DeanDesk

Communication Tools

DeanDesk provides three communication channels to keep your community connected: Emails for admin outreach, Announcements for course and program updates, and Discussions for real-time group conversation.

Emails (Communications Hub)

The Communications Hub is the admin's central tool for sending emails to students, parents, teachers, and contacts.

Key features

  • Compose and send emails immediately or schedule them for later
  • Recipient selection from individual users, email lists, class rosters, or courses
  • Personalization with merge tags ({{firstName}}, {{lastName}}, {{email}}, {{username}})
  • Two editor modes: simple rich text or a styled block-based editor for professional emails
  • Email templates to save and reuse common emails
  • File attachments (up to 10 files, 5 MB each)
  • Email lists to organize contacts into reusable audience segments
  • Delivery history with status tracking for every email sent
  • Bulk contact import for adding contacts from a file

Tabs in the Communications Hub

| Tab | Purpose | |-----|---------| | Compose | Write and send or schedule emails | | Templates | Create and manage reusable email templates | | Scheduled | View, edit, or cancel emails scheduled for later | | Lists & Contacts | Manage email lists and subscribers | | History | View delivery logs for all sent emails | | Bulk Import | Import contacts in bulk | | Contact Merge | Merge duplicate contacts |

Announcements

Announcements are course-specific and program-specific messages posted by teachers and admins to communicate with enrolled students.

Key features

  • Course and program scoped — announcements go to all enrolled students in a specific course or program
  • Who can post: the course/program instructor, course assistants, or an admin
  • Pinning: pin important announcements to the top of the list
  • Responses: students and teachers can respond to announcements with threaded replies
  • Attachments: attach files to announcements and responses
  • Notifications: every enrolled student receives an email, push notification, and in-app notification when an announcement is posted

How to post

  1. Open a course or program from your dashboard
  2. Go to the Announcements tab
  3. Click New Announcement
  4. Enter a title and content, optionally pin it, and post

Discussions

Discussions are real-time group chats that are automatically created for your courses and programs.

Key features

  • Auto-created: a discussion group is created automatically for every course and program
  • Auto-enrollment: students are added to the discussion when they enroll in the course or subscribe to the program
  • Real-time messaging with typing indicators
  • Role-based access: members, moderators, and admins with different permissions
  • Custom groups: admins can create additional discussion groups (public or private)
  • Notifications: members receive email, push, and in-app notifications for new messages

Discussion roles

| Role | Post messages | Edit own messages | Delete others' messages | Manage members | |------|:---:|:---:|:---:|:---:| | Member | Yes | Yes | No | No | | Moderator | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | | Admin | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |

Course instructors are automatically assigned the Admin role. Students are added as Members.

When to use each channel

| Situation | Use | |-----------|-----| | Sending emails to a broad audience or external contacts | Emails | | Posting an important update for a specific course or program | Announcements | | Ongoing class Q&A or group conversation | Discussions |

Related Sections

  • Initial Setup - Configure your school and invite users
  • LMS - Course management and curriculum