Qwil Messenger for Schools - replicating the classroom model

Organisations everywhere need to adapt to a new digital reality in which chat dominates how we communicate. Although social platform may be suitable for personal use, they do not meet the communications requirements of organisations(such as supporting GDPR requirements).

Qwil Messenger can enable Schools to bring the power of secure and GDPR compliant conversations to all aspects of their engagement across the school community by:

• Enabling teachers and other internal staff and education partners (e.g. club leaders) to securely communicate and exchange content with each other. This is highly efficient, easy to deploy and use, and will allow the school to replace the use of unofficial social tools such as WhatsApp, and less efficient channels such as email.
• Enabling teachers and administrators the ability to securely engage with the parents of students replacing the need for many outdated legacy processes (communication books, paper forms for consent, injury notification and confirmation of consent).
• Enabling parents to communicate with each other (either directly or in groups) knowing that they are engaging with the right participants in a trusted, branded community, purpose-built for professional communication.

By deploying the capability across the school community as a preferred communications platform, the school will be able to provide a parental engagement experience that is second to none. Parents will more easily be able to integrate school life into their busy lives.

We can help make your organisation not only more secure, but more efficient. For that you need all your staff (teachers) and clients (parents) to be able to communicate and share information on a common secure channel. Below we provide below a brief overview of how to make it happen and then you can choose how best to load up your users. 

We also recommend reading our Guide to making Qwil a success in your organisation which provides a full overview from getting stakeholders aligned, making Qwil your own, tips and best practices for the roll out and and to increase the level of interaction. 

Let's first explain what the relationship is between staff, clients (parents), and contact groups.

Replicating the classroom and activity model in Qwil Messenger

Your organisation on Qwil Messenger is composed of users (staff and parents) and contact groups that are used to connect users to each other. You are the one creating the contact book on the phone so that your clients know who they can start a chat with. 

Staff users are your internal users who provide services on behalf of your organisation. This will include teachers and administrative staff in a school. They automatically have access to each other but need to be in groups to see their colleagues on their contact list. They also can only see a client contact if they are in a group with them.

Client users are the external users that you invite to use the system to be provided services from you. This is likely to be parents in a primary school. They must belong to at least one group to be added to the system. This group must also have at least one active Staff user in it. This means that the staff user must have accepted their invitation before the client records can be loaded.

A Contact Group is a collection of users that enables visibility to each other via their contact lists. Both staff and clients can belong to many groups. In practice you will create at least one contact group per class (for example "Year1R") with all parents, but may also for activities for example a 1-to-1 music class with a music teacher and the parent ("Violin Peter Chan"). Just like your coverage model, not all staff see all parents and not all parents can contact all staff.  This is key for privacy. 

This is of course just for the setup in the system. Once a user starts a chat (we call Chat Threads), anyone can add other users in their Contact Group to the conversation. 

Sample contact groups:

• Year 1 (All parents, Teacher and admin staff)
• Year 5 (All parents, Teacher and admin staff)
• All Staff (All Teachers and admin staff)
• Music (Parent and music teacher)

Let's get started: Invite or import all your staff and parents

Now that you have an appreciation for the different data elements and the relationship between them, it is time to invite your staff and parents. You need to be a "staff admin" to do so (Understand roles and permissions) and have the administration tab in your browser side menu.

You have full flexibility and can invite all users manually or if you have an existing data base do it simply through the use of our Excel (CSV) template whether for a part (only staff for example) or for everyone. We recommend inviting a few staff members manually first and then use the excel templates. 

The method is always the same, invite your staff, create a contact group and assign your staff and then invite a parent. You only need the name, email and mobile number.

When inviting parents, we recommend adding under the "Job Title" include the name of the Child and year group. 

You can find out more about the process by going into those sections. 

Option 1 (manual): Invite your staff and clients directly from the administration tab

Option 2 (batch upload): Complete our excel template and import to our system

Once the invitation has been sent, users will receive an email and need to accept the invitation to set up your Qwil account. The staff member in the contact group will be notified when that has been completed. Accept an invitation to join Qwil Messenger

A few extra tips

Here are a few examples of how our customers make the most of Qwil to enhance their coverage model:

• Invite potential clients (parents) in the first meeting in a contact group with the onboarding administrative staff. Here you not only have security to share documents to onboard them but also full consent from the start. Technology is key differentiator and even more important today. 
• Send an email just before rolling out Qwil. This ensures everyone is clear on the benefits of using Qwil Messenger and what they can expect, so they accept your invitation (e.g. making communication safer and more convenient).
• Dynamically update your Contact Groups. If a staff goes on holiday, it is easy to add a replacement staff ensuring clients can always reach someone if they need to.
• Tell your staff that Qwil is to replace email internally and externally as it is not only inefficient but at high risk of fraud. Chat has replaced email in our personal lives, it is time for it to happen professionally. It is intuitive for older generations too (and they love the desktop app).