Toddle provides an intuitive experience for school administrators to create announcements for their school community. Using the educator app, you can send announcements to teachers, students and family members and can even choose specific class(es), grade(s) or curriculum(s) or selected members of the school community to share the announcement with. Additionally, you can track the read receipts of announcements, allowing you to follow up with individuals who may have missed important updates. Read this article to learn more!

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To begin creating an announcement as a school administrator, click the ‘Announcements’ card on your preferred curriculum homepage. On the landing page, click on the plus button.

💡Please note that in order to access the 'Announcements' feature from the educator app, you need to be added to one or more programmes.

This will take you to the announcement creation page, displayed as a single scrollable interface. Here's how to go about creating an announcement step by step:

If you’ve configured default banners for announcements from the admin portal on the web, the relevant banner will be automatically applied based on the curriculum you’re in. You can click on the banner to view it, remove it, or replace it by:

If you remove the default banner or if no banner has been set, you’ll see the ‘Add banner’ option at the top. Click this to:

💡The ‘Set to school default’ option will only appear if a default banner exists for the selected curriculum.

The next step in announcement creation is to add a title (mandatory) and write a description. You can style the description using formatting options, adding emojis, bullet/numbered lists, etc.

If your school has AI features enabled, you can also generate a description using it. Read this article to learn how to use AI in announcements.

Your content is automatically saved as you type when creating new announcements. This means your work is preserved even if you navigate away. You can find your auto-saved announcements under the ‘Draft’ tab at any time.

Next, add supporting files to your announcement. You can upload an image, record and attach an audio message, or click the three-dot menu to explore more options.

From the three-dot menu, you can:

Additionally, if your school has integrated Google or Microsoft Workspace, you’ll see the option to create a document, spreadsheet, or presentation directly from within the announcement. Once created, the document will be automatically attached to your announcement.

💡The available creation options depend on your school’s configured cloud storage integration.

Under the ‘Who should receive this?’ section, you can configure your audience in the following ways:

This section displays recipient lists from your previously sent announcements in the current academic year. You can use the three-dot to scroll through the list to view older announcements if needed.

Click any of these to instantly reuse the same recipient list.

Start by selecting the recipient type for your announcement. You can choose staff, students, family members or all user groups.

Next, select specific curriculum/programmes, grades, or classes in your school to share the announcement with. If you wish to share the announcement with specific members of your school community, you have the option to do so using the ‘Custom’ option. Let’s explore each one of these options in detail:

If an announcement is to be made at the programme level, select 'Programmes' and click the ‘+Add programmes’ button to choose the curriculum(s) you want to share the announcement with. This will ensure that the announcement reaches the selected audience (staff/students/family) for the chosen programme.

If you wish to send the announcement to specific grade(s) in your school, select 'Grades' and click on the 'Add grades' button.

You will see a list of all grades in your school grouped by the curriculum they belong to. Simply select the grades using the checkboxes. This will ensure that the announcement is shared with the selected audience of the chosen grades.

If you want to send the announcement to one or more classes, select 'Classes' and click on the 'Add classes' button.

You will see a list of all the classes, grouped by grade levels. Simply select one or more classes where you want to share the announcement.

Based on your selection, the announcement will be shared with the selected audience for the chosen classes.

If you wish to share announcements with specific members of the school community, use the 'Custom' option. This allows you to create a personalized recipient list for your announcement. To do so, simply click on the 'Custom' option, then select the 'Add custom' button to add the relevant members.

💡You can only select one group type at a time (e.g., you cannot select both Classes and Custom together).

Next, you can search for specific members or filter your view using the filters on the top. You can choose to view recipients by:

This helps you easily narrow down your recipient list. For instance, if you select the ‘Classes’ filter, you’ll see all the classes in the programme you are in. Upon selecting a class, all the members associated with it will be added as recipients.

💡Please note that the list of users that appears will depend on the recipient types you selected before selecting the recipient group. For example, if you only select Students, the screen will only show individual students or students grouped by classes/grades/year groups. If you select ‘All members’, you’ll be able to choose from students, staff, and family members.

To further customize the recipients list, simply uncheck the members you do not wish to include in the announcement.

After adding recipients, you will see a summary that includes:

Use the checkboxes in the ‘Email’ column to control whether each user group should also receive the announcement via email in addition to Toddle.

Before publishing, you can preview how your announcement will appear to recipients by clicking the eye icon at the top right of your screen. Use the ‘Toddle Preview’ dropdown at the top-right of the screen to switch between different preview modes:

Once you’re ready, you have two options:

For scheduling an announcement, use the date/time picker in the scheduling modal. Your announcement will be automatically published on the exact date and time you have selected.

After publishing, recipients will:

To view announcements, use the toolbar on the 'Announcements' page. Let’s explore each tab:

Clicking on any announcement will show its details such as title, description and attachments, if any. Additionally, you will be able to view the name of the publisher and the date and time when the announcement was published.

For visibility on the recipients of the announcement, use the 'Read on Toddle' option. This will present a comprehensive list indicating who has accessed and read the announcement, as well as those who have yet to do so.

Likewise, you can review the classes with whom the announcement has been shared by utilizing the 'Sent to' option. This will provide you with a curriculum-based list of classes that have received the announcement.

As a school admin, you have the ability to edit or delete both your own announcements and those created by other staff members within your school. Simply choose an announcement from the list and click on the pencil icon to edit any necessary information. While publishing an updated announcement, you can choose to update with or without notifying the recipients. Alternatively, if you wish to delete an announcement, use the trash icon.

💡It's important to note that when editing an already published announcement, auto-save is not enabled. Changes to live announcements must be explicitly saved. This prevents accidental updates from going live.

When you delete an announcement, instead of being permanently removed, it is moved to the ‘Bin’ tab and is no longer visible to the recipients.

Note that when you delete a draft announcement, it will be permanently removed and will not be stored in ‘Bin’.

To restore and republish a deleted announcement, select the announcement you wish to recover and click the ‘Republish’ button.

This will open up the announcement in edit mode, where you can make the required changes. Adjust the recipients and choose whether to republish immediately or schedule it for later. Once republished, the announcement will appear as a new post in recipients' inboxes, and they will receive a notification.

Additionally, you can quickly find specific announcements by entering keywords in the search bar at the top right. You can also filter the announcements to narrow down your search within the ‘Inbox’ and 'All Published' tab using the filter icon.

Clicking on the filter icon will open a modal with the following filtering options:

Created by: This lists all staff members who have published an announcement. You can choose one or more names from here.

Published Date: You can filter and view announcements based on the date they were published.

Class(es): This tab will show a list of classes you are tagged to. You can select one or more classes to view announcements specific to those classes.

Recipient type: This tab allows you to filter announcements based on the recipients they were targeted to.

Once filters are selected, click ‘Show announcements’ to view the filtered announcements. To reset a specific filter, you can click the ‘Reset’ option on the top right corner.

We hope that you could find what you were looking for. Explore other articles for more!