Navigating and Composing a Messages

Compose and send a message to families

Summary: Messages is how you write to your families from Montessori Compass. Open Messages from the link in the top-left of your screen, click Compose Message in the upper-right, and the recipient options you see depend on which inbox you are composing from. Write your message, then before sending, choose how recipients can reply — reply to the sender only, reply all, or no replies. Click Send. Replies arrive as a separate thread, and from a sent message you can retract it, mute further replies, or archive it. Which audiences you can message depends on your role and the inbox you are in.

Who can do this

Any assigned teacher can compose and send messages to the families of their classroom from that classroom's inbox. Owners and Administrators can send from their private inbox to the entire school, to all staff, or to a classroom, as well as from any classroom inbox. The recipients available to you depend on which inbox you are composing from, as described below.

Step-by-step

1. Open Messages. Click the Messages link in the top-left of your screen. It opens in a full-screen view.
2. Start a message. Click the Compose Message button in the upper-right corner.
3. Note your inbox. The recipient options depend on which inbox you are viewing. See "How the inbox decides your recipients" below.
4. Choose recipients and a title. Select who the message goes to (for example, the entire school) and enter a title (for example, "Welcome to Summer").
5. Write your message. Type the content of your message.
6. Review the reply options. Scroll to the bottom to find the recipient reply options.
7. Choose how recipients can reply. Pick reply-to-sender-only (the default), reply all, or no replies. See "Choosing how recipients can reply" below.
8. Send. Click Send. The message is sent.

How the inbox decides your recipients

The inbox you compose from determines who you can reach:

• Private inbox (for an administrator) — you can send to the entire school, to all of your staff, or to a classroom, which includes all of the parents and teachers of that classroom.
• Classroom inbox — when you compose from a specific classroom's inbox, you only have access to that classroom's students and parents.

Choosing how recipients can reply

Before you send, you choose how recipients are allowed to reply. This matters most for group messages:

• Reply to the original sender only (the default and the simplest option) — a recipient can reply only to whoever sent the message. If you send to the whole school and a parent replies, the reply comes straight to you. If you are a classroom teacher messaging your whole class, a parent's reply goes back to the classroom inbox, so only that classroom's teachers and the school administrators see it.
• Reply all — recipients can reply to all other recipients, like a big group chat. If you send to the whole school and a parent replies, their reply is visible to all other parents and staff named on the message. This can get noisy on a school-wide message, so consider it carefully.
• No replies (read-only) — replies are turned off entirely, so recipients cannot respond to the message.

How replies come back to you

Any reply to a message creates a separate thread. A parent's reply appears as a new thread from that parent, references the original message so you know what they are responding to, and shows their reply. From there you can continue a private conversation with that parent only, separate from the original group message.

Retract, mute, and archive a message

From a message you sent, click the three dots in the upper-right corner for more actions:

• Retract — if you sent a message to the wrong group or person, retracting it deletes the message completely, as though it was never sent. There is no record of it.
• Mute — turns off all future replies to the message. Use this to turn a message into a no-reply message after it has already gone out.
• Archive — archive the message from within it to tidy your inbox.

You can also multi-select messages to archive them in bulk or mark them all as read or unread.

A few things worth knowing

• The inbox you compose from decides your possible recipients — switch inboxes to change who you can reach.
• Reply-to-sender-only is the default and keeps a parent's reply private to you (or to the classroom inbox), which suits most messages.
• Reply all can get very noisy on a school-wide message, since every recipient sees every reply.
• Retract removes a message entirely; mute only stops future replies and leaves the message in place.

Related articles

• The parent messaging experience: what families see
• Creating a calendar event to share with your school community
• Creating a bulletin board to share files with families

Watch the video

Here is a short video covering this topic for additional reference.