VS-Mail - Staff guide

Guide on how to use VS-Mail for Teachers, Secretaries, Principals etc.

We’ve recently updated our top menu navigation (July/August 2024). We’re currently updating our user guides to reflect these changes, so thank you for your patience while we work on this. The new menu is user-friendly, so you shouldn’t experience significant disruption. If you need help locating specific items in the new menu however, watch our quick videos for admin users here, and for teachers here.

Last updated: 17/08/2023

VS-Mail is part of the Communications Package. Visit vsware.ie/vsmail to read some of the benefits and to register your interest in using it. 

Before you start, check the inbox

All principal and secretary users have access to both their own personal inbox and the overall school inbox, however a teacher must be granted access to this by the secretary or principal, should the school wish to do this. Read how to grant this access to teachers here. 

The school inbox means that the staff in the school can share the task of sending and replying to emails. Any message from this inbox will be listed as being from the school office rather than an individual. 

Users can navigate between these by clicking on your name on the top right hand corner of the screen. Always check that you are in the correct inbox so that messages are sending from the right account. You will see a drop down menu which will let you toggle between the two. 

Sending a message in VS-Mail as a principal, secretary or teacher

• To get to VS-Mail, click Mail from the top menu.

• Select ‘Compose new’ on the left menu.

• You will then be brought to the Compose message screen.                             

Selecting the recipient 

All principals and secretaries have the ability to send messages to any user (staff, student or contact).

If you are a teacher, the recipients you have access to depends entirely on your permissions that the principal sets up. 

• When sending a message to an individual or a group, the ‘To’ search bar is a powerful feature. Simply start typing the name of the person or group, and you can select the name from the dropdown menu that appears. Provided that you have the permissions enabled, you can send a message to the following:
• A staff member
• A group of staff (e.g. All Current Teachers or Irish Teachers) 
• An individual student
• A student group or teaching group (e.g. U16’s Rugby, base class 1C or art class 1ArtB) 
• A contact (parent/guardian of a student)
• The contacts of a student group
• Teachers of a particular student 

Formatting the message 

• The main body of the message can be formatted and edited using the toolbar above the message field. In this example below, a principal has used bold, italics and the link option to personalise her message. 

• You can also attach files to your message, in the same way as you would with an email. 

• Make sure to also include a subject for your message. 
• When sending messages, users can also use the Cc or Bcc features. Use Cc when you want to copy others publicly, and Bcc when you want to do it privately.
  
  

Allow replies to message 

• When any staff member is composing a message, they will have the option to allow replies to that particular message. Note at the end of the video above, the option is deselected which means none of the teachers will be given the option to hit ‘reply’ to the principal's message.
• Note that a parent or student does not have this option to control replies. 

Managing messages

Schedule Mail

• To schedule a mail for to send at a future date, come pose your message as usual > click 'Schedule Mail' on the bottom right of the screen > select the date and time you want it to send > click 'Schedule Mail' to save it. 
  
• You can then view all of your scheduled mails within this folder where you can open, edit and update them up until the time of sending. 
  

Drafts folder 

• You can also save a mail as a draft using the 'Save Draft' folder. 

Starred and important messages

• Messages and replies in your inbox will appear as a message thread so you can easily read through your conversations. 
• Click the star icon on important message threads in order to save it to your starred folder.
  

Deleting messages 

• Click the trash bin button to move messages into your bin folder. 
• You can also select multiple messages by checking the blue box on the left in your inbox or sent mail folders and then hitting the bin button.          

• To permanently delete the mails in your bin folder, select the Empty bin button.        

Principals, secretaries or teachers can go to their sent mail and click on 'Mail Details' in order to see whether the recipient has read the message or not. This allows your school to keep track of which users are engaging with VS-Mail and ensures that important messages don't get missed. 

To view this feature, go to 'Sent Mail' > Select the mail (either individual our group mail) > Click 'Mail Details' on the right > Under 'Mail Receipts' in the 'Status' column, you will be able to read wether the mail is read or unread. 

Send backup SMS to users who have not read their VS-Mail. 

There is added functionality where by the school has the option to send an SMS to remind the recipient that they have an unopened mail that requires attention.

To use this feature, go to 'Sent Mail' > Select the relevant message (either individual our group mail) > Click 'Mail Details' on the right > Under 'Mail Receipts' heading, check the box beside the recipient or recipients you would like the SMS to go to > Send SMS > Verify that you have selected the correct recipients and click 'Next' >

Here you can either manually compose the message, or use a pre-made template (find out how to set up SMS templates here). There are handy variables available at this point so you can easily include the student's or recipient's name. Once you're ready to send the SMS, hit 'Notify Recipient'.