The following information is for Staff. If you're looking for Parent + Student information, please click here.

Important Note: Make sure you have the correct building selected when completing operations in the app. Almost all aspects of the app are separated by building. For example: Creating a news category at EHS, will not be visible to parents who have John Gregg as their selected building. Please double check your building at the top of your screen when completing any setup in the app!

Getting Started

To get started with the Edison Local Wildcats app, there are a couple things you need to do right off the bat:

1. Get logged in
   1. Dashboard
      
      1. Check your email for dashboard login setup instructions
      2. Login to the dashboard with those credentials
   2. App
      1. Follow setup steps for the app and select Login with Google when prompted
2. Create a News Category
   1. navigate to Features -> App Newsfeed -> Categories (Shortcut link)
   2. Click New in the top right
   3. Name your group on the left and optionally add an image (suggested names are like "Mrs. Lastname's 1st Grade")
   4. The "Secured Access" section is suggested to be left on it's defaults as "All Users - This item is public" because:
      1. Users must opt-in to receive these posts
      2. You are able to choose who your news goes to on an individual post basis

For more detailed instructions, click to link for the section in the list.

Operating the App

As a staff member, two portions of the app are going to be the most important to you, Mass Communication/Create News and Conversations. Below are descriptions of each feature. You can click on the feature header to go to our knowledgebase article on using the feature:

Mass Communcation/Create News:

This is your 1 way communication feature. In the dashboard, you'll see this referred to as Mass Communication, within the phone app you will see this as the Create News option. This feature allows you to send information out via App (Push notifications), Email, and Text. You get to customize who each post goes to, and which channels you want them to receive it on.

Our general guidance with Mass Comms is that non-critical information goes out to the App Channel, and critical or time sensitive information can go out through all 3 options to help reach parents that do not have the app set up.

Conversations:

This is your 2 way communication feature. You can access it via the dashboard or mobile app. It is very similar to most instant messaging/text messaging applications. Important things to note with it:

• Creating a new conversation allows you to create individual or group messages where everyone in the chat can chat with each other.
• Selecting the option to "Send Bulk Private Message" allows you to send messages to a group of people where they then can only reply back to you, not the other people in the group like the standard conversation does. This is useful for announcements.
• In the Participants To list, you should find your classes "target lists" as well as individual contacts for parents, students and other staff members
• Clicking the + on a group in the Participants section allows you to expand the group to see all participants and remove individual people
• When receiving a new message, if the recipient has not read it by the following morning, they will receive an email letting them know they have unread messages