Targeting: Choosing Who Receives Your News
Targeting in the News system is explicit and snapshot based. When you publish a news item, the system records exactly which students are recipients at that moment. Targets are never dynamically resolved — if your student
How Targeting Works
When you publish a news item, the list of recipients is captured as a permanent snapshot tied to that published version. This means:
- The system always knows exactly who received a particular version of a news item
- Reporting is deterministic — "who was asked this question?" has a precise answer regardless of when you look at it
- Adding or removing students from your studio after publishing doesn't automatically change who received a news item
If you select "all students" as your audience, that expands into an explicit list of individual student records at the time of publishing — not a dynamic rule that updates as your student list changes.
The Students Panel
The Students panel in the news item detail view shows all current recipients in a table. At a glance you can see the total number of students targeted and how many are still awaiting a response. Each row shows the student's name, their response status (Responded, Awaiting, or Stale — see Viewing Responses), and a summary of what they submitted.
Selecting Targets Manually
When creating a news item, click Add students in the Students panel to choose recipients. You can select individual students from your current student list and add them one batch at a time. The selection happens against a searchable list — students already added are hidden so you can't add duplicates.
Pre-Populated Targets from a Performance
If you create a news item directly from a performance, the target list is automatically pre-populated with all the students in that performance. This saves you the step of selecting recipients manually and ensures the news item reaches exactly the right families.
If the performance student list changes after you've published the news item — for example, a new student is added to the concert programme — the targets in your news item won't update automatically. If you want to add the new student as a target, you can use the Sync to news option from the performance, which identifies the mismatch and updates the targets on the latest published version.
One detail worth knowing: a student can appear more than once in a performance (if they're playing multiple pieces), but they'll only receive the news item once — the system deduplicates recipients by student when syncing.
Adding and Removing Recipients After Publishing
You can add new targets to the current version of a news item after it has been published. Adding targets does not create a new version — the content stays the same, and the new recipients receive the current published version.
You can also remove recipients from the current version. Removing a student deletes their target record for this version. You'll be asked to confirm the removal before it takes effect. Like adding, removing does not create a new version.
Targets Are Version-Specific
Each published version of a news item has its own target snapshot. If you publish a new version of a news item — for example, to update the content or require fresh responses — the new version starts with its own target set (copied from the previous version). You can then add or remove students from the new version's list before publishing it.
Historical versions retain their original target sets permanently. You can always go back and see exactly who received which version.
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