SMS Texting is a new feature that will be available to Basic Tier schools and above. We are currently BETA testing this feature with a group of schools. The feature adds the ability to text family and staff as part of an Announcement.
This knowledge article applies to schools involved in the BETA testing of the new SMS Texting feature and will be updated once we are ready to release the feature to all qualifying schools.
For the BETA testing, each participating school will be given an allotment of texting credits they can use at no cost for the testing period.
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.
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: BETA schools: we have copied the cell phone number that was in a user's General page to this new field 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."
- Users who haven't consented to Text Messages will see the following in the Profile > System Info page:
They just need to click to consent.
- Once a user has consented - their 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 (which you don't need to worry about during the BETA testing period) 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
BETA Testing Configurations
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.
- For the BETA, we will default the SMS Auto Scaling to ON. This means when you run out of your texting allowance, it will automatically add more at no cost, no action is required.
- For the BETA, you should need to use the Purchase Additional Texting because we will provide your texting allowance at no charge.
