What a parent sees, and how they approve a message

Most questions about Safe Messaging come from parents, so it helps to know exactly what they see. This article is written for administrators and leaders. If you want something to send to families, use Safe Messaging: a guide for parents and guardians instead.

The approval step

1. A leader sends a message. It is held, and the child’s parent or guardian is notified. See How to send a message to a child.
2. The notification carries a link. Following it opens the message in full, along with the last few messages of the conversation, so the parent has the context rather than one line in isolation.
3. The parent approves or rejects it. If they reject it, they can give a reason.
4. Approving delivers the message. Rejecting means it is never delivered, and the leader is told.
5. Doing nothing has the same effect as rejecting, once the approval window set by your church has passed. The leader is told it expired.

How guardians are told

Every pending message goes out two ways at once, so a guardian has two chances to see it without you having to chase anyone.

• An email, telling them a message has been sent to their child that needs their approval. It names the sender, gives the subject, and carries a link straight to the approval page.
• A notification in your church app, saying approval is required. Tapping it opens the same page.

Where a child has more than one guardian, every one of them is notified. Whichever guardian acts first decides, and the others receive a short notification telling them the message was approved or rejected by another guardian. So separated families and households where both parents are involved are handled properly, and neither parent is left wondering.

Three things are worth knowing when you are helping someone. Notifications arrive within a minute or two rather than instantly. The push only reaches a guardian who has the app installed with notifications switched on, so email is the reliable channel. And there is one notification per message, with no reminders, so a message nobody notices simply expires quietly.

The Approvals tab

Parents do not have to rely on catching a notification. In the app, Inbox has an Approvals tab alongside Messages and Notifications, which always shows anything waiting, whatever happened to the email or the push. When there is nothing, it says so plainly.

This is the first thing to point a parent to when they say they have not seen a message.

The read-only view

Parents can also look at their child’s conversations at any time, whether or not anything is waiting. In the app they tap Chat, use the dropdown at the top of the Chat list to switch from their own name to their child’s, and open any conversation. There is no message box, and a line at the foot confirms they are viewing their child’s chat read only.

Worth mentioning to families early. It is the single most reassuring thing about the whole feature.

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Good to know

• If a parent is not receiving approval requests, check the email address on their record first, then ask them to look in their junk folder, then check whether they have the app with notifications enabled, then point them at the Approvals tab.
• Because there are no reminders, a busy week can mean a message quietly expires. If that keeps happening, your church’s approval window may be too short for your families. Expired approvals show up on your Safeguarding Dashboard, so you will see the pattern, and you can change the window in your settings.
• If a child has no guardian on record, or their guardians have no email address, messages to that child cannot be approved and so cannot be sent. See How to get your family data ready for Safe Messaging.
• Rejections and their reasons appear on your Safeguarding Dashboard as high priority. A parent turning a message down is telling you something, and it is worth a conversation rather than a tick.
• A child can have more than one guardian, and it is worth setting that up properly. Every guardian is notified, so approval never depends on one person being available.
• Bulk sends work exactly the same way from the guardian’s side. See Sending a mailing or Broadcast to a group that includes children.