Publishing, Editing, and Versioning
A news item starts as a draft. When you publish it, the content becomes an immutable snapshot — families can see it in their Hub feed and respond to it. Sending notifications to families is a separate step that you trigg
The Draft Stage
Before publishing, a news item version is a draft. You can edit the title, body, response blocks, due date, target list, and attachments freely while it's in draft. Nothing is visible to families until you publish.
Publishing
When you're ready, click the Publish button. Publishing creates an immutable snapshot of the current draft content and makes the news item visible to targeted families in their Hub feed. Once published, the content of that version cannot be changed — this is by design, so you always have a reliable record of exactly what was communicated.
After publishing, the Send your news item modal opens automatically so you can notify families straight away. You can also trigger it later using the Send your news item button in the Students panel.
Sending Your News Item to Families
Publishing alone does not send any communications. Sending is a separate action you take after publishing. The Send your news item modal lets you:
- Choose your channel: Email only, SMS only, or Email + SMS. If SMS is not included in your plan, the same modal still opens but the SMS options are marked as premium and email remains available.
- Choose your audience: Parents & students, Parents only, or Students only. You can change this at any time before sending — the recipient list updates accordingly.
- Review the recipient list: Every eligible recipient is shown with their name, email address, and whether they're a parent or student. If the same parent appears more than once, the modal also shows the relevant student name so it's clear why.
- See missing email warnings: If any recipients in your audience don't have an email address on file, they're listed separately as a warning. They won't receive an email until an address is added to their account.
- Review SMS details before sending: When SMS is selected, the modal shows who will send, who is not eligible, the message preview, the most recent SMS send time for that news item, the estimated SMS credit cost, and the school's remaining SMS balance.
- Choose the SMS format: You can choose either the full SMS body or a shortened version, and you can include or remove the secure Hub link.
- Choose whether to copy yourself: A checkbox lets you send a copy to your own email address. This is off by default.
- Send: Click the send button to dispatch the selected channel or channels. Email sends personalised, tokenised links to each recipient, and SMS sends immediately after confirmation rather than waiting for a later schedule.
Sending Reminders
After the initial notification, you can send follow-up communications to anyone who hasn't responded yet. The Send your news item button in the Students panel pre-selects only the non-responders, so the same modal opens but with the recipients already filtered to those who still need to act. You can also send a reminder to a specific individual using the Remind button next to their row in the students table.
Editing After Publishing
When you need to update a news item that has already been published — to correct information, change a date, or add a requirement — click Edit in the Details panel. A notice in the editor confirms: "This version is published. Saving will create a new draft version." Your edits are made in the new draft, which doesn't affect families until you publish again.
Any attachments on the published version carry forward to the new draft automatically. While editing, you can add new attachments or remove existing ones — those changes are saved along with everything else when you click Save, and only take effect once you publish the new version. If your only change is to the attachments, saving still creates a new draft version, the same as any other edit.
While you have unsaved draft changes that are newer than the published version, the Publish button pulses with a ring and shows an "Unpublished changes" badge as a visual reminder. An orange warning banner also appears on the detail page explaining that a new draft version exists and inviting you to publish it.
When you publish the new version, it becomes the current version that families see. The previous version is preserved in the version history.
Minor Changes: Existing Responses Stay Valid
If your change is minor — a typo correction, a clarification, wording that doesn't change what you're asking — save and publish the new version without checking Require families to respond again. In this case, existing responses remain valid. Families who have already responded don't need to respond again.
Major Changes: Requiring Fresh Responses
If your change is significant — you've changed the event date, altered what consent covers, or updated the RSVP question in a meaningful way — check Require families to respond again before saving the new version. This marks all previous responses as stale and asks families to re-respond.
When this option is checked, families who previously responded will see the news item as requiring a fresh response. Their original response is preserved in the history but is no longer counted as current in the response report.
Why Versioning Matters
The version system means you can always answer questions like:
- "What exactly did we send to families for this concert?"
- "Which families responded to the updated version?"
- "Did anyone respond before we made the significant change?"
This is particularly important for consent or compliance purposes — having an immutable record of what was communicated is part of what makes the system reliable.
Extending Targets Without Creating a New Version
Adding or removing students from the target list of a published news item does not create a new version. The content stays the same; you're simply adjusting who receives it. See Targeting for more on this.
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