Heads Up: The availability of this feature depends on how we sync your data. Reach out to your Customer Success Manager for more information.
Users who sync their data may have access to the Groups feature in the left-hand menu in Connect. This feature allows users to create and save Groups of families or Staff to send Announcements to this audience. (For users with the Data feature on the left-hand menu, it also allows them to access student data for the members of their Groups.) Access to Groups does not allow users to send Conversations or make phone calls to Group members.
Two types of Groups can be created:
- Staff Groups - Groups of staff/teachers created by Administrators to (1) allow them to access the students' data and/or send Announcements to these families or (2) create and save an audience of Staff members for Announcements.
- Student Groups - Groups of students created by teachers or Administrators who are in their scope.
Note: Any Student Group created by a teacher will be checked nightly against the district SIS (Student Information System) to ensure accuracy for the scope of access. These specific Student Groups will be updated based on roster changes during our nightly sync and will ONLY remove students who are no longer assigned to that teacher.
Note: Groups created by teachers from the previous school year are DELETED once the new school year begins. Any group created by an administrator or via Searchlight will remain unless deletion is requested by the district.
Staff Groups
A Staff Group defines staff/teachers who have permission to access a Student Group either to 1) send an Announcement or 2) view student attendance, discipline, or assessment data (for High Impact users).
Note: Access to a Student Group does not give you the ability to view individual student contacts or communicate with student families in Conversations or phone calls. For this use case, please consider creating a manual classroom and assigning staff. Learn more here.
Examples of Staff Groups might include:
- A "2025 Student Council Advisors" Staff Group with access to view the Student Group "2025 Student Council Members"
- A "Bus Drivers" Staff Group to send Announcements related to bus assignments
- "ELL Teachers" Staff Group with access to the Student Group "Multilingual Families" and to send Announcements related to ELL teaching
Learn how to create a user group here
Student Groups
A Student Group is a custom-made list of student contacts. Students can be added or removed to keep the group up-to-date.
- 2025 Student Council: "Student Council"
- ELL Students: "Multilingual Families"
- Afterschool Program, "Afterschool Families"
- Students in need of special counseling services, like speech pathology, "Speech Support"
- Participants in short-term activities, like a field trip or the school play, "Fall Play Participants"
Sending Communication to Groups
You can communicate with a manually created or Searchlight-created student group by sending an Announcement.
📝 Please Note: The Group name is visible to recipients when an Announcement is sent. Please choose Group names carefully.
- Once your new group is created in Searchlight, click the “+” (Plus) icon in the top-right menu and select Announcement.
- Under Recipients, go to the Groups tab. Search for and select your newly created group.
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