WhatsApp business or similar (Invigilators/Exams)

[Andycat]

Is anyone running WhatsApp for school use?

 

We're thinking for Invigilators, as they only have their own phones, no school device, and no staff email account or Microsoft licence.

 

We've had a no phone policy implemented generally for staff, but also no non school accounts.

 

It's making the Exam invigilator/regs almost unworkable....

[enjay]

Wouldn't that involve them sharing their personal numbers with each other? I can imagine some people saying no to that.

 

We've created limited M365 accounts for our invigilators, so they have a mailbox but no other access.

[itskdog]

If you're a Microsoft school, you could get some free A1 licences and use Teams, presumably similar is available for G Suite, but I don't yet have any experience on that front.

Edited April 16 by itskdog
Politeness

[Andycat]

5 minutes ago, enjay said:

Wouldn't that involve them sharing their personal numbers with each other? I can imagine some people saying no to that.

 

We've created limited M365 accounts for our invigilators, so they have a mailbox but no other access.

They're happy to share numbers, they currently  do it through a non official whatsapp......

[psydii]

They are in the MIS and SCR, so they get accounts provisioned, so they use Teams. They also have to use the wifi because 4/5G coverage is patchy at best.

 

We also have a no-phone policy. But its implemented much like the pirate's code. 

[jmak]

Signal offers WhatsApp like features with privacy for users and from what I can tell better security and privacy for the organisation. 

You need your phone number to sign up but it doesn't need to be made visible to other users. 

It's our backup option to use if we lose access to our tenancy and anything that's SSO with it.