The purpose of the Communications feature is to send pertinent team information to your membership as a whole or to individual groups within the team (i.e., Athlete Age Groups, Roles, Athlete Roster Groups).

» Note: This feature is not intended to facilitate back-and-forth communication and does not support copy/paste of individual email addresses into the “To” field. Communication is based on parent or athlete accounts affiliated with your team each season. For instructions on creating accounts, ➞ See Managing Your People/Roster.

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Video Tutorial and Access

Communications: Overview Video (5:53min)

This overview provides insight into how to designate who receives your communication, how to manage who can send communication from your team and through what email, and the features available when you compose your email.

➞ See our ▶️ Training Videos - Communication article for more specific videos on our email and alert features.

➞ direct link to our Communications Overview video.

Accessing the Communications Center

Emails or Alerts are managed from the Communications tab in the Manage Team admin console.

Permissions Required to Send an Email or Alert

Members with full Site Admin (red badge/label) access, and members assigned to a Role with Manage Communications permissions, can choose between sending an Email (detailed information) or sending an Alert (information you need to share quickly - meet delayed, practice canceled, etc.).

➧ Site Admin:

For instructions on creating Admins, ➞ See our Adding New Admins Help Center article.

➧ Role Permissions: (designated on each Role)

For instructions on Roles ➞ See our Defining Roles Help Center article.

Sending Emails and Team Alerts/Push Notifications

Team Alert Details

The purpose of using the Alert feature is to quickly broadcast a short urgent message via the SwimTopia Mobile App (i.e. Practice canceled due to weather).

➧ How can I send an alert? Alerts are sent through the Communications tool from your Manage Team admin console, or through the SwimTopia mobile app (under the key icon) ➞ See SwimTopia Mobile App - Overview & Admin Info

➧ What determines if a member will receive the alert on their phone? Sending an Alert triggers a push notification to team members who have downloaded and are logged into the SwimTopia mobile app, AND have enabled notifications within their phone settings, removing the need for a separate text or SMS message service.

➧ What about members who don't have the app downloaded? Team members who have not downloaded AND logged into the SwimTopia mobile app, OR who have not enabled notifications for their downloaded app, will receive the alert as an email instead of a push notification.

➞ See our Community Post to learn about more benefits of using our Alert feature.

» Note: Alerts cannot contain styled text or attachments and are limited to 160 characters. Every message must have a subject (which will appear on phones as a bolded line of text) and a body.

Steps to Send an Email or Alert

➧ Step 1) Choose to Compose an Email or Alert

Click +Compose button and determine whether you want to send an Email or an Alert.

➧ Step 2) Determine Your Audience

In the To field, groups are labeled based on type, including (Age Group), (Role), (Roster Group), and (Group). Start typing the name of any user or group and select the matching user or group to receive the email or alert. (click Expand groups to display each individual user, or to remove any from your list)

» Tip: When typing in a group name on an iOS device (iPhone, iPad) you may have to try typing in the first few letters of the group or recipient name and then backspace a few letters to be able to select.

Group labels in the To field are highlighted in green to differentiate from individual addresses, which are highlighted in blue. (Remember: green = group)

➧ Optional Selections

Also publish as news post: will create a news post of your message along with the communication sent out that uses the subject as the title and the message as the content of the post. Attachments will not be included on the news post. (News posts are managed under Website > Posts, ➞ See the News Posts article for more details.)
Send me a copy: Will send a copy of the message to the account being used to send the message.
Allow recipients to see each other: divides the recipients into groups of approximately 50 and sends the messages out in batches. Delivery to every member will take longer when sending in batch, so give it time (hours to be safe) before submitting a support ticket thinking something went wrong. Since these messages are sent in batches of 50, not everyone will be able to see every other recipient, only those within their group of recipients.

➧ Step 3) Compose Your Message

Type your message and include any attachments as necessary.

