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Comms Templates
Navigate to Settings -> Comms Templates
Whilst you can send a free text email or message out of SELMA to an individual student, the powerful way of using the comms part of SELMA is to create templates. You can create templates for Emails, Email Attachments and Text Messages.
On the overview grid of all Comms Templates, you can edit, preview, duplicate or delete templates:
To create a new template, click on the “Create New Template” button and choose to either create an email, email attachment or txt message template.
Email Templates
In this example, we start with an email template:
The new template will need a name and you can also set the subject line of the email. The Subject line can contain mail merge fields as well.
The most important selection however is the “Use case” for the email template. If you choose e.g. “Student”, the template will be available for sending on a Student record. If you choose “Intake”, the template can be used to send an email to one or many student(s) from an intake:
In below example we selected “Student” as the use case. Once the use case is selected, the available mail merge fields on the right will change to all fields available in emails sent from the student record. The “use case” of a comms template cannot be changed once the template is saved.
When drafting the template, you can copy and paste the mail merge fields into your template as in the example above. You can also put a generic email signature into the email including pictures. The rich text editor allows you to use different fonts, styles, colours and alignments.
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You can use HTML to design the template by clicking on the </> button. |
Text Message Templates
Text messages can be sent from a student record, from intakes, or from classes. The text message template is designed very similarly to the email designer above; however, styling is not possible, and you will be limited to 300 characters:
Each text message sent from SELMA will incur a charge. If you send a text message to a class of, for example, 15 students, it will result in a charge equivalent to 15 times the cost of a single text message.
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Technically a text message can be significantly longer if some of the mail merge fields contain a lot of characters (E.g. Programme Title). The text message will still send and present as one big message on the students device, however, you might be charged for more than one message. |
PDF Attachments
Like the email body, you can also generate and build a PDF attachment that is automatically built and attached to an email message:
The template name will be the file name once attached to the email. It cannot contain mail merge fields.
The body of the PDF can be designed using the rich text editor. Advanced skills in HTML might be needed to generate complex PDF’s. The friendly team from helpdesk is happy to support you.
Sending Emails
You can send emails to individuals from a student record or enrolment record. You can also send emails in bulk to an entire class or intake or selected students within these cohorts.
To send an email to a student, navigate to Students -> Manage Students at the top of the page. Click on the hyperlinked “StudentID” of the desired student. Next, click the “Student Action” button and then select “Send Email”. Depending on your access rights and the system configuration, you might not be able to send an email, or you may need to enter “Edit Student” mode before the function becomes available:
Once you click the “Send Email” option, a slide in window will walk you through the process of sending:
In above example, both the message body and the attachment are selected to be templates. You can however draft your own message to the student by selecting “Free-Text” and/or you can attach documents from your computer. It is possible to attach more than one document by clicking on Browse and then hold down ctrl when selecting documents:
Before sending the email, you have the option to cc yourself into it.
The email will be sent from the generic address that is setup under:
Settings -> My Organisation -> Edit -> Email
Once the email is sent, the message and attachment are stored in the students Event Log:
From here you can reference the message and download the attachments.
Similar to email, you can also send a text message from the “Student Actions” menu:
For a text message, you may want to use another mobile number if the displayed one is not the one you’d like to use.
You can also send emails from the enrolment record. Navigate to Enrolments -> Manage Enrolments and then select the hyperlinked “EnrolID” of the desired student. Remember that a template must exist with the “Use Case” enrolment. You will be able to reference enrolment-specific data, such as attendance %, when sending emails from the enrolment. The function is available in the enrolment under “Enrolment Actions”:
Sending in Bulk
Navigate to Intakes -> Manage Intakes and then select the hyperlinked “Intake Code” of the desired intake group.
Go to the “Students” tab and ensure you are in edit mode. Click the “Student Actions” button, and you can choose to send an email or text message to everyone in the intake:
However, before you get to the already familiar composing page for the email, you can select the recipients. In the picture below, you can see that SELMA automatically excludes learners who are not active. You can, of course, overwrite your selection or simply select all:
When clicking on next, the composer page will come up as explained in the previous chapter.
When sending an email in bulk, an event log message will be added to every single student selected.
Sending a text message in bulk works very much the same.
Scheduled Messages
Navigate to Intakes -> Manage Intakes and then select the hyperlinked “Intake Code” of the desired intake group.
Go to the “Event Scheduler” tab and ensure you are in edit mode. You can set up emails that are sent automatically upon certain trigger events, for example, a few days before an enrolment starts. The event scheduler is explained more in-depth in the Intake manual.
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The event scheduler cannot send emails with attachments, but it can send text messages. |