Assign chat roles, create rooms, and manage members

In Finalsite’s new chat feature, communication can take place in real-time between parents/guardians and school staff. This article will show admin users how to understand the roles that are available in the chat feature, how to create and assign roles to your chat setup, and create rooms that are each designed with the selected roles in mind.

In this Article

• Assign chat roles
  • Chat roles and permissions table
• Create rooms and understand how to monitor all communication
• Understand chat types
  • Chat room vs direct message
• Manage room membership

Assign chat roles

During the implementation of your chat feature in Finalsite’s new mobile app, you will work closely with our integration team to assign roles to your people, ensuring that each role has the right level of involvement in the chat process.

Here are the 4 chat roles available to choose from. 

• District Admin: This may be a Director of Communications, a Tech Director, or Superintendent. This is the role with the highest level of abilities within the chat setup including ability to monitor all chat messages and rooms in all schools.
• School Admin: This role might be a Head of School or Principal/Assistant Principal. They may have the highest level of rights within their own school but not over other schools in their district.
• Chat Manager: A Chat Manager is an assigned role to manage a particular chat room or rooms though are limited in abilities to monitor other chats and block users.
• Chat Participant: Likely a parent or guardian, chat participants are able to participate in chat conversations and chat directly with a Chat Manager if this is a part of their setup. Chat Participants can report messages, mute the notifications in a chat, and reply in a thread where they are allowed to chat.

Chat roles and permissions table

This table will help you make the best decision on what role each person will have in order to successfully participate in the communication process.

Create rooms and understand how to monitor all communication

Once you have the roles assigned and established, you are ready to create rooms. It's helpful at this phase to understand how you will be actively monitoring and moderating the communication taking place in your assigned arena.

• Configure the chat room settings via your CMS website desktop version.
• Depending on your Chat permissions level, you may assist with managing or moderating the chat.
• Anyone within the Chat feature can start and participate in direct messages.

Understand chat types

Here are the different chat formats that are available in Finalsite's chat feature: 

• Direct chat between 2 people.
• Group chat with multiple people.
• Auto-created chat rooms based on SIS, and ability to create more chat rooms.
• One-way chat room: admin can send messages to group without recipient ability to respond.
• Two-way chat room: anyone can send a message. 

The mobile Chat homescreen is divided into two sections: Chat Rooms and Direct Messages.

Chat Rooms vs Direct Messages

Chat Rooms

A chat room is a place where all members of a class or an athletic team or fine arts group can communicate together in an ongoing basis. Rooms with new, unread messages will be listed first in your list of all chat rooms. A small notification bubble with a number inside will signify new and unread messages in that chat room.

• Read and write new messages.
• Mute or unmute push notifications with an easy toggle.
• View other chat room members.
• Post files and other media in messages or replies.
• Change formatting (bold, italic, strikethrough).
• Reply and react to messages with comments and/or emojis.
• Leave rooms you no longer wish to be involved in. 

Direct Messages

Direct messages are more situational or targeted toward having a "quick chat" about something with a smaller audience. New and unread messages will display first with a notification bubble.

• Involve other teachers or parents/guardians in a message. 
• Write or reply to regarding a mutual student.
• Know with confidence who is included in a direct message. 
• Mute when you don't want to receive notifications for this message any longer.

Manage room membership

Once you have worked with our support or implementation team to add your people into the system, you can now manage them from the Members tab. To view membership, open the Chat feature by first opening up Mobile Apps from the module menu. Click on the Members tab to see a list of all members. 

Here are all of the different tasks you can do from the Members tab: 

• Filter by chat role and/or location to populate only that selection in the list.
• Add members manually to appear in the Members tab or Delete with the trash can icon.
• Adjust the Chat role level of that member.