Making your Safer Schools England App truly yours is so important to communicate relevant information to your users.
Customising your Safer Schools England App with colours, images and accurate links is so important for a number of reasons:
- User friendly - your users can find what they need, when they need it at the touch of a button
- Staying up to date - users always have immediate access to the most up to date information
- Notifications - if using Push Notifications you can use them to draw attention to changes on those sections to keep everyone informed.
- Avoiding confusion - if the feature isn't filled or disabled, it may cause confusion among users and lead to them not referring to the App regularly.
Aside from these, other customisable options like your News Builder or Surveys you create ensure the App becomes yours.
Let's Customise!
When you first log in to your Web Management Portal, you'll need to head to the Customisation tab in the left hand menu.
App Details and Links
These will be for ensuring that the school name displayed on your App is correct, as are your contact details should users wish to use the contact functions.
Be Aware! If you're using links to something like a Google Calendar, Outlook Calendar, or other web-based calendar, ensure viewers will not need an account to view the content. For example, if this is private school office based account that only staff can access, a parent would not be able to view the calendar as they wouldn't have permission. They might see a screen like this one if that's the case. Ensure external viewing is possible and events are public. For some guidance for Outlook, see our advice here 👈🏻
Carousel Tile Links is asking for URL Links to your school website for the News, Schools Calendar and Policies pages. PLEASE ensure these are filled in! These are the first items seen when users log in to the App, and so likely to be clicked on frequently! Simply copy the URL from the address bar of your school website for the relevant pages, and paste into the appropriate box.
Don't have a school website? Don't worry! If you have a school blog, this will work exactly the same way. Alternatively, you can link to another web page relevant to your school if that is used more often.
Social Media
Your Social Media dialogue boxes are for your school associated social media accounts. Again, if you don't have some of them, just leave them blank.
- Facebook: Copy and Paste from the address bar in your browser when on the school facebook page.
- Instagram: Visit instagram on a web browser and copy the URL in the address bar into this box when on the school instagram page.
- Twitter: Add your Twitter ID here. That's just the username that starts with an '@' symbol.
- YouTube: You'll need the Channel ID here, NOT the URL of the school's YouTube account homepage. To find that, you'll need to be the account holder, as it can be found in the channel settings. See our help here on accessing it 👈🏻.
- Vimeo: This is the URL from your Vimeo channel homepage, and can be copied and pasted from the address bar when on the page.
School Resources and General Information
Your Schools Resources relate to programmes and support services you may use within school to track pupil's learning, share it with parents etc. These are simply toggle switches to turn them on and off in the App. When green, they'll appear in the App menu School resources, and if they're turned 'off' they'll go grey and not appear in the App.
The General section comprises your school contact and address details, as well as your Longitude and Latitude which allows the Contact Us'section in your App to work correctly. To find your school's co-ordinates, visit this website .
Troubleshooting: If you can't see the ones you're expecting, your App may be caching.
First, try clearing the App cache.
If this has not worked, go back into your Web Management Portal and toggle the resource on/off again and click Save Changes. Then toggle the resource back on/off and click Save Changes again.
If the issue persists, contact our Support Team.
Colours and Branding
Under Customisation item in your left hand menu bar in the Portal, move down to Branding and you'll see a page for images and colours for your App.
The colours ideally will be in the form of a Hex Code, and if you aren't sure what yours are, upload your school badge here and you can find your school Hex codes!
The image uploader allows you to directly upload your images to your App and again give it 24 hours to update if it doesn't do it immediately as your App may be caching the old images.
Click each Upload button to assign your pictures to the correct titles:
Troubleshooting: If images do not update after upload, this is the browser caching the old files. Please clear the browser's cache for the updates to appear. Alternatively, our team may still be working behind the scenes with the colours and images to ensure they look their best within the App.
Features
This will allow you to enter the correct details for features like Report a Concern to function properly, or disable any features you don't wish/aren't ready to use. You can then return to turn them back on when you're ready. Do this using the toggle on the right hand side and ensure you click Save Changes to apply.
You find out more about how all these features work in our Other Articles. For some of them, they need additional information for them to function correctly.
Report A Concern requires the email addresses for the school email inboxes you'd like concern reports to go to. Without this, users won't be able to submit Concerns using the in-app form.
Report Absence also requires the email address you'd like reports of absence to be sent to. Without this this function can't be used.
All of the others can simply be turned on/off to turn them on/off in the App.
Note that if you turn a feature off here, it will also turn disappear from the portal! For example, if you don't want to use the Latest News feature, this will cause the News Builder to disappear from the portal. It will reappear once this is turned back on the Features menu.
If you're unable to toggle a feature on/off, this means that your local authority/multi academy trust have disabled it. Speak with a member of the safeguarding team there if you think it would be a useful feature.
Still feeling unsure?
Our Service Engagement Team are always here to answer any questions you may have and provide you with any support you need.
💻 Check out our other support articles
📞 Call our team on 02896005777
📩 Email us at saferschools@ineqe.com