Call Alerts

With School Loop Plus, teachers can get critical messages home with a single phone call in the parent's native language. If a teacher assigns a test or something important is due, parents without a registered account can still be kept in the loop. School Loop can currently deliver these messages in 28 languages:

Arabic, Armenian, Cantonese, English, Farsi, French, German, Haitian, Hindi, Hmong, Italian, Japanese, Khmer, Korean, Lao, Mandarin, Polish, Portuguese, Punjabi, Russian, Samoan, Somali, Spanish, Tagalog, Thai, Ukrainian, Urdu, Vietnamese.

There are two types of alerts teachers can schedule when posting assignments. 

Test Alert (call day before test): The call will alert parents, in their native language, about a test scheduled in your class for the next day.

Example: "Your child in grade 9 has a test tomorrow in period 3."

Assignment Alert (call today and day before due): Similar to the Test Alert except that the system calls the day the assignment is given, and then again the day before it is due.

Examples: "Your child in grade 9 was given an important assignment today in period 3." and "Your child in grade 9 has an important assignment due tomorrow in period 3."

When enabled for a school, calls are automatically scheduled when teachers use the Priority Alert feature available to all teachers. See our help page on Priority Alerts for more information.

There are two methods for importing the data necessary to use the Call Alerts feature. Both methods use a data file with the following requirements.

• Plain text; ASCII encoding; no column headings or quotes around each data value.
• The columns: Student ID (either permanent or local), Parent home phone number (formatted as pictured below), Home Language (see the list of languages above – case insensitive, but spelling matters).
• For students with more than one parent with different phone numbers, add an additional row, with the same student ID, 2nd phone number, and Home Language.

Manual Upload

1. Administrators may access the upload interface by selecting Parents in User Management located at the top left of the page.

2. On the Parent List, click the Upload Phone Numbers button.

3. Navigate to the tab delimited, plain text ASCII file.

4. Click Submit.

To update the School Loop System, generate and upload a new data file as often as necessary.

Automatic Imports

The Call Alerts data file can be included with the nightly data upload. For more information, see the Data Integration document in the left column of the Data Imports page. You may also contact School Loop support for help.

Q: Why do the calls only go out to unregistered parents?

A: Parents with registered accounts will not receive these phone calls, as their portal pages and daily emails serve as their source for information pertaining to assignments and tests.

Q: How do I enable the Call Alert feature?

A: Please have your School Loop coordinator call us for more information.