Sending messages
Go to Communication → SMS.
The messaging dashboard summarises delivery, estimated cost and recent activity.
The module sidebar gives you the Dashboard, Text Messages, WhatsApp, Parent Chats, Announcements, Diary and communication Settings. Start on the dashboard for today’s delivery figures, recent activity, parent reachability and performance over a selected date range.
Sending an SMS
Section titled “Sending an SMS”Open New message.
- Choose the recipients. Pick groups — All Students, a class, a stream — or use Search student to add individuals. You can also paste numbers directly, and send to a filtered list such as fee defaulters.
- Proceed to the message itself.
- Choose or write the message. Pick a template or type it.
- Check the counters. The screen separates people from phone numbers, then shows SMS per person, total messaging units required and your available balance. One learner can produce more than one recipient number when several guardian contacts are enabled.
- Send.
Use Communication → Settings to choose whether messages use one, two or three saved contacts for each learner.
The composer disables Send Message when the balance is too low and tells you how many units are missing.
Message length and special characters
Section titled “Message length and special characters”One standard SMS segment is up to 160 GSM-7 characters. A longer message is split into 153-character segments. Emoji and characters from scripts that cannot be represented as plain GSM-7 use Unicode, where the limits are 70 characters for one segment and 67 for each part of a longer message.
ShuleOne changes common smart punctuation — such as curly quotation marks and long dashes pasted from Word — to safe plain-text equivalents before sending. If another character still forces Unicode, the composer identifies it and shows the higher cost before you send.
Before you press send
Section titled “Before you press send”An SMS cannot be recalled. Thirty seconds of checking is cheaper than an apology to every parent in the school.
- Read the preview, not the template. A merge field that did not resolve shows here.
- Check the recipient count. If you meant Form 2 and it says 840, stop.
- Check the length and encoding warning. Long or Unicode messages can use several units per recipient. The on-screen counter uses the same calculation as the sender.
- Check names and dates in the text itself.
Where the school has WhatsApp enabled, open Communication → WhatsApp. Use the Chats and Bulk messages switch at the top to move between conversations and template campaigns.
WhatsApp carries more text and supports attachments, which makes it the better channel for a newsletter or a report card. It only reaches parents who use WhatsApp on the number the school holds, so most schools use both: WhatsApp where it works, SMS as the fallback.
Direct messages
Section titled “Direct messages”Communication → Parent Chats is a conversation with one parent or member of staff rather than a broadcast. Use it for anything specific to one family — an absence, a fee arrangement, a behaviour matter.
The conversation stays attached to the record, so the next person who picks it up can see what has already been said.
Who receives what
Section titled “Who receives what”Recipients come from the contacts on the underlying records:
- Parents — the guardian numbers on the student record.
- Staff — the numbers on their registration record.
- Students — their own numbers, where the school holds them.
Undelivered messages are almost always a wrong or missing number. Fix them at the record rather than keeping a private list, or the next sender hits the same problem.
Communication credit is displayed as messaging units. For ShuleOne-managed SMS, one unit sends one SMS segment to one phone number. A two-part message sent to 500 numbers therefore uses 1,000 units. WhatsApp templates use the number of units shown for their message category on WhatsApp → Bulk messages → Wallet.
The shared retail rates are managed centrally for ShuleOne and BomaSuite. At the current rate, one messaging unit is KES 0.60. One SMS segment uses 1 unit. WhatsApp uses KES 8 for Marketing, KES 2 for Utility, KES 1.50 for Authentication and KES 0 for Service messages. The Wallet screen always shows the live shared rates; use that screen if a later pricing update differs from these examples.
Which balance does my school use?
Section titled “Which balance does my school use?”Most schools use one ShuleOne communication wallet for SMS and WhatsApp. The balance is shown in the Communication navigation and in the WhatsApp Bulk Wallet tab. You can top it up through the M-Pesa prompt, review top-up history and confirm a payment that is still pending. Failed provider sends are refunded automatically.
If an M-Pesa receipt appears in your phone but the history still says Pending, open the history and select Confirm payment. ShuleOne actively asks M-Pesa for that checkout’s final result; it does not create another payment or another credit. A successful confirmation can take a short time immediately after entering the PIN. If M-Pesa has not returned a final result, the message below the history explains that the payment is still being verified—wait briefly, then confirm again. It is safe to select Confirm payment while the M-Pesa receipt is arriving: ShuleOne preserves the receipt and applies the credit as soon as both M-Pesa checks agree.
Do not manually add the same receipt a second time. If support already loaded the receipt into the communication ledger, confirmation recognises the matching amount and marks the purchase successful without increasing the balance again.
Some schools have SMS managed directly by an external provider such as Africa’s Talking or Chacha. On those accounts:
- the SMS dashboard displays the provider name and its SMS-unit balance;
- ShuleOne wallet top-ups buy WhatsApp messaging units only; and
- SMS credit must be recharged using the provider’s instructions.
The amber provider notice on the SMS dashboard tells you when this applies. Do not top up the ShuleOne wallet expecting it to increase an externally managed SMS balance.
Schools in the same linked group can request or approve transfers of ShuleOne-managed messaging units from the dashboard’s Unit Requests tab. This option is not shown for externally managed SMS accounts.
Check the balance and required units before a large run. The composer now stops an unaffordable send before it reaches the provider.