Push Notifications for announcements/bulletins

[Richardson1]

Why is there not an option for parents to receive push notifications for school announcements or bulletins? It seems only logical that parents would like to receive this info from the same resource they use to receive notifications for grades and attendance.

[HeatherWeist]

@Richardson1  Parents using the mobile PowerSchool app can have School Announcements as a push notification. They can also have School Announcements setup via email notification. Under Email Notification within their parent portal, it can be selected. 

[Richardson1]

Thanks for responding, but I’m still a little confused. Are you saying they can get notifications through the app on their phones without it being a push notification via email? From the app, I see where I can get push notifications for grades and attendance and underneath that is an option to set up email notifications for several things including announcements. So, a parent would have to set up push notifications on the email to receive push notifications from PowerSchool that way and take a chance that the notification would get lost in all their email notifications instead of being a notification from PS directly. Am I understanding that correctly?

Here’s why I am asking: I teach in a high poverty, semi-rural school system, and many of our parents don’t use email daily the way they do push notifications, and they have been very pleased with the grade and attendance push notifications, so I was just curious as to how that could be set up for announcements in the same way.

[SAFFIYAT]

Hi @Richardson1

The Push notifications are limited to Grades and Attendance only and the setting in the portal under the Email Notification is specific to Email.

Email notifications are configured via the portal and are standard email notifications that get sent around midnight to 3 am-ish time frame. Push notifications that are sent within a few minutes ONLY that supports Grades and Attendance.

[jjolmarq]

Hi Saffiya,

I am wondering if you know of a way to change the time the email notifications are sent? As you previously replied, ours are sent after midnight. Because they are being sent at that time, the announcements are never current, as I have not yet posted announcements for the day by that time. If I could get the emails to send later in the day, parents would receive current announcements for that day. Any suggestions? 

[KritiS]

Hi @jjolmarq

There is no way to change the time the email notifications are sent as this Hard coded and can’t be changed. As the emails go out after 12am you should ensure the event spans to the next day (making the event the day before, not the day of)