How do I send, schedule and manage notices?

From the School Administrator manual, "Notices".

Go to Manage Notices (/notices/admin). Notices are short, time-limited announcements — a schedule change, a reminder, a weather closure — that automatically expire so your notice board doesn't quietly fill up with stale posts.

Click + Add Notice, fill in the title/body, optionally attach files (PDF, Word, Excel, images — same Attachments control as Document Library, see Document Library for how attachment descriptions work), set an expiration date, and optionally scope it to an Audience (leave blank for everyone). A notice stays up through the whole of its expiration date in your school's time zone (set in School Settings), and goes away at midnight. The expiration date can't be one that has already passed (an already-expired notice can still be edited as long as you leave its date alone). Existing notices can be Edited or deleted, and the list shows whether each one has already expired.

Drafts and scheduling: on the web form, When should parents see it? lets you Publish now, Schedule for later or Save as a draft. A draft is seen only by admins and nobody is alerted. A scheduled notice goes live at the minute you choose, in your school's time zone (set in School Settings), and that is when parents are told. The go-live time must be in the future and before the expiration date. Manage Notices marks each one Draft or Scheduled with its go-live time; Edit a draft or scheduled notice to publish it straight away. A notice that is already published has no timing choice. Organization Editors always publish straight away. The iPhone, iPad and Mac app does not offer drafts or scheduling yet.

Category and urgent notices: the notice form has a Category list (see School Settings, Categories) and a Mark as urgent checkbox, available to both Junior and Senior Admins. An urgent notice shows a red exclamation mark in the Notices list and an HIGH PRIORITY NOTICE banner at the top of the notice. Parents can use the category buttons - and an Urgent only button, shown whenever at least one notice is urgent - above the Notices list to narrow it down. Organization Editors publishing from an organization's page do not see these two controls.

SwiftUI app: Admins see a + button on the Notices tab to add a new notice — title, body, audience picker (or leave it on "Everyone at the school"), and an expiration date, defaulting to two weeks out (it can't be set to a date that has already passed). Opening any notice's detail screen shows a pencil icon; tapping it turns title/body/audience/expiration editable in place, with Delete Notice available from within Edit mode (behind a confirmation). Existing attachments still open/download from the detail screen as before, but adding or removing an attachment is still web-only for now.

Organization notices. A notice written from an organization's own page (Organizations (Teams, Clubs & Groups)) shows that organization's colored pill (with a small people icon, linking to the organization) in the Notices list and on the notice itself. A notice sent to a saved audience shows "For " instead, and a school-wide notice shows nothing. Organization Editors cannot reach Manage Notices — they publish only from their organization's page.

On the Notices list itself, swiping a notice left-to-right toggles it read/unread (everyone, including parents), matching the same blue swipe Apple's own Mail app uses. Admins additionally see a Trash action when swiping right-to-left — since this deletes the notice for every user at the school, not just you, it asks you to confirm twice before anything is actually deleted. Parents don't see the Trash action.

Formatting a notice body

The Body field is a formatting editor, not a plain text box. A toolbar sits across the top of it with these buttons, left to right:

• Bold, Italic, Underline and Strikethrough — select some text, then click the button.
• Link — select the text, click the link button and paste the address.
• Heading 1 and Heading 2 — two heading sizes for the line your cursor is on.
• Numbered list and Bulleted list.
• Image — pick a JPEG or PNG under 5 MB. You are asked for a short description of the picture, which is what a screen reader reads out. An image always sits on its own line.
• Clear formatting (the T with a small x) — removes the formatting from the selected text.

⌘B, ⌘I and ⌘U work as shortcuts. There is deliberately no table, font, colour, or alignment control — keeping the formatting set small is what lets the same notice look right on the web and in the iPhone/iPad/Mac app.

Older notices. A notice written before the editor changed in September 2026 still opens in the previous editor when you edit it: select text for a small floating toolbar, or type / at the start of a line for a menu of things to insert (including a table). New notices always use the toolbar described above.

Personalizing a notice with merge fields

Above the Body field, an Insert field dropdown lets you drop in a personalized field that fills in each parent's own information automatically — so "Dear [First Name]," shows up to every parent as their own actual name, not literal placeholder text. Pick First Name, Last Name, or School Name from the dropdown to insert it at your cursor as a small blue pill; the dropdown resets afterward so you can insert another. The pill isn't editable text — delete it as a whole unit if you want to remove it — and you (the admin) are the only one who ever sees the pill itself; every parent viewing the notice sees their own resolved name in its place, as ordinary text. If a parent's name isn't on file, they'll see "Parent" there instead of a blank. This works the same way in the iOS/macOS app: as an admin you always see the pill (in the notice and in its editor), and each parent sees their own name.

Notice Templates

If you send the same kind of notice repeatedly (a "Picture Day reminder," a weekly schedule note), save it as a template instead of retyping it every time.

Manage Notice Templates: at the top of Manage Notices (/notices/admin), click Manage Notice Templates to see every template for your school, sorted alphabetically. Click a template's name to edit it (Template Name, Notice Title, and Body — the same formatting editor Notices themselves use), or add a new one. Deleting a template asks you to confirm once, the same as deleting a notice on the web — it never affects any notice you already created from it; a template is only ever a starting point, not a live link.

Using a template: on the Add Notice page, a Template dropdown sits above the Title field — pick one by name to fill in the Title and Body. If you'd already typed a Title, picking a template leaves it alone; if you'd already started writing a Body, you're asked to confirm before it's replaced (so you can copy what you'd written first if you want to keep any of it). Everything filled in from a template is still freely editable before you publish.

SwiftUI app: admins see a second button next to + on the Notices tab (a small document icon) that opens Notice Templates — the same create/edit workflow as the web; deleting a template there asks you to confirm twice (swipe, then confirm), matching how deleting a notice already works in the SwiftUI app specifically — a stronger confirmation than the web's single prompt, since a swipe gesture is easier to trigger by accident than clicking a Delete button. On the New Notice screen, a Template picker sits above the Title field, with the same "don't overwrite a typed Title, confirm before overwriting a typed Body" behavior as the web.

Pasting from Word or Google Docs works: the text, bold/italic, headings, lists and links come across, and the source document's fonts, colours and sizes are stripped so the notice matches the rest of the app. A pasted table comes across as plain lines of text, because the editor has no tables — if you need a real table or a complex layout, attach the spreadsheet or PDF to the notice instead (see Attachments, above).