Want to add images to your message?:

Pasting images in the body of the message is not supported. Either use the "insert image" option from the editor bar or if you know how to insert images using HTML, you can add images uploaded to your Settings > Uploaded Files page using the HTML editor "<>."

» Note: There is a 5MB message size limit in outbound email messages. You will receive an error if you attach images or documents that are too large and will need to resize them to send the message.

➧ Step 4) Send Your Message

Click Send to send and save your message in the Sent Messages area.

Directing Communication to Specific Groups

Reaching Specific Groups of People

➧ All Current Season Members	Email all members of the team in the *current season* team by entering: Members. This group is intended for team-wide general information Communications. All users are automatically added to your "Members" group for the current season through registration, including Paid, Approved, and Pending registrations (i.e. check or account# pymts, and waitlist submissions that haven't been moved to rejected), and users manually added through the People tab. Parents or Athletes (High School teams) who have an email included in their registration or profiles but have opted out of receiving team emails are not included in this group. They will show as “Unsubscribed” when viewing their profile in People.
➧ All Previous Season Members	Email members of the *previous season* by entering: Members - Previous Season. This is an excellent way to invite members to register for a new season. All last season's imported members and registrations with an email address are included in this group unless their form is in the rejected status or they have opted out. They will show as “Unsubscribed” when viewing their profile in People. » Note: Any season marked "unofficial" will be skipped.
➧ Members in Seasons Before the Previous Season	Option 1: You can always reach parents or any groups in any season from the Reports tab using reports like the Registration Details/Data Export, Parents Information or Athlete Roster reports. ➞ See the Sending Emails & Alerts to Groups Through Reports and Meets section below for details. Option 2: An alternate option, but more work, for reaching prior seasons is to change your "current season" under Schedule > Seasons to that season and then send the communication to "Members." The message will reach anyone who was registered during that season. Make sure you go back to change the "current season" back when done.
➧ All Parents (Disregards Opt-Out Selection)	Email Parents only by entering: Parents. Parents can unsubscribe from "Members" but not from the "Parents" group. Using the Parents email group will send a message to every parent with an email address even if they have opted out, so don’t use this group for general announcements. This is designed for messages where it's imparitive for everyone to receive it. The Members group is likely smaller than the Parents group, but there’s no need to send to both groups in a single message. If you want everyone to receive the message even if they’ve requested not to be communicated with, use Parents (but use it sparingly).
➧ Athletes	Email all Athletes on your current roster by entering: Athletes. Due to the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act ("COPPA"), only High School and Grown-Up Swimming teams can collect athlete emails during registration to send Communications directly to athletes. Teams can add emails to athlete profiles directly but use caution when communicating with them due to the above act. *See Note Below
➧ Athlete Age Groups or School Year Groups	Email specific Athlete Age Groups or School Year Groups by typing the age, competition category, or school year and select from the drop-down list of choices. (15 + age groups are typically labeled “Men” or “Women.”) *See Note Below
➧ Athlete Roster Groups	Email Athlete Roster Groups by entering the name of the group (must configure this feature under Settings > Athlete Roster Groups). *See Note Below
➧ Role Assignees	If you tend to reach out to a subset of your members (i.e. your board, coaches, etc.), we suggest creating "Roles" for these groups and then assigning these members to the role. You can email all members assigned to a role by typing in the name of that role. ➞ See more information on Defining Roles and Assigning Volunteers to Roles. *See Note Below
**» Note:***	Athletes Under 18: Each Parent/Guardian listed with an email is included in the communication sent to an athlete directly, or athletes assigned to an athlete group or role, and sent from athlete-specific reports (i.e., Athlete Roster) This happens regardless of whether the athlete has an email in their profile, or the parent/guardian chose to opt out of team communication (only acknowledged for "Members" groups). Athletes 18+: Parents/Guardians are not automatically included for 18+ athletes. If you want to include parents they must be added manually or assigned to a role that you include. Exception: if a team has a Masters program where adult athletes are also parents - the parent email will receive the communication. Don't want to include a parent?: You can click on “Expand Groups” and remove them. Proceed with caution - - The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act ("COPPA") and SafeSport rules state that adults cannot communicate with minors under 13 (a parent or other adult must be copied).

Sending Emails & Alerts to Groups Through Reports and Meets

Do you want to send a message to a specific athlete roster group from the current or previous season, or members from seasons beyond the last?

You can do this from the Reports tab. If you want to include your current season in that message, this will allow you to send one message to multiple seasons and the system will eliminate duplicate messages.

You may also send emails to other groups while working with reports and meet jobs & shifts.

➞ See our Sending Email & Alerts to Groups through Reports and Meets tutorial for more details.

Additional Details and FAQs

Sender Display and Team Email Tip

➧ Sender Display

All emails or alerts sent from your team website will be from the name and email address associated with your own login and are not visible across admin accounts.

➧ Team Email Tip

We highly suggest setting up team or role-based admin logins in an external email program of choice (gmail/yahoo etc). For example, board@teamname.com or treasurer@teamname.com or president@gmail.com, registrar@gmail.com etc.

Then set up SwimTopia accounts with these logins to send team-wide email/alert messages. Doing this will allow for easier role transitions, and retain a log of emails sent for future reference by new volunteers. Replies to emails will be sent to the email used when the message is sent.

» Note: These emails must be set up in an email program external to SwimTopia. We do not create/manage these emails.

➧ Team Email Setup Steps

Once you set up your new team email in Gmail (etc), you would either provide the login to those who should access it to see what communication comes in, or you should be able to set up an alias in that account to add the personal emails of those individuals, so any message sent to that generic email is also sent to these people.

Then the SwimTopia setup comes in...Go to People and use the New Parent button to create the account, and grant Site Admin privileges (if appropriate).

You can also create a New Role to grant specific privileges to if you don't want to give these people access to everything, and assign this new account to this role for communication. This is done under Roles > Assign Roles button > Add/Remove

An activation email would be sent to this email for you to set up a password. Then you would provide that login to whoever needs it if they should be able to login to the account on your SwimTopia site.

Important Delivery Details

Unsubscribe: At least one parent per family must be configured to receive team emails. Clicking "Unsubscribe" in a user's profile (under People) only pertains to emails directed to the "Members" groups. Emails directed to any other groups listed above are delivered without regard to the unsubscribe option in a user's profile. If someone is assigned to a Role and does not want to receive team communication, they need to be removed from the Role, or their email needs to be removed from their profile.
Pending Registrations: These families are considered part of your Roster, and will receive messages if applicable based on the "group" used in communication. If you do not want this to occur, you can move them to Rejected status until approved. (i.e. your waitlist applicants)
Email Duplication: A communication will not be sent to a single recipient more than once, even if you enter multiple groups in the recipient field and they are members of more than one group. For example, if you send to multiple age groups and the parent has more than one child, they will only receive one message.
Athlete and Role Groups: (also stated above)
- Athletes Under 18: Each Parent/Guardian listed with an email is included in the communication sent to an athlete directly, or athletes assigned to an athlete group or role, and sent from athlete-specific reports (i.e., Athlete Roster). This happens regardless of whether the athlete has an email in their profile, or the parent/guardian chose to opt out of team communication (only acknowledged for "Members" groups).
- Athletes 18+: Parents are not automatically included for 18+ athletes. If you want to include parents they must be added manually or assigned to a role that you include. Exception: if a team has a Masters program where adult athletes are also parents - the parent email will receive the communication.
- Don't want to include a parent?: Click on “Expand Groups” and remove the parents. Proceed with caution - - The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act ("COPPA") and SafeSport rules state that adults cannot communicate with minors under 13 (a parent or other adult must be copied).

Communication FAQs and Troubleshooting Issues

If your questions are not answered here, ➞ See our Help Center article on Communication FAQs

If you are experiencing issues sending en email or alert, ➞ See our Help Center article on Communications: Email Delivery Issues

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