How To: Message Students Using Navigate

Learn how to efficiently communicate with your students through email or text messages. This guide provides instructions on selecting multiple students or reaching out to individuals to streamline your student success outreach.

Student Success
11 steps
2 minutes

Eab

Navigate provides both email and text messaging for users to communicate with students, either individually or en masse. Communicating with students through the platform creates records of those communication which can be accessible by other users with certain permissions. You can send emails or texts to one or more students from Staff Home, Professor Home, or the Student Profile.

Send a Message from Staff Home

Navigate to <https://pittstate.campus.eab.com/home#?tab-state=students_tab_hash> From Staff Home, select the **Students** tab. To send a message to one student, select the box next to their name. To send a message to all of your students, select the box next to "**NAME**".

Screenshot of students tab on staff home page.

If you select next to "**NAME**" to select all students and have more than 100 students, you will get a message in blue to "**Select all XX items**." Click this blue link to select all students, otherwise you will only have the first 100 names selected.

Screenshot of selecting all students from assigned student table.

Click **Actions** and select **Send a Message to Student** from the dropdown.

Send a Message from Professor Home

From Staff Home, click the dropdown and select **Professor Home**.

Screenshot of selecting professor home page.

Scroll down to the **Students in My Courses** section and select the student(s) you want to send a message to. Follow the same guidelines as above for selecting one or multiple students.

Screenshot of students in my courses section of professor home.

Click **Actions** and select **Send Message** from the dropdown.

Send a Message from Student Profile

To access the **Student Profile**, click on the student name (blue link) from any student table located on the Staff Home or Professor Home.

Screenshot of selecting student name link from assigned student table.

If you don't have any assigned students to select from, use the **Quick Search** bar to search for a student by name or student ID#.

This will open the Student Profile. Select **Message Student** from the **Options** menu on the right-hand side.

Send an Email

The Send a Message dialogue opens. You can choose to send an email or text message. To send an email, select **Email** and complete the necessary fields. - **Subject:** The subject line for your email message. - **Message:** The body of your email message. There is no character limit for the message, but any hyperlinks must include the full URL. You may add images, merge fields, and rich text formatting to the message. - **Add Attachment:** Upload or drag and drop attachments to the email message. - **Send Additional E-Mail Notifications To:** Allows you to include additional students or staff you also want the email sent to. - **Preview Message:** Allows you to preview the message before sending it. - **Send Sample:** Send yourself a sample email to preview directly before sending the message. ***Note:*** *When sending an email message to more than one student, each recipient will only see that they received the message and will not see the other recipients.*

Screenshot of sending an email message dialogue.

Send a Text

To send a text message, select **Text** and complete the necessary fields. - **Character Limit:** Text messages are restricted to 300 characters. - **Two-Way Texting:** Allows you to send text messages to students and receive replies in the Navigate staff platform. **Texting Best Practice:** - These numbers may not be immediately recognizable to students. Therefore, it's important for users to identify themselves in the message (e.g., *From Pitt State*, or *From Academic Advising*, or *From John Smith*, etc.). - Text messaging should not be the sole method of communicating information/announcements; **texting should be used for action items** or when other communication methods have failed. ***Note:*** *When sending a text message to more than one student, each recipient will only see that they received the message and will not see the other recipients.*

Screenshot of sending a text message dialogue.