Get Notified About Important Boarding School Info

Today I have an exciting announcement to make. We just updated our in-app notifications and released a new notification manager for staff!At Boardingware we have been collecting client feedback for our notification system for a while now and we have listened closely to what our customers truly want.Notifications are such a broad subject but when we boil it down to its very essence, it is a way to be told about important information.Previously we've had the ability to send email notifications for different reasons throughout Boardingware, but nothing with any real intelligence.So, in order to build an intelligent solution we had to ask the question: ‘what is 'important information'?’. We ultimately decided that important information is subjective and it should be up to the person who will be receiving the information (unless it’s an emergency).[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="770"]

Above: Your homescreen with a poorly designed notification system.[/caption]The ProblemBoarding school is a busy place andmost boarding staff have devices that are buzzing all the time with notifications from students and parents (one staff member had 3 phones!). Often it’s information that isn’t even necessary for them to know at that point in time.This not only distracts staff from their other roles within the school, but it often leads to people ignoring their notifications completely, which undermines the whole reason for notifications in the first place.So instead of blindly creating an ‘on’ and ‘off’ switch for all notifications which would notify people constantly - we wanted to build a scalable system that would allow staff to get notified about what they want, when they want, how they want and for who they want.For example, your general advisor or sports coach doesn’t need to be notified about leave requests for all students and your head of boarding might want to be notified about EVERYTHING. So instead of pleasing some people and annoying others, we’re excited to announce the release of our Smart Notifications.[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="770"]

Above: Staff member's notification settings within their Boardingware profile.[/caption]The SolutionHere you can see a staff members profile and the options below to decide what you want to be notified about.(1) At the top you can decide which house/dorm you want to focus on.(2) Then you can further narrow it down to specific groups like sports teams or advisee groups(3) You can then decide which information you want to be notified about(4) Decide what platforms you would like to be notified on. (NOTE: Version 1.0 is only push notifications.)So when you have set up your notification preferences you should be left with only information that is important to you at that very moment in time.[caption id="attachment_1574" align="aligncenter" width="260"]

Above: The flow from notification to leave request approval for a staff member[/caption]So, if you’re already a customer at Boardingware, please visit: My Account>Notifications to access your settings and set up your new notification preferences.If you’re currently looking into Boardingware, why not take a look with one of our consultants? Book your 1-1 consultation here.[marketo-fat form="1107"]