---
title: Using ad-hoc/school messaging
description: Using ad-hoc/school messaging | Help & Support — GO 4 Schools
---
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# Using ad-hoc/school messaging
The school messaging functionality is available via the **People** menu, **Compose message**:
### 
### **Selecting recipients**
There is a button to add/remove recipients, which once clicked, will open up a selector:
This selector will let you choose students individually, but also by year groups, registration groups, departments, subjects, teaching groups, and attributes marked to be used with messaging. You can select one group, search for another group, and add them to the recipient list.
Once you’ve selected your recipients, on the next screen you can choose to filter to just priority 1 parents if preferred, and select the channel you’d like to use for each recipient.
By clicking the text/down arrow at the top of the column, you are given the options to select all, clear all, and select if no other channel. The **select if no other channel** will select all parents who do not currently have one of the three channels selected. These options should help you quickly assign a channel to long lists, or send SMS when a parent has all other channels disabled. Where a parent has a channel disabled, you’ll be unable to select that channel for the parent (see Miss Kelsey Smith in the screenshot above who doesn’t receive notifications). Hovering over a greyed-out checkbox will display a tool tip describing the reason the channel cannot be selected. There is a button at the bottom of the list of recipients which will also allow you to select parents in bulk, according to some pre-defined rules – all channels, maximising speed, all channels, minimising cost, and free channels only.
After your channels are selected, you can then move to either the compose, or compact page.
### **Compose page – Simple view**
The compose page has two views available, the default view is **Simple** and presents you with two text boxes with character counts – one for the subject line, and another for the body of your message. The body text box will be limited to the maximum amount of characters available for the smallest channel you have chosen.
Email subject line – 200 characters **NB:** This is needed for SMS and Mobile App notifications as well, as it is the subject line used in the online inbox.
Email body – 3000 characters
Mobile notification – 400 characters – **Please note:** if you have disabled the online inbox we recommend you don't send a notification by itself, as due to limitations on different phones the notifications may not fully display. In this case we'd recommend you send an accompanying email.
SMS – 300 characters (this is two text messages – the cost displayed updates once you’ve gone over 160 characters to reflect this). This is due to how Twilio handles multiple SMS – limiting the characters to 153 per message. There are certain characters that cannot be used with Twilio, and we provide a message if you are using any of them. We also give warnings when the subject/body are empty:
****
Once complete, pressing **Preview/Send** will allow you to preview and then send your message(s).
### **Compose page – by channel view**
The **by channel** view of the compose page gives you a title (subject line) text box, and a text box for each channel that you’ve picked to use – this allows you to send an appropriate level of detail by channel.
As above, pressing **Preview/Send** will send your messages.
### **Compact view**
A final way to compose your messages is the **Compact** view – this view puts all of the options on one page, so you can select your recipients, and compose your messages in either the simple or by channel views all on the same page:
### **Preview of message prior to sending**
Once you have pressed **Preview/Send** you are presented with a preview of what your messages will look like – this will show all channels you have selected in one final view:
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