Use a Watchlist to notify people (for example parents and/or students) when certain events take place. For example in Attendance all N codes recorded for AM Registration, or Detentions awarded for that day.
In this guide:
- Choose the Students or Groups of Students
- Operational Settings for Attendance and Behaviour
- Delivery Settings
Note: Watchlists are used to search for Attendance Codes/Meaning, Behaviour Events or Actions and Detentions Awarded or Scheduled on the specific day you are running the watchlist.
Access: The minimum permissions required to Create a Watchlist is found in the Communication Module of Config>Setup>Roles & Permissions.

See also: How To Create a Message Template.
To start, from Config>Communication>Watchlists.

Select New.

Search for Students or Groups of Students
Choose either Individual Students or the Class or Tutor Group option, then choose Find to open the Group Name. If selecting Individual Students this will be a static list of students
Tip: in order for all Current Students to be included in the process, including Students that may be added on roll in the future, choose Class or Tutor Group and then the (V) Boys and (V) Girls Groups. These are dynamic Groups that update overnight to include any new Students.


Click Done. Then select the Operational Setting option.
Operational Settings

Select the relevant field on the dropdown list to Monitor By.

Attendance Example
Pick Attendance Code or Attendance Meanings from the dropdown.
For example: the below image shows a Group that will look for any Students with Attendance N Codes entered for all periods and all days and to not ignore any present students.

Once you have selected the Periods to Notify On, and Enabled Days, complete the relevant checkboxes.
- Threshold for number of consecutive periods – choose from 1 or more to define, leave at zero to turn off. In the example you have chosen All AM on the Periods to Notify on then you can define the number of consecutive periods for example 2 consecutive periods to appear on the watchlist.
- Allow Repeat Send Option: if this is enabled then the chosen method of communications will be sent multiple times in the same period for the same event. As an example, if you are using an SMS to notify of absence and the Watch List is then processed again for the same period, the system will send out another SMS to the same Contact for the same absence. If this is Disabled, the Contact will only receive one SMS per absence/event, regardless of the amount of processes.
- Watch Each Period Independently: this will determine whether or not the list will watch each period independently, so if multiple periods have been selected and this option is ticked the system will search for students who have been absent for all or any of the periods. If unticked then the system will search for students who have been absent for all of the periods (this is only applied to Consecutive Periods).
- Ignore Present Students: checking this will ignore all Students that are Present. So if a student is marked as N for AM but then marked as Present for Period 1 it will ignore this student.
- Notify On Return: When ticked and in the example a parent has been sent a message stating their child is absent and subsequently a teacher gives the child a present mark in the lesson after, it will resend another message to the parent to say that now returned hence “Notify on Return”
Then choose who to notify, the Contact and/or the Student.

Behaviour Example
Available for Events, Actions, and Detentions Awarded and Scheduled.
As above, once you have selected the Periods to Notify On, and Enabled Days, complete the relevant checkboxes to choose who to notify.
For Behaviour Events, you can notify a Teacher, in addition to a Contact or Student.
For Detentions Scheduled, you can also select which detentions this will apply to.

Delivery Settings
In the example used above (attendance watchlist) a message will be sent to those with Parental Responsibility Contact Only with Priority 1 and only to mobiles marked to receive text messages.
Either select an existing Template from the dropdown list or click the New Template button.

Then select the Process option. By default this will be on Manual and for this example we will keep this as Manual.

If Manual is selected you will let need to process the watchlist when required.
Go to Modules>Communication>Watchlist Process

Choose the Watchlist you want to process from the dropdown.

We can now see 2 students with N codes for the AM Registration

We can then choose to either Select All or Select Specific Students by clicking on each student in turn

If the Automatic option is selected the Schedule Settings page will be displayed.

Then select the Save option, give the Watchlist a name and click the Save button.
