This guide will help you configure who receives important communications and who can approve various requests within your school's Involve Education system.

Getting Started

The Contacts and Approvers settings page allows you to assign staff members to different roles that control permissions, notifications, and approval workflows throughout the system. Each role serves a specific purpose in managing your school's day-to-day operations.

Core Contact Roles

Primary Contacts

Who they are: Your main points of contact for Involve School Portal

What they receive:

• Important system updates and announcements from Involve Education
• Renewal reminder emails (if no finance contacts are set up)
• Critical school-wide notifications

Requirements: You must have at least one primary contact configured at all times.

Finance Contacts

Who they are: Staff members who handle billing, payments, and financial matters

What they receive:

• Subscription renewal notifications
• Billing inquiries and payment-related communications
• Financial emails (these are prioritized over other administrators)

Note: Finance contacts are email addresses, so you can add people outside your staff list if needed.

Approval Roles

Event Approvers

Who they are: Staff members who review school events before they're published

What they do:

• Receive email notifications when events need approval
• Can approve or reject events through the system
• Events remain in draft status until approved

How to enable: Check the box "Require approval for school events" to activate this workflow. When disabled, no approval is needed and events publish immediately.

Tip: Use this to maintain quality control over what appears on your school calendar.

Message Approvers

Who they are: Staff members who review bulk communications before they're sent

What they do:

• Receive notifications when messages to the whole school or entire year groups need approval
• Can approve or reject mass communications
• Prevent unauthorized bulk messaging

How to enable: Check the box "Require approval for school and whole-year pod messages" to activate this workflow.

Tip: This is particularly useful for preventing accidental or inappropriate mass communications.

Staff Absence Approvers

Who they are: Staff members who manage teacher absences and coordinate cover

What they do:

• Approve staff absence requests
• Manage cover arrangements for absent teachers
• Receive notifications about new absence requests (when enabled)

Optional setting: Enable "Send absence request notifications" to receive immediate alerts when staff submit absence requests.

Note: This role only appears for schools with the cover management feature enabled.

Management and Operational Roles

Attendance Officers

Who they are: Staff members responsible for monitoring student attendance

What they do:

• Receive email alerts about unexplained student absences
• Get notifications about attendance patterns requiring attention
• Access attendance monitoring tools and dashboards

Tip: Assign your attendance team here to ensure they're promptly notified of issues requiring follow-up.

Duties Managers

Who they are: Staff members who oversee duty schedules

What they do:

• Can edit recurring duty events
• Manage duty rosters and assignments
• Coordinate staff duty schedules

Room Managers

Who they are: Staff members who control room bookings and availability

What they do:

• Create and manage room booking events
• Block rooms for cleaning, maintenance, or special events
• Can edit booking events regardless of who created them
• Control access to the room booking system

Tip: Assign your facilities team or office staff who handle room bookings.

Music Admins

Who they are: Administrators for your music department

What they do:

• Receive notifications about lesson changes made by restricted teachers (when enabled)
• Can prevent restricted teachers from performing bulk event actions
• Manage music department-specific settings

Optional setting: Enable "Notify music admins of restricted teacher lesson changes and prevent restricted teachers from bulk event actions" to maintain oversight of the music schedule.

Office Pod Configurations

Note: Office pods are staff groups that receive and manage specific types of parent communications.

School Office Pod

What it handles: General parent change requests and messaging configurations

What it does:

• Receives parent change requests (e.g., updates to contact details)
• Configures which groups parents can send messages to
• Can be set differently for each division in multi-division schools

Optional setting: Enable notifications to receive immediate alerts when parents submit “personal detail” change requests.

Setup: Select a staff pod from the dropdown menu. This pod will receive all school office communications.

Student Absence Office Pod

What it handles: Student absence messages and requests from parents

What it does:

• Receives parent absence submissions (illness, bereavement, appointments, etc.)
• Processes absence requests according to your school's rules

Configuration options:

• Same-day only: Limit parents to requesting absences only for the current day
• Illness threshold: Set how many consecutive illness days require a doctor's note
• Holiday message: Configure an automatic response message for absence requests during school holidays

Setup: Select a staff pod from the dropdown menu for each division (if applicable).

Catering Office

What it handles: Meal-related communications and requests from parents

What it does:

• Receives catering-specific parent messages
• Processes meal-related requests and changes

Setup: Select a staff pod from the dropdown menu.

Admissions Office

What it handles: Prospective student communications and admission workflows

What it does:

• Receives admissions-related parent communications
• Manages prospective students through admission stages
• Provides access to admissions management views

Important: Staff must be in the admissions office pod to create admissions bookmarks in the student view.

Setup: Select a staff pod from the dropdown menu.