What this helps you do
Sending a Blast delivers your message to the phones and computers of everyone in the audience you pick, and by email to everyone in it who is still an email subscriber, from your school's own verified sending address. You can send now, schedule for later, or repeat weekly. The composer supports formatting, links and images, up to three attached files for people on Blasts (email subscribers do not receive attachments, so link to anything they need), a YES / NO reply the Hub counts, One per household for Blasts delivery, and Send a test to me so you see exactly what people will receive.
When to use it
Use it for the messages that fail in a newsletter: a closure or a two-hour delay decided before dawn, an early dismissal, a change to pickup or the dismissal door, a bus route running behind or changing its stop order, a field trip returning behind schedule, a classroom that moved, a cancelled practice or a moved rehearsal, a chaperone or volunteer call, a form or fee deadline closing this week, and a notice families need today.
How to do it
- Open Send, or start from one of the starter templates your Hub seeds for closures and delayed openings, dismissal and pickup changes, route changes, division and grade notices, trips and deadlines, team and activity changes, events and volunteer calls.
- Pick exactly one audience. Ask yourself which one the fact belongs to: the route, the grade, the classroom, the team, an interest, or the whole school. If it belongs to a combination, such as Grade 5 Soccer, that combination needs to be its own audience.
- Type the message. Link to the revised schedule or the permission form so everyone can open it; an attached file (up to three, 5 MB each) reaches people on Blasts only.
- For a dismissal change or a volunteer call, ask for a YES / NO reply and the Hub counts the answers people send themselves.
- Tick One per household when the home only needs one copy, for example a fee notice. It applies to Blasts delivery; people on email each still receive a copy.
- Read the Delivery panel: one Blasts credit per connected person, one email credit per email subscriber. The count is people, never homes.
- Click Send a test to me, then choose Send now, Schedule for later, or Repeat weekly.
Example
Tuesday, 5:30 a.m., the roads are ice. The principal picks All Parents & Guardians, says school opens two hours late, buses run on the same delay and breakfast is not served, and clicks Send now. Two hours later the transportation office sends a separate note to Bus Route 4 only, because that route cannot run the hill at all. Nobody on the other routes hears about a road they do not use.
Good to know
- An immediate send is held for about a minute so you can cancel it from Sent & Scheduled; nothing is charged for a cancelled Blast.
- Do not plan follow-up calls around whether people have seen a message. When you need an answer, ask for a YES / NO reply: that is the parent's own reply, and the Hub counts it. If two messages asking for YES / NO go out within a few days, a reply is counted against the most recent one, so ask one question at a time.
- This is one more channel beside whatever your school is already required to do in an emergency. It does not replace your emergency procedures, your official notification or the call from the office.
- Recurring Blasts, such as a Friday note, are managed under Sent & Scheduled: pause, resume or delete them there.
- If leader approval is on (Settings), a Coordinator's send waits under Sent & Scheduled until an administrator approves it. A new school Hub starts with that off.