Alviyora

Communication

Sending an SMS to a guardian

Reaching a parent on any phone, from the learner’s profile — including what it costs.

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Announcements reach the parents who sign in. SMS reaches the rest — which, at most schools, is most of them. It works on a fifteen-year-old handset with no data, and it arrives whether or not anybody has downloaded anything.

It is sent from the learner’s profile, by a member of staff, to that learner’s guardians. Every message is logged.

Who can do this

Any member of school staff can send one. It is not gated behind a separate permission — a teacher who can see a learner’s profile can reach that learner’s parent, which is the point.

Sending a message

Open the learner’s profile

From a class list, a register, a search result — anywhere a name is clickable.

Press SMS Parent

The button sits at the top of the profile, beside Edit profile. It only appears where there is a number to reach.

Check who it is going to

Alviyora resolves every number it holds for that learner and lists them, with the relationship beside each: Thandi Ntuli (Mother), Joseph Ntuli (Father). Untick anyone who should not get it.

Write the message, or use the absence template

Use absence template fills in a complete, correctly-worded message naming the learner, the school, you and today’s date. Edit it or send it as it stands.

Send

You are shown, per recipient, whether it was delivered.

The SMS dialog with the absence template filled in. The counter under the box — 207/640 · 2 SMSs per number — is the cost, shown before you send.

Which numbers Alviyora finds

For a learner, in this order:

  1. Each linked guardian’s phone, labelled with their relationship.
  2. The learner’s own number, if they have one on file.
  3. The emergency contact number, but only if there are no guardian numbers at all — a fallback rather than an option.

For anyone else — a member of staff — it is simply their own number.

Every number is checked before it is offered. One that cannot be read as a real phone number is dropped rather than listed, because a broken number costs the same at the gateway and delivers nothing.

No number on file

If the dialog says there is no phone number for a learner’s parent or guardian, that is a data problem, not a fault. Add the number on the guardian’s profile, or import it — see Importing from a spreadsheet, where the Guardian Phone column exists for exactly this.

Two parents, one phone

Households share handsets constantly, and a learner’s number is frequently their mother’s. Alviyora selects people and sends to handsets: two guardians on one number get one message, not two, and the school is billed once. The log records both names against it.

What a message costs

The counter under the message box — 207/640 · 2 SMSs per number — is the real billing figure, not an estimate.

A text message is billed in segments:

Plain textWith special characters
One segment160 characters70 characters
Each segment after that153 characters67 characters

The second column is what you get the moment the message contains one character outside the basic set. The usual culprit is a curly apostrophe — the one every phone autocorrects don't into. One of those drops the whole message from 160 characters per segment to 70.

Watch the counter, not the character count

If a message you expected to be one segment says two, look for a curly quote, an em dash, an emoji or an accented character. Retyping the apostrophe straight often halves the cost of a message going to 300 parents.

SMS is billed to your school at cost — itemised on your invoice at exactly what the gateway charges. Alviyora takes nothing on it. See Your Alviyora subscription.

Every message is logged

Each send writes a record: who sent it, which learner it was about, which number it went to, the name behind that number, the full message text, how many segments it was billed as, whether it was delivered, and the time.

That record is what makes SMS usable in a school. When a parent says nobody told them, there is an answer — the message, the number, the timestamp.

Failures are logged too, with the reason.

What to use it for

Good: an unexplained absence today. A learner who is ill and needs collecting. A change to pick-up arrangements. A short reminder about something with a deadline.

Better as an announcement: anything going to the whole school. It costs nothing and it does not fill 2,600 inboxes with 160 characters.

Not this at all: a conversation. SMS here is one-way — a reply comes back to the gateway, not into Alviyora. If you need a discussion, use it to ask the parent to call the school.

Announcements Posting to the whole school or one audience, with read receipts.The daily learner register Marking a class present, absent, late or excused — and correcting it afterwards.Your Alviyora subscription What the platform costs, how it is billed, and where to see your invoices.