The Mailbox feature allows teachers to send texts or emails to students and parents. It also allows parents to send message to teachers. This article will show how the Mailbox works for a teacher, but click HERE to see how parents use the Mailbox!
How it works: The Basics
Article Table of Contents
Drafting and Sending Messages
Messages can be sent to a single student/parent, multiple students/parents, or all students/parents at once from all of your classes.
Messages can be sent as either a text message or email.
Messages can be sent immediately, or scheduled to be sent at a later date/time.
Emails sent from the Mailbox in Otus will go to the student/parent's active email address linked to their Otus account. They do not receive the message directly within Otus, rather, it is sent to their email inbox. The email will come from the address mailbox@otus.com. It might be helpful to have parents add mailbox@otus.com to their email contacts to avoid messages being sent to junk or spam.
The email itself will come from mailbox@otus.com, but the sender's name will appear alongside the email address. The sender's name and live email address will also appear at the bottom of the email.
When a message is sent from the Otus Mailbox, recipients are unable to see who else the message was sent to.
Parents and students can respond to emails; the response will go directly to the teacher's email inbox. The responses will be contained in the same email thread.
Text messages only send one way from the phone number (717-200-4638). They do not include a subject line, cannot include pictures, and are sent 140 characters at a time. Note - have students and parents add the number to their phonebook so they know these messages are from Otus.
❓ Can messages be sent to the entire school? Messages are sent based on classes. We've had some districts create a class and enroll all students in that class. They would then use that "class" for school-wide announcements.
Example Emails
From: Teacher
To: Family or Student
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From: Family
To: Teacher
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Replies
If a student or family member replies to an email message sent from the Otus Mailbox, it will go straight to the original sender's email inbox. Mailbox replies are not housed in Otus.
The student or family's email address will appear with the reply.
The student or family's reply is only sent to the original sender. It is not sent to the other recipients, and the other recipients are not able to see the individual replies.
If multiple students or family members reply, each will be added to the same email thread.
Scheduled Messages
Scheduled messages can be edited for both content, change in the time to be sent, and change in recipients to be sent to.
Scheduled messages can also be deleted.
Sent Messages
You can view the contents and recipients of your sent messages by selecting the message from the list.
Otus Live Video
Below is a video from our Otus Live series on how to use the Otus mailbox.