Overview:
School Administrators (typically Principals and Admin Secretaries) in Blackboard can manage school groups and assign them to any staff member assigned to their school, including teachers who are using Teacher Messaging. This article will guide you through how to:
- Utilize Automatic Groups and assign them to Teachers using Teacher Messaging.
- Create Personal Groups
See Blackboard's Group Help - Manage User Groups | Blackboard Help
Automatic Groups from Synergy and Versatrans
Automatic groups will import nightly and update with changes made in their system of record
NOTE: Staff (using Mass Messaging) can utilize these automatic groups as is. If you want a teacher (using Teacher Messaging) to use one of these groups you'll need to create a Blackboard Group and use Advance to assign them. (See Assign Group below). The resulting BB group will be dynamic (update nightly with new members from Synergy/Vtrans).
- Where do these groups come from?
- Census groups come from Synergy and includes language, grade, class, teacher, gender, etc. This info comes from Synergy.
- Groups created in Synergy Student Groups are imported. They include athletics, gifted & talented and generic groups.
- Versatrans bus groups are imported nightly as well.
- How do I assign the group to teachers? Use the automatic group to create a Blackboard group, then assign that group to any teacher messaging user.
- Messages>Groups - click on Add (bottom right), then create a Public Group and select the desired Group from the Groups Folder. We suggest you name it the same as the Synergy group and add BB to the end of it.
- Choose Advanced Options at the bottom, expand the Teacher folder and choose the Teacher(s) you want to assign the group to. Save
In this image Tom will now see the Basketball Group in addition to his classes when he is logged into Teacher Messaging.
Personal Groups
Personal Groups are static and won’t update nightly like the groups above.
- Manual Groups are custom groups you can create in Mass Messaging – these are static and won’t update nightly like the groups above. See Blackboard instructions for Managing User Groups
NOTES:
- Once a user creates a group the can can assign it to Staff or Teachers at their location using the instructions in Step 2 in the Automatic Groups section above. (If you need to share it with district personnel call center can assist).
- You can use a list of IDs from a synergy search to create the group with a txt file, (or just search through the provided list)
- Remember you'll have to maintain this as it isn't dynamic; so you may prefer to maintain the file and use it at the time of sending a message instead of creating a group that won't stay up to date. To do this refer to KB "Blackboard Import a text file with contacts"
- Below is an example of a 'Personal' Bus Group that a school can create for Transportation to use. This would be if you want to inform external contacts (not parent/student/staff) about a late bus. The external contact must have a Community Member account. Once the group is created Call Center can assist you in assigning the group to transportation so they can use it as well.
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