How do I send something to just the right people (audiences)?

From the School Administrator manual, "Audiences (Targeting)".

Go to Audiences (/audiences) — reusable, named groups you build once and reuse across Document Library, Notices, Permission Slips, Polls and Sign-Ups, instead of re-specifying "who should see this" every single time.

The audience menu shows how many people it reaches. Under the Audience dropdown on every one of those forms (and in the iPhone/iPad/Mac app) a line reads, for example, "Reaches 12 people (9 students)" — or, for "Everyone at the school", the number of members and students. "People" are the adults reached (parents, staff, and an organization's leaders, editors and admins); students are counted separately.

Every organization is already an audience. You never need to build one just to reach a team or club: in the Audience dropdown of any of those forms, pick the organization under the Organizations heading. Classes and Departments are audiences too, under their own Classes and Departments headings (shown only while the school has those features on). An archived organization, class or department, or one whose feature is switched off, is not offered. Everyone connected to the organization is included — the families of its roster students, parents who joined it, its leaders and editors, and school admins. Audiences you build yourself appear under Saved audiences.

Building an audience

Click New audience, give it a descriptive Name (e.g. "9th graders in the PTA"), then build it from steps, top to bottom. A step's first dropdown chooses what it picks from: Grades, Organizations, Classes, Departments, Named students, a Staff role, or A saved audience (Classes and Departments appear only while those features are on). Step 1 is always where you start; each later step does one of three things to the group you have so far:

• Add — bring in another group. (9th grade, Add 10th grade, Add the Chess Team = all three together.)
• Only keep those also in — narrow it down. (9th grade, Only keep those also in the PTA = just the 9th graders' families who are in the PTA. A 6th-grade PTA family is not included.)
• Take away — remove a group. (The Chess Team, Take away 6th grade = Chess Team families except the 6th graders.)

Each step picks one kind of Group:

• Grades — one or more grades (checkboxes). Only grades with at least one current student are offered, so the list reflects your real roster.
• Organizations — one or more organizations.
• Named students — specific students, searched and added by name.
• Staff role — a specific staff role (e.g. all teachers).
• A saved audience — another audience you've already built, used as a building block. If you later change that audience, every audience that includes it changes too.

For each step after the first you'll see a small two-circle diagram showing what that choice does ("So far" on the left, "This group" on the right; the hatched part is what's kept), with a plain-words caption underneath. Under each step the page shows live counts for the audience you are building ("So far: 12 people, 40 students · After this step: 3 people, 9 students"), and a total at the bottom ("This audience reaches 42 people (31 students)"). The counts update as you click, before you save. "People" are the adults reached — parents, staff, and an organization's leaders, editors and admins — and students are counted separately.

Next to each choice you are picking from — each grade, organization, staff role, or saved audience — the page also shows how big that group is on its own, in parentheses: grades show students ("9th Grade (4 students)"), staff roles show people ("Teacher (4 people)"), and organizations and saved audiences show both ("Pirate Wrestling (1 person, 3 students)"). Those figures describe the single group, not your audience, so they don't change as you build. Use Up / Down to reorder steps (the order matters) and Remove to drop one.

On the Audiences list each audience shows a one-line summary of its steps.

Admins and leaders who are also parents. When a step uses Only keep those also in or Take away on an organization, a person who is both an affiliate (an admin, a leader, an editor, a parent member) and a parent is compared child by child: "9th graders, Take away the Chess Team" keeps an admin's 9th grader who is not on the Chess roster, and drops only the child who is. If the person has no child on one of the two sides, they are compared as a person.

Deactivated members never receive alerts. A parent or admin you have deactivated (see Manage Access) gets no notification in any form from any audience or from "Everyone at the school": no bell entry, no push, no email, and a registration-list entry carrying their account email is skipped too. Reactivating them brings the alerts back for new content.

Deleting and restoring

Delete asks you to confirm and tells you what currently uses the audience. Deleting hides it from every dropdown, but notices, documents, polls, permission slips and sign-ups that already use it keep reaching exactly the same people, and other audiences that include it keep working. To bring it back, click Show deleted at the bottom of the list, then Restore. An organization's own audience can't be edited or deleted.

When you Edit an audience that other things use, a note at the top lists them, because changing it changes who they reach.