Build one alert to suit multiple audiences
The majority of the schools that make great use of Pulse alerts find the need to make multiple copies of one alert with only minor changes to levels of severity and and /or recipients. Here's an example:
It makes sense that homeroom teachers should monitor issues of lower severity, while the DP of Wellbeing should be notified when something like lateness to class (using the example above) starts to become more of a worrying trend.
There's also a need to define the threshold as a minimum and maximum:
The improvements we've made
Changes to the Pulse alert wizard now allow you to create one rule (i.e. lateness to class) with multiple conditions, removing the requirement for needless duplication of alerts.
- Create one alert but have it sent to different audiences based on different levels of severity.
- Set a minimum number of incidents to be notified and a maximum up to which you'd continue to be notified.
The following is a walkthrough on how to set up a multi-condition alert.
Selecting Pulse type and cohort
This part of the process hasn't changed. Select what you're concerned about and the group you'd like to monitor.
Label your alert
While naming the rule is the same, the new conditions mean that what is received in an email may differ from this label. Think of this alert label as your heading, and conditions as sub-headings. This will make more sense later in the process.
Alert trigger
This selection has changed. What was once threshold is now by a custom condition, after which you'll still be asked to define the time span you're interested in monitoring.
Note, there are some alert types, like overall attendance, which only allow you to capture instances for the whole semester. Calculating a student's overall attendance across timespans shorter than the whole semester can be misleading.
Having selected by a custom condition as your alert trigger, you can now define the conditions for severity and audience, and you can have multiple conditions. The animation below walks through the process of setting your first condition.
A few process tips
Condition name
Make sure to label your condition with specifics about the conditions.
If your alert label is Late to class over the current fortnight, perhaps the first condition label might be Homeroom teachers: late 2 - 5 times to class in the current fortnight.
Send an alert when
- select if you'd like to be notified when what you're tracking exceeds or drops below (note drops below is only available to alerts types that track %)
- select the lowest number of occurrences at which point you'd like this group of recipients to be notified, the maximum number, after which they stop being notified
I want homeroom teachers to begin getting alerts for lates to class when a student is late twice in the fortnight, and I'd like them to continue being notified if the student gets up to five lates in the fortnight.
- next, determine if you'd like the recipient group to be notified every time the group gets one higher, i.e. they had three lates, now they've got four. Select the checkbox if you want this to happen - otherwise, they will only receive an alert when the minimum is reached.
- Now, who is this part of the alert going to? Pick your recipients.
- Click the Review recipients icon to see that the staff group you've selected, i.e. Year Level Coordinators, has staff mapped to this role type in your information system, i.e. Synergetic/TASS.
- Finally, pick how often they should receive alerts.
We sync the data every day. Choosing to receive alerts less frequently than daily summarising all of the alerts for the days that have elapsed since last reporting.
Adding additional conditions
Here's where it gets interesting. You can repeat all of those steps for the same alert type but you can change when an alert gets sent, and to whom.
Setting your additional condition label is important as it is what appears in the alert emails. Be sure to change the label to reference the different parameters, i.e. when an alert is sent and to whom.
Commencing capture
The last step is to determine when you want Pulse to start listening to changes in the data to report on your alerts. You can set it as far back as the start date of the reporting time-span you've selected.