“Message Builder” is a tool in Infinite Campus for individual schools as well as the district office to communicate with parents/guardians via email, phone calls, and text. Messages can be scheduled ahead of time to go out between the limits of the time window set by the district (7:00 AM – 9:00 PM).
To send a general message to parents/guardians in IC, please follow the steps below:
Select the current year and the school (select “All Schools” for district level messages going to more than one school):
In the Index, go to “Messenger > Message Builder”:
The message type will be “General Notification”. (“Priority” and “Behavior” types are not used at this time.)
For “Deliver To”, check “Student Messenger Contacts”—this means Parents/Guardians. (You may check the box for “Students” as well to message students directly—HOWEVER, very few students have their own email addresses listed in IC.) Under “Student Messenger Contacts”, select “One Message Limit”. This means that for parents/guardians who have more than one student, they will receive only one message rather than the same message multiple times for each student they have enrolled:
When you are sending a message during the school year, check “Message Only Active Students”. The only time you would NOT check this box would be to message students enrolled in the upcoming school year before the school year has actually started:
To message all contacts regardless of language, leave “No Language Preference” as the default. Selecting “English” will ONLY message contacts who have English listed as their contact preference and will exclude others. If sending a message in Spanish, then select “Spanish” to only message those contacts with a Spanish preference:
You must select an Ad Hoc filter in Message Builder. Filters have been built for each school as well as each grade level. Scroll down to the “Messenger” folder and expand to view the available filters. Your ability to message different schools and grade levels will be limited by the calendars you have access to through your IC rights:
If you select more than one filter, the “Set Filter Operation” is critical. “Union” will message ALL contacts in BOTH filters. “Intersection” will message only those contacts who are found in both filters. For example, if you select a school (Witter Ranch) and a grade level (Grade 1) and “Intersection”, you will message contacts of 1st graders at Witter Ranch only. If you select Witter Ranch and Grade 1 and “Union”, you would message all Witter Ranch contacts (regardless of grade) as well as all 1st grade contacts (regardless of school). If you have selected only one filter, the default “Union” is fine:
Select which devices the message will be delivered to. “Inbox” is the message center for parents/guardians in the IC Parent Portal. “Email” and “Voice” will go to email addresses and numbers on file for contacts. “Text” will send a text message to contacts ONLY IF they have opted in for texts:
Enter a “Message Subject” and compose message. If you selected “Text”, there will be an additional text message box to enter a shortened version of your email. Please note that emails are sent from a “do not reply” email box. If you would like recipients to be able to email you back, you will need to provide an email address in the body of your message:
If you selected “Voice”, the message body of your email will go out in calls as read by text-to-speech software UNLESS you record a voice message (NUSD strongly recommends that you record a message). To record a voice message, select “Record Message” and you will be provided with a phone number to call to record a message as well as a PIN. You only need to dial one of the numbers:
Follow the prompts on the voice recorder to save your message. After you have pressed “3” to save your message, you may hang up. A .wav file will be created and listed under “Recorded Messages”. Download and save to your computer by selecting the second icon under “Controls”:
Close the new tab or window that opened for the recorder to return to Infinite Campus. Browse for the .wav file saved on your computer (most likely in your “Downloads” folder). Select and be sure to hit the UPLOAD button:
If you have an email attachment, browse for the file and be sure to hit the UPLOAD button. IC recommends that email attachments do not exceed 1.2 MB or the message will not be delivered.
Optional: After reviewing all of your settings, click the “Save” button at the top of the page and give your message template a title if you might want to reuse the message at a later date. Otherwise, you do not need to save a template. Once sent, your message will be saved in the Sent Message Log.
Select “Test” to send your message to your own phone/email to verify it is correct. This should always be done for any message:
If the test is successful, you can set the time and date for delivery. Because the caller ID of the calls is matched to the main desk number for each school and for the district office, it is recommended that calls are scheduled to go out after the end of the business day to minimize the number of call backs from contacts simply redialing a missed call before listening to any messages. Set the dial window to start at an appropriate time:
You can set the time for email delivery to any time:
Select “Preview/Send” to review the number of recipients and devices. If you are ready to send, select “Send Message”:
After sending the message, you should review status/progress by going to “Messenger > Sent Message Log”.
Click on the message to view the delivery summary. Click on “Print Sent Message Report” for more delivery details.
For more information about all messaging tools in Infinite Campus, please visit the Knowledge Base in the Infinite Campus “Campus Community”.
Also see the related NUSD Knowledge Base article on “Emergency Messenger”.