What are templates? The Communication Center allows you to use a template to customize the message you send to your students and parents. When the message is sent, the Communication Center searches for the keywords and replaces them with the information from the recipient's records. The result is a personalized message that you only have to write once - Communication Center does the hard work for you.
Where do I get templates? We provide a number of templates as a good starting point. Select one of those and you can use it as is or modify to better suit your needs. You can also create a blank message and create your own template using the keywords below to individualize your message for each recipient.
How do I modify the template? Once you select a template from the pull-down menu, the text of the template is inserted into the body of the new message(s) you're creating. You can change the text as much or as little as you want.
Can I change the keywords? Yes, you can. The template contains words surrounded by the "pipe" | character. These designate to Communication Center to pull out those words and replace them with the appropriate information from the student record in question. If you want to change a keyword, you can just replace the text between the pipe characters with a different keyword.
How do I type the pipe character that surrounds the keywords? The pipe character is shift-backslash.
Can you show me a sample? Sure! If your template looked like this:
Welcome |student.firstnameLastname| to your first day at |school.name|.
Your recipient would see this:
Welcome John Doe to your first day at YourState Virtual Academy.
What keywords can I use?
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Keyword
Explanation
|student.firstnameLastname|
first and last name separated by a space (John Doe)
|student.firstname|
first name (John)
|student.lastname|
last name (Doe)
|student.genderString|
male or female
|student.hisHerTheirString|
his, her, or their
|student.heSheTheyString|
he, she, or they
|student.phoneFormatted|
(555) 555-1212
|student.birthday|
mm/dd/yyyy (01/01/2007)
|student.attendanceInLastThirtyDaysMinutes|
attendance information in minutes (147)
|student.attendanceInLastThirtyDaysHours|
attendance information in whole hours (2)
|student.id|
SAMS student record student ID
|student.preferredOrFirstname|
The student's preferred name if given, else the student's first name
|daysSinceLastLogin|
|lastLoginDate|
mm/dd/yyyy (01/01/2007)
|hoursOfAttendanceYtd|
hours of attendance so far this year (48)
|firstDateRequiringLogin|
school start date or the student enrollment date, whichever is later. displayed as mm/dd/yyyy (01/01/2007)
|learningCoach.firstnameLastname|
first and last name separated by a space (John Doe)
|school.name|
YourState Virtual Academy
|school.abbreviation|
The short name or abbreviation for the school (YSVA)