Welcome to the exciting world of GenMessaging!  This new offering looks to enhance your efficiency by giving your users access to system events in real time. 

This is accomplished by users being able to subscribe to events within Genesis. 

Once subscribed, the user is notified about the event, so that there is no delay in the processing of the event. 

All notifications are pushed to the Genesis Mailbox, which houses all event communication. 

GenMessaging allows the continuous flow of information to users without delay, which leads to your school working more quickly and more efficiently than ever before. 

Setup is found via Setup>Genmessaging.

Click Here to see a list of GenMessaging Videos and Webinar Replays

Required Tasks

Two tasks are required to be running in order for GenMessaging to run.  You can activate the tasks on the Core>Scheduler screen.

The first task is the "GenEvent Daemon". This is what allows Genesis to create any data driven event.

The second is the "GenMessage Daemon".  This task is what creates the messages based on the subscriptions to the events. 

Events

The GenMessaging core mission is to notify users when a specified event occurs.  

This allows the subscriber to receive a message within Genesis, and optionally to receive an email.

All events that can be subscribed to are found on the Setup>GenMessaging>Events screen and are described here.

Events can be anything from a student being registered into the system to a message when it is one of your students birthday.  

Events include but are not limited to:

• Student Registration
• Open Registration
• Lunch Applications
• Teacher Referrals
• IEP Expirations
• Physical Exam Expirations
• Student Birthdays

Subscriptions

A subscription to an event tells the system what event you would like to be notified about. 

Subscriptions can be setup on the WebDesk>Setup>Subscriptions screen. 

Each of your subscriptions also allow the user to place criteria on the subscription so that the messages will be filtered. 

In order to place filters or to be able to subscribe to an event, the user will need a staff member assigned to them that is marked as representing them. 

This allows Genesis to know what type of staff the user is and will allow us to filter out the students correctly for each event that occurs within Genesis. 

For instance, one filter option is “Only students with staff member as Counselor”.

If checked, this tells the system that this subscription is only looking for the event if it effects one of the user’s students. 

In this case, it’s looking for students who are being counseled by the user.

We determine that by looking at the staff attached to the user account that are marked to represent the user. 

When analyzing the event for this subscription, we would create a new message only if the student has the user as their counselor.

If not, then the subscription is ignored and a message will not be sent to the user.

The following are the filters that each subscription can be given:

-          Schools

-          Only students with staff member as Counselor

-          Only students with staff member as Vice Principal

-          Only students who are in staff member's Homeroom

-          Only students who are taught by staff member

-          For Conduct Only. Only incidents with staff member as Administrator

Sysadmin users are able to switch users on the WebDesk>Setup>Subscriptions screen so that they can setup and analyze subscriptions for other users.

Setting Up Subscription Plans

Administrators can subscribe users to events in mass by creating “Subscription Plans” on the Setup>GenMessaging>Subscriptions screen. 

A subscription plan allows you to select a role or roles for users to push the subscriptions to.

For instance, if you are looking to push out the Happy Birthday event to all your teachers, then you would select your teacher role for the plan.  Each plan also contains the filtering options used in the subscriptions. 

In this example, it would be useful to check off the “Only students who are taught by staff member“ option. 

This way, the teachers would only receive a message about students who they actually teach, rather than all students in the school.

Once you have chosen a role for the plan and all the options are setup to your liking, you can click on the “Push Subscription Plan” button. 

This will go through all the users within the roles selected and assign the subscription to them as long as they qualify for the plan. 

What does this mean you ask? Let us explain.

When creating a subscription that is for the teacher role, you may only setup the subscription for the high school.  

When the push is done, we analyze all the users with the teacher role.

If a user does not have access to the school that the subscription is being created for, then that user will be skipped in the push out. 

Click here to see the Subscription Plan page for more details on how the plans work.

The Genesis Mailbox

At the heart of GenMessaging is the Genesis Mailbox.  

The mailbox can be easily accessed from any screen in Genesis by clicking on the mail icon in the top right corner. 

All incoming messages appear in your Inbox. If a message is deleted from your inbox, it is sent to the Deleted tab.

By clicking on the Create Message tab, you can send a message to any Genesis user in the district which will appear in your Sent tab. 

The Options tab allows you to request an email notification in addition the message that will be sent to your Inbox.

Security Setup

Once you have the GenMessaging feature, users will need to be assigned the “genmessage.mailbox” location in order to have access to the Genesis Mailbox. 

If you would like your users to have direct access to their subscriptions, then they would also need the “webdesk.setup.subscriptions” location.

In order to create and push Subscription plans, you will need to assign the “setup.genmessing.subscriptions” location.

Additional Pages:

Current GenMessaging Event Types

Genmessaging FAQ

Subscription Plans

User Access to Students and Student Information