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Announcing Orah’s New Communications Product - Connect

Paul Organ

February 7, 2023

Orah's new connect tool allows you to communicate with your community in a simplified, centralised place.

Running a school and enhancing student engagement relies heavily on clear and efficient communication but unfortunately in 2023, schools globally struggle to send timely communications to both students and parents from a powerful, centralised location. 

We continue to hear stories from schools and parents telling us that information is missed due to paper forms at the bottom of bags, clunky software interfaces, inaccurate contact information and many more issues caused by incumbents and existing solutions that struggle to keep up with the modern demands of younger, tech-savvy staff and families.

Want to try Connect for yourself? Register to join the Beta program and to receive future updates.

With Orah being so widely used and trusted by school communities globally, we had the infrastructure and a close set of customers to build a modern communications product. 

So today, we’re super excited to release Connect! And today’s release is the ‘Broadcast’ feature within Connect. This allows for bulk communications to groups of students.

We’ve listened to schools globally, and you’ve told what you’re trying to get from a communications product;

Simplified communications

Orah's connect allows for a single place to send communications from.

It’s currently hard to create simple, beautiful and easy broadcast announcements in clunky school systems OR you have to use 3rd party apps that aren’t integrated seamlessly with other school applications and don’t have the necessary nuances purpose-built for demands of a school community.

Using Connect, you’ll have a one stop location to create, design and send beautiful communications to the right people at the right time.

Send the right information at the right time

Orah's filters allow you to target the exact students you need at the right time.

Using Orah’s connect, schools can leverage the power of filters based on dynamic student information, meaning that you can select groups of students based on certain conditions that are met. For example, you might decide to schedule a message to everyone in the library each day 10 minutes before the end of lunch. 

Connect would automatically send a notification out to ONLY the students that are currently checked into the library letting them know that they need to pack up their things ready for class.

Another example is messaging students that have signed up for a specific event to ensure they have the right equipment and clothing to bring along with them.

The possibilities