4. Create Announcement Channels & Announcements

The Hub acts like the Abre homepage. It is the first thing all stakeholders see when they log in to Abre, so it is essential to be intentional about what they land on. 

You do not want a mostly blank screen greeting your families.

Why You Want Families Consuming Abre Announcements

Beyond the simple need to communicate with your families, Announcements draw families into the full Abre platform. They may read about a school event, but then immediately hop over to view grades, or see a graduation plan, or jump into a learning opportunity about FAFSA.

Create an Announcement Channel

Channels allow districts to streamline and organize the information they share through the Abre Hub. Creating multiple channels can give districts and school leaders the means to share the right information with the right stakeholders.

Channels hold and contain announcements. Think of them as a news channel feed.

Tips!

Channels can be required or voluntary. You can tailor channels to individual stakeholders. You can make channels available to stakeholders of particular buildings.

Typically a channel is grouped by a theme. For example: The Principal Channel or the PTO Channel.

How To Create a Channel

View this knowledge base article or watch the video below.

Creating Announcements

Once you’ve created a channel for families, it’s time to populate with announcements.

You create announcements from the Announcement Editor. You can also view and edit previous announcements in the announcement editor.

Note:

To create an Announcement you need to have Abre “System Admin Permissions”, “Communications Administrator” or “Communications Administrator (Building)” enabled. If you need permissions enabled, contact your Abre System Admin.

We recommend having at least two announcements ready for your family members.

Headlines

Headlines are ways to capture a user’s attention. They’re announcements on steroids and help schools obtain full compliance on important information. Users must review the information before they can move into other areas of Abre.

Tips!

You can use headlines to deploy surveys to your family members. They’re a great way of getting 100% compliance. You can also use headlines for important messaging, updates, and news. 

Action Items

1. Create at least one family channel
2. Create at least two announcements in the channel
3. Create one headline for family members

But wait – I already do all this using this (fill-in-the-blank) process or tool.

You (and your larger communication team) may already be doing communications through a variety of ways. We actually have a “Communications Playbook” that goes into detail for completing communications in Abre. There are ways to simplify all communications.