Getting Your School Ready for Bluedesk Chat

Bluedesk Chat gives staff and parents a direct, written line for the conversations that today happen on the phone, at pickup, or via a forwarded voicemail. It also covers staff-to-staff messaging and group chats for a class or a year level.

Before turning chat on for parents, a small handful of things need to be in place on the school's side. This article covers what they are and why each matters, then walks the person doing the actual configuration through where to find each setting in Bluedesk.

What needs to be in place, and why

1. Parents on the system. Each parent needs a Bluedesk login. Without an account there's no parent side of the conversation, and chat appears empty to anyone who isn't yet signed up.
2. Children mapped to classrooms. Chats are routed by the classroom relationship — a parent's child needs to sit in the right room so the right teacher appears in the parent's list of staff they can message.
3. Staff accounts and roles. Every teacher and office staff member expected to respond needs a Bluedesk user account with an appropriate role. Account admins can start group chats and reach across the school; teachers reply to direct messages from the parents of children in their classes.
4. Notification preferences set. A staff member who never sees a message will never answer it. Each user enables email notifications (and, on the mobile app, push) so new messages surface promptly.
5. Communication norms agreed. A short, shared decision the school makes once: what's chat-worthy versus office-worthy, what response time parents can expect (usually within the school day, not evenings or weekends), and who covers a teacher's chats when they're absent. Without this, every staff member invents their own answer.
6. The feature turned on. An admin enables chat on the website so parents see it the next time they sign in.

The order matters. Turning chat on before parents are imported produces an empty experience for the few who do have accounts. Turning it on before staff have set their notifications produces a quiet inbox the school later has to apologise for.

For the person doing the setup

Once the school has agreed on the above, the configuration itself is a short list of admin screens.

1. Invite or import parents. Use Dashboard → Guardians → Invitations to send invitations one at a time, or Dashboard → Guardians → Import to upload a CSV. Confirmed parents appear in the guardian list.
2. Place children in classrooms. Open Dashboard → Classrooms, choose a classroom, then add the students and link each student to a guardian. A child who isn't in any classroom won't surface in any teacher's chat list.
3. Add staff and assign roles. Use Dashboard → Users to add individual staff, or Dashboard → Users → Import for bulk. Most teachers can stay as standard users; account admins get the broader access needed to create group chats and reach guardians across the school.
4. Have each staff member set their notifications. Each user does this themselves under Account menu → Email Preferences. Mobile push is enabled inside the Bluedesk mobile app the first time they sign in.
5. Publish the norms. A two- or three-line note in the school newsletter or on the parent portal is usually enough — response hours, what to use chat for, what to keep calling the office about.
6. Enable chat on the website. Go to Dashboard → Websites → Edit → General, tick Chat, and save. Parents see chat in their dashboard the next time they sign in.

Once all six are done, no separate launch is needed: staff-to-staff and group chats become available immediately for those with permission, and parents discover their chat tab on the next sign-in.