The (New) Easier Way To Communicate With Your Students

Just under a year ago Orah invited existing customers to take part in our pilot program for our new communications product, Connect.

Why we built school communications tools

From our research, there are three main reasons schools are interested in communications solutions:

1. Communications are happening in lots of fragmented places: SMS, email, message boards, LMS, messaging apps etc - it is hard for staff to get a complete picture as to what is being communicated to whom
2. Without complete management of school communications, there is a real possibility that something important could be missed
3. Schools need communications tools that are structured as they are, so that classes, tutors and other student - faculty relationships can be maintained in school communications so the right staff can support the right students
   

Since we've launched Orah Connect

Since launch, we have had dozens of schools using Orah Connect and thousands of students have received broadcast messages informing them of last minute schedule changes, urgent maintenance issues, reminders to students on passes or updates to students on events.

Recently we have started the next phase of development, taking all your feedback on board. Here are some of the recently released features customers have been asking for:

• Ability to also send broadcast messages to staff and contacts of students
• Fine-grained permissions so all school staff can communicate via Orah Connect, but without accidentally sending to everyone!

Introducing Broadcast Responses

This week, we are releasing our next most requested feature: broadcast responses!

Broadcast responses are a simple but effective way to gather a positive (or negative) response from students - whether you need to ensure that students have read and acknowledge an important message or you need quick feedback on on something time-sensitive, broadcast responses are especially powerful when you need to hear back, but you don’t want to handle lots of individual replies.

Meet your new-and-improved Orah Connect dashboard

We want your feedback

We would love to hear about how you might see your school using Broadcast responses!

As that launches, we have already started on the next two pieces that schools need for a complete communications solution:

• Communications Insights: Connect will soon give staff insight into what communications are happening at your school, where you need to focus attention and any potential areas of concern
• Connect Chat: chat with individual students or student groups within Orah, so all your communications can be in one place

Improve Communications at your school

If you are an existing Orah customer, we would be happy to set you up with a free trial of Connect communications - we can do this in just a few minutes, just let us know.

Watch the Orah Connect Webinar

If you would like to learn more about how Orah Connect works, join us on March 6 2024 for our live webinar "Improving School Communications with Orah" 

When you register, you will get access to the webinar recording and slides from the session.

Register here