How to review Safe Messages

Every message sent to a child through Hubb is kept, whatever happened to it. Approved, rejected, still waiting or expired, it is all there. Nothing can be quietly deleted, which is what makes Safe Messaging accountable rather than just convenient.

You will find it behind the shield icon in the left of your web office, on the Safe Messages tab, alongside your Safeguarding Dashboard. Like the rest of that area, it is visible to your named Safeguarding Lead only.

Reading the record

Each row shows you the whole story of one message: when it was sent, who sent it, which child it was for, the message itself, and its current status. Alongside that you get who approved or rejected it and when, the reason given for any rejection, when the message expires, and whether you have marked it as reviewed.

Status is one of four things.

• Pending. Sent, and waiting for a parent or guardian to approve it.
• Approved. A guardian approved it and it was delivered.
• Rejected. A guardian turned it down. The reason they gave appears in the rejection column.
• Expired. Nobody approved or rejected it in time, so it was never delivered, and the leader was told.

The record covers every route to a child, not only chat. A Type column tells you whether each row is a chat message or a copy of a mailing, Broadcast or text message. If your church allows children to reply, their replies appear here too. Everything to or from a child, by any route, is in this one place.

Finding what you need

1. Use Review to switch between messages waiting to be reviewed and all messages. It opens on the ones waiting for you.
2. Use Status to narrow to pending, approved, rejected or expired messages only.
3. Use From and To to set a date range, which is how you would pull a record for a term or for a safeguarding meeting.
4. Use Search to look for wording in a message, or for a person by name.
5. Press Filter to apply what you have chosen. The count of messages found appears just underneath.

Marking messages as reviewed

1. Read the message.
2. Choose Mark as reviewed at the end of its row.
3. To clear a whole batch at once, use Mark all as reviewed at the top right. Only do this when you have actually read them, since the point of the badge is to tell you what you have not yet seen.

Marking a message as reviewed is what removes it from the count on the shield badge in your top bar. It records that a human being has looked, which is the part no software can do for you.

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Good to know

• Marking as reviewed is about your own oversight. It is separate from approval, which is the parent’s decision and happens before delivery. See What a parent sees, and how they approve a message.
• Leaders know their messages are seen. That is by design, and it is worth saying out loud when you brief a team: it protects them as much as it protects the children. See Safe Messaging and your safeguarding policy.
• Rejected messages deserve a second look rather than a tick. A parent gave a reason, and that reason is usually worth a conversation.
• This record covers messages to and from children. Ordinary chat between adults is private to the people in the conversation and is not visible here, or anywhere else in your web office. See Who can see chat messages?
• Chat history is never deleted. If your church ever faces a formal safeguarding case, we can extract the relevant conversation data for you on request.
• The date filters make it straightforward to produce a term’s record for a safeguarding review or a leadership meeting.