You are able to set up customisable groups of schools in Broadcast, which you can then use as your target audience for specific files. This saves you having to upload the same files multiple times.
When uploading files and folders, if the start of the name of the file/folder identically matches a Broadcast Group name and is followed by an underscore, all of the schools in that named Broadcast group will receive those files. For example, if you have set up a Broadcast group named PriGroup that contains all of the primary schools within your LA, then upload to Broadcast a file called PriGroup_Estimates.doc, all of the schools in the PriGroup Broadcast group will receive the Estimates.doc.
Similarly, if you were to upload a folder named PriGroup (without any school or other group identifiers in the name), every school in the PriGroup Broadcast group would receive all of the files found in the PriGroup folder.
Group Management
To view, create and edit your Broadcast Groups, hover over Broadcast and click on Groups.
If you already have groups set up, they will appear in the Group Name list. If you don't, then this will be empty. Click New Group to set up a brand new Broadcast School Group.
Give your group a name and a description and then click Save. For the purpose of this example, we have created a group called AcademyGroup.
Once saved, you will then be able to add schools to your new group. To do this, select the schools from the Schools Not In Group list on the left and click Add. You can hold the Ctrl key on your keyboard to select multiple schools. To remove a school from a group, select it from the Schools In Group list and click Remove. You can add or remove all schools at once by clicking Add All or Remove All, accordingly.
You can also use the School Type filter just above the list to filter the schools that appear.
As you add schools into your group, the number in the bottom left hand corner will increase, to display how many schools are currently in that group.
You are not able to add more than 200 schools into any one group. If you need to create a group with more than 200 schools, you would need to split the group in half and create two groups, with schools in each.
A school added to an existing group will not automatically see all files historically sent to that group. If you need newly added schools to access these files, the file(s) will need to be deleted from Broadcast, then redistributed to the group.
Removing a school from a group does not automatically remove all group related files sent to this school historically. To remove the files from that school, you will need to delete them from Broadcast, then redistribute them to the group once the school has been removed.
Sending a File to Your New Group
To send files to a group, follow the steps outlined in the Uploading and Publishing Files guide, but make sure that the start of your file or folder name matches the name of your group, followed by an underscore.
For this example, we will send a file to our new group, named AcademyGroup. The file has been uploaded to the Finance folder. Notice that the name of the file is AcademyGroup_Finance Sheet 2019. This means that when it is published, it will be distributed to the AcademyGroup schools.
Now that the file has been saved, we can check the School View to ensure that it is going to the correct schools. The below image is the School View for Abacus Primary School, who are a school in the AcademyGroup group. The file is displaying in their Finance folder.
The below image is the School View for Abbey Gates Primary School. This school have no Finance folder or files, which is what we would expect. As they are not in the group, the file is not visible to them.