Bromcom Messaging

[garethEds]

Have asked this on the Bromcom Community but hoping for quicker answers.....

 

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In ClassCharts we can send messages to groups of pupils - such as classes, clubs, individuals etc. The messages appear as announcements in the ClassCharts app (parents and students).

 

We want to do this in Bromcom - but apart from Announcements in MCAS, I cannot see a way of sending announcements to groups of pupils. I can see an option to 'Send Message' - but this is for SMS/EMail - neither of which are working at the moment at our school (LEA/Bromcom are working on it).

 

I need to be able to send messages direct to MCAS or Student Portal app.

 

 

Cheers everyone - feel I am missing something obvious.

[Rob_D]

As far as I can remember, if you send an email, and the recipient has the MCAS app then it will come through as an MCAS message.

[Seb1780]

From within the messaging tool if the "Send push notification for mobile app users" is ticked this will send messages to the app (parent or student) rather than sending SMS / E-mail.

Of course, it only works with those who have enrolled on the app and will send SMS / E-mail to all others.

 

Bromcom does one or the other, not both; it's either a message to the app or an e-mail / SMS.

[garethEds]

1 hour ago, Seb1780 said:

From within the messaging tool if the "Send push notification for mobile app users" is ticked this will send messages to the app (parent or student) rather than sending SMS / E-mail.

Of course, it only works with those who have enrolled on the app and will send SMS / E-mail to all others.

 

Bromcom does one or the other, not both; it's either a message to the app or an e-mail / SMS.

 

This is not really what I want - yes to send messages to the App - and only the app. I don't want to use SMS at all. It's a shame if we cannot do that. If I choose email them that doesn't go to the app. This is the window I see - I wonder if it would work if we had no SMS credits.

 

 

 

[Devaleth]

Gareth, if you send as "email - plain text", it defaults to a message in the app with an accompanying push notification for all parents with an active MCAS app. Any without would be turned into an email. This is probably as close as you will get.

 

https://docs.bromcom.com/knowledge-base/how-to-send-an-sms-or-email/

 

You can send this to groups of parents/students either by using the group page (e.g. year group, class group, tutor group) or by selecting a selection of students using the standard filters, or the hidden filters at the top of the screen

[Alis_Klar]

This is one of the Worst examples of Bromcom making something which should be simple an annoying maze of options that hardly work.

 

If i was being helpful I think announcements generate a push notification in the app also.  Although it's not obvious as with anything in Bromcom.

[Bromcom_Alastair]

Hi @garethEds - I managed to find your original posting on the Bromcom Community and got someone to add a fuller reply to you on there. 

One users commented that:
 

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From within the messaging tool if the "Send push notification for mobile app users" is ticked this will send messages to the app (parent or student) rather than sending SMS / E-mail.

Of course, it only works with those who have enrolled on the app and will send SMS / E-mail to all others.

But to answer your other query about SMS credits, we've said:
 

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Yes, push notifications will work if you have no SMS credits. Be mindful that some parents may have turned off push notifications and will need to enable them.

 

Hope this answered your question in full, and apologies for the delay.

[Alis_Klar]

Looking at this Community thread https://community.bromcomcloud.com/archive-1kfacyh7/post/push-notifications-sending-instead-of-sms-N8MzxvfVgyAJ6Tn

 

How does the system deem an MCAS account as active and not fall back to SMS/e-mail if you ticked the push notification box? 

 

Also while i'm here it's highly confusing that the push notification option disappears if HTML is selected.

 

This should generate a popup error not just hide the tiny tickbox as it could easily be missed.

 

Is the Announcement option a better bet as this never consumes SMS/e-mail credit and if a parent fails to get the message it's simpler to troubleshoot as it mainly caused by notifications not being enabled on their smartphone.