JoomSchool - Announcements

Announcements are JoomSchool's way of broadcasting information from teachers and the school to students and parents. Each announcement is targeted at one or more classes, can include an image and file attachments, and triggers email notifications to parents whose children belong to the targeted classes.

Overview

Announcements differ from private messages in two ways:

• One-to-many. Each announcement is broadcast to every parent and student in the targeted classes. Replies are not threaded — announcements are read-only from the audience's perspective.
• Class-targeted. Each announcement is tied to one or more classes via the Class field. Only the parents and students of students in those classes see it on their dashboard.

The frontend dashboard's top widget shows the latest announcements, and the Announcements menu item gives a full filterable archive.

Prerequisites

• At least one class exists with students assigned. Without it the targeting list is empty.
• The teachers who post announcements have a teacher record in JoomSchool (the announcement form credits a specific teacher).
• Components → JoomSchool → Options → Notifications and Options → Attachments are configured if you want email notifications and file attachments.

Where announcements are managed

Two places:

• Admin — Components → JoomSchool → Announcements lets the administrator create, edit, unpublish or delete any announcement.
• Frontend — teachers can post announcements from their frontend portal under the Announcements menu item, where they see both their own posts and the form to create a new one.

The form is the same in both places.

Creating an announcement

1. Open the Announcements list and click New.
2. Fill in the form:

1. Click Save & Close.

The announcement is now visible to the targeted students and parents.

Email notifications

When the When user receive a new private message notification is enabled in Components → JoomSchool → Options → Notifications, JoomSchool also sends emails to the parents whose children belong to the targeted classes. Each parent receives one email per announcement, regardless of how many of their children are in the targeted classes.

A previous version of JoomSchool had a bug where parents with multiple children received duplicate emails (or no email when only one of two children was in the targeted class). That has been fixed in recent releases — the recipient list is now de-duplicated by parent.

Targeting model

Targeting is by class, not by individual student. The form's Class field accepts multiple classes, so a single announcement can reach all of Year 11 by ticking every section of Year 11. A typical school workflow:

• "Class 6 only" — pick that one class.
• "All of Senior School" — tick Class 9, 10, 11, 12.
• "Whole school" — tick every class.

There is no per-section, per-division or per-individual targeting on announcements. For one-to-one or section-specific messaging, use private messages (see the Manage Private Messages article).

Frontend display

When a logged-in user (student or parent) opens their dashboard, the top widget displays the most recent announcements that target a class they're connected to. Each card shows:

• The image (if uploaded)
• The title
• The author's name (the teacher selected in the Teacher field)
• A short preview of the body
• The publication date

Clicking the title opens the full version with the editor-formatted body and download links for any attachments.

The Announcements menu item is the full archive — every published announcement targeting the user's classes, with date filters and a keyword search.

Publishing, unpublishing and archiving

Announcement state matches the standard Joomla pattern:

• Published — visible on the frontend.
• Unpublished — hidden from the frontend but kept editable in the admin list.
• Archived — hidden from the regular list and frontend but kept for historical search via the Status filter.
• Trashed — moved to the trash, recoverable until the admin empties it.

To take an announcement off the frontend without deleting it, set Status to Unpublished or Archived.

Tips & Best Practices

• Keep titles under 60 characters. The dashboard widget truncates longer titles, so important information may be cut off.
• Use the image field for visual announcements like sports day or arts week — it's the first thing users see on the dashboard.
• Attach permission slips, syllabi and event details rather than pasting them into the body — parents prefer to download an official document.
• Schedule big announcements for the start of the school week. Parents are more likely to read on Monday than on Friday afternoon.
• Don't unpublish an announcement to "edit it later" — viewers who already opened the page may have a stale copy. Edit and re-save instead.
• Archive end-of-year announcements rather than deleting them. They form part of the school's communication record.

Troubleshooting