SMS Texting is a new feature that is now available to Basic subscription tier schools and above. The feature adds the ability to text family and staff as part of an Announcement.
This feature is available to schools on the Basic, Pro, and Enterprise level subscription. If you are interested in upgrading to gain access to this feature, please contact ClassReach Support.
This feature is a new communication tool for schools. It is intended to serve as an alert for high priority items such as a snow day, important or cancelled events, and other items that need to be communicated quickly to family and/or staff. Each eligible school receives a free monthly text allowance. If that should run out, additional texts in quantities of 500 are automatically purchased when you elect to send an announcement requiring text alerts. Balances start over each month and don't carry over.
Basic: 500 free/mth
Pro : 750 free/mth
Enterprise: 1000 free mth
Additional credits - $8 per 500
Mobile Phone Numbers used in SMS Texting
You may have noticed that we have added a new field "Mobile Phone" to the People > Basic page as shown below.
Note: For schools who are using the Cell Phone field on the General page of the user form, we have copied that cell phone number to this new Mobile Phone field (unless it was already populated-then it was left alone) to save your families some time. They will still need to "consent" to receiving texts at this number - see more below. 
IMPORTANT! Once a user has a mobile phone number in their profile, they will need to consent to receive text messages. Only users that have consented to receiving texts from ClassReach will be included in text alerts!
User Consent for SMS Texting:
Users that have a mobile number entered but have not yet consented will see a message on their home page under Requires Attention that reads "<school name> has Text Alerts and you have not yet consented to receive text alerts. Please go to your ClassReach Profile and provide consent." (example below)
- In the user Profile > System Info page, users who haven't yet consented to Text Messages will see the following:
They just need to click to consent.
- Once a user has consented - their User Profile page will look like:
Using Announcements to send mass text message:
You will notice a new option when you Add an Announcement - "Send an SMS text when announcement is posted?" 
When you select Yes, you will be provided with available texting credits as well as estimated announcement credits that will be needed for this message based on who the message audience is (teachers, guardians, students) taking into consideration the number of users who have consented to texts)
Note - The SMS text portion of your announcement has 148 character limit and no special characters are allowed.
What will my families/staff see?
The text you enter in the Text Message box on the announcement page will be exactly what your users who have consented to receive texts will see on their mobile devices.
What happens when my school runs out of texting credits?
If your school's text balance is not sufficient to complete the announcement, you will see the following message informing you that more credits will be automatically purchased to complete the transaction:
On the rare occasion your school does not have a valid payment method, you will receive an error when you attempt to Save the announcement, and no texts will be sent. You will need to contact the school administrator responsible for your ClassReach billing to address the issue.
SMS Usage History
- You will be able to see your SMS Texting usage on the Settings > Billing > SMS Texting page as shown below. There will be a row for each announcement that included a text and how many texts were sent:
The SMS Texting Summary is shown by month - use the drop-down box to select the month you would like to view. Each Announcement will indicate how many texts were sent, the balance remaining, and the user who created the text alert.
You can also see any Automatic Texting Credit Purchases made as well as the Monthly Texting Allowance here. Remember, each month starts over for texting credits.
- You can also see which Announcements included text alerts on the Announcements View All page. There will be columns indicating if Emails or Texts were included in the announcement and which user created the announcement:
