Support

Hello,

I am looking to see how other school districts handle group creations for their counselors? Right now we have site designees with the admin role that is able to create student groups. Some of the challenges we're facing:

1. Counselors want to be able to create their own communication groups, we wouldn't mind letting them do this but they would need the admin role in order to have this access. We do not like the idea of letting them have access to everything that comes with those permissions in Aeries Comm. 
2. We can have the site designee create a private group, but adding 500+ students manually is a time-waster. If we have the group created as public then ensuring 500+ students go in and follow a group is not ideal. If we could upload a csv file of the members we want, that would great!
3. The other option is creating an Aeries Dynamic Group with Aeries Comm. Right now I can only get this dynamic group to only pull for 5 counselors due to availability. We have 8 counselors at one site, so this option is not ideal either.

I am hoping there is a more time-efficient practical way of doing this. There could be something I am not understanding or aware of. Any insight is greatly appreciated! Thank you in advance for your time. 

Hi Dana,

There are pros and cons when it comes to creating groups withing communications and student groups. The big con is remembering that the group is out there and will continue to receive messages even if the student switches schools. (same as creating a student group, you will need to delete the group once you no longer need it or remove the students from the group.)

Pros, the list is there to use at any given time.

A counselor should be able to upload a list of students from a CSV file and use it over and over again under the Announcement Manager, Archive list (you only need the ID listed on the template).  The only thing is that if there are changes to the list, example, new students added or removed from the the group, those changes would not reflect.  A new list would need to be uploaded. (And I believe only the person creating the original upload has access to the group).

Are you saying that when you create a student group, you are only allowed to give access to 5 users? 

I think that creating a student group and only selecting Communications View (unless all students are part of a dynamic group, example Migrant ED) and giving access to the counselors that need the group is the best way to go.  The only thing is that once the list is not needed, it should be deleted or the students removed. Any of the counselors would be able to send messages as long as they have the correct settings for communications. In addition, you may want to create and admin counselor group, so that whenever a message is sent to this specific group, you add the admin team as well, so they can see what message was sent.