Use a Personal Notification (PN) for a message intended for selected parents, guardians, students or staff. Unlike News and general Notifications, it is not a post for everyone in the app feed.

1. Start the message

For one family: search for the student at the top of the Dashboard, open their profile and click Send PN. Choose the relevant primary or secondary contact, or both.

For a group: on the main dashboard, open Communications → Personal Notifications → Add Personal Notification.

On the creation screen, check Reply to this PN if a reply is needed. For the supported individual-family conversation workflow, see Viewing & Managing Responses.

2. Write and attach

1. Select a saved Template if useful.
2. Enter the Title and Content.
3. To upload a document to a Personal Notification, choose Document and add the file. Use Image or Video for those attachment types.

Keep important instructions in the message text so they are easy to read on a phone. If Video is unavailable, contact support about your school’s Vimeo setup.

3. Select and check recipients

1. Under Send to, click Add or Remove Users.
2. Choose Parents, Teachers or Groups.
3. Use search or the year/class filters to find the right people, then click Apply filter where shown.
4. Select the people and contact options you need, then click Add to Final List.
5. Review the list and click Add to Notification.
6. Back on the message, check Total Selected, App Users and Non-App Users. Use View Users to review the names.

Year Head: no students showing in the recipient list?

If no students appear when you select recipients for a Personal Notification, this is usually an Access & Permissions issue. The most likely cause is that the school administrator has not updated the Year Heads for the current academic year.

Ask your school administrator to follow How to Update Year Heads. They may need to remove the existing Type 1–6 Year Head records and create them again with the current classes and correct staff details.

If the list is still empty after the administrator updates the setup, contact staffsupport@uniqueschools.ie.

4. Check timing and settings

Open Schedule & Archive for a future send time or archive date. Review the dates shown. Archived PNs remain available in the app’s archived section.

• Send as Push Notification: send a phone alert to the selected app users.
• Send SMS: use the text-message option for non-app users where appropriate. Review any SMS charges.
• Unread Email reminder: send the unread-message email reminder; the existing process uses a 24-hour delay.
• Include Student in PN: include the student where they are registered on the app.
• Mark as Private: restrict staff visibility to the sender and Principal under the PN privacy rules. This is separate from selecting the parent or student recipients.

5. Preview and submit

1. Click Preview.
2. Check the message, attachments, recipients, reply setting and timing.
3. Click Submit when ready.

Submission sends or schedules the PN according to the settings and your access. A limited-access user may need approval before publication.

After sending, use Delivery & Read Status to follow up. See Edit, View, Duplicate or Add Users for later changes.

For help, call 01 886 9458, email staffsupport@uniqueschools.ie or book training.