Email Communication for Group Events

Overview

The Communication tab on each Event has a number of tools to help manage event communications. Sending Notifications to specific constituencies is a quick way for a user to send a preset email template with some specific details from Veracross. In contrast, the email distribution lists are used to send an email from a user’s email client after they have written the full email.

Email Community

The first distribution list available is a tool to make emailing the widest group possible with updates about the event. The distribution list recipients are selected based on the event classification and visibility settings. If for example, the School Level classification drop down field is set to All School and Visibility is set to display on Student and Parent portals, all parents and students across all school levels would receive any email sent. This email distribution list should be viewed as the best way to email all people who most likely know about the event via calendars in other areas of the system.

Email Students, and Parents

There are four links for emailing very specific constituencies, each with its own logic:

• Email Participants – Sends to all members of the group(s) associated with the event
• Email Parents – Emails the parents of all students associated with the event
• Email Staff – Sends to any staff/faculty/coach associated with the classes/teams connected to this event
• Email Players, Parents, & Coaches – A quick way to grab all of the above

Event Attendance Distribution Lists

The distribution lists will email groups of people based on Event Attendance. Each group is based on a specific attendance status. These links will not be enabled until the Event Attendance Taken drop down is marked as either Yes – Default to Invited or Yes – Default to Attended.

Distribution lists can be accessed from the “Communications” tab of the event detail screen, or the “Find Groups” query.

Veracross only supports sending to one distribution list in the BCC field. If group distribution emails are sent via BCC, it will fail. Veracross already handles privacy: the distribution list alias, and the other recipients, are always hidden from the recipient of a distribution list email because Veracross distribution lists send one email per recipient. That being said, we highly recommend not using BCC with distribution lists as privacy is already handled by our system.

Event Notifications

Each Event includes a system for sending quick notifications to specific constituencies. The “Event Notification” email template will be the default template to use for sending updates, but multiple templates can be configured for different uses (read more here for details on configuring event email templates).

The process for sending notifications is as follows: (1) Select a notification template; (2) Write the insert for the notification template; (3) Select one or more constituencies; (4) update the event record to send the notification.

Once the notification has been sent the notification options reset to ready the notification functionality to be used again. One specific feature of the notification system is that it can be used to notify persons assigned to event checklist items of event details.