages from PARS you will also need to create an API Key for PARS to use.