Sending News by SMS
When you publish a news item, you can alert families by SMS as well as email. You do this from the Send your news item modal, choosing SMS as a channel. Octavia shows you a preview, who is eligible, the estimated credit
When to Use It
Use news by SMS when a published news item is important enough that you want it to land as a text, not only sit in the Hub feed and an email. It's the right tool for time-sensitive alerts — a last-minute change, an urgent notice — where stronger visibility matters.
This works alongside the normal news flow. You create, target, and publish the news item as usual (see Creating a news item), then send it. Sending is always a separate step from publishing.
Sending
From a published news item, open Send your news item. In the modal you can:
- Choose your channel — Email only, SMS only, or Email + SMS.
- Choose your audience — Parents & students, Parents only, or Students only.
- Choose the message format — the full message uses the news title and body, or the short message sends a brief alert that points families to the full details. The short option keeps longer news items from turning into a long, costly text.
- Include or remove the secure link — when included, each recipient gets their own secure Hub link to open the item; with it off, the text is simpler.
Before you confirm, the modal shows a preview of the exact message, each recipient's eligibility, the estimated credit cost, your school's current balance, and the last time this news item was sent by SMS. When you're happy, click Confirm and send SMS. The messages are sent straight away — they do not wait for any schedule.
Who Will and Won't Receive It
Each recipient row shows one of three states:
- Will send — eligible and not yet sent this version
- Sent — already received this exact version of the message
- Not eligible — cannot receive it, with the reason (for example, no consent or the category not opted in)
Octavia won't send the same recipient the same version twice. If you change the message format or the secure-link choice, or you publish an updated version of the news item, that counts as a new message and can be sent again. If everyone eligible has already received the current version, the send action is disabled and the modal explains that you'd need to publish a new version to resend by SMS.
Cost and Balance
SMS news announcements use your prepaid SMS credits, the same as any other message, and the cost depends on each recipient's country and the message length — which is why the short format exists. The preview only estimates the cost; nothing is charged until you confirm. If your balance is too low to cover the send, it stops rather than sending to only some families. See SMS credits and top-ups and SMS cost by country and message length.
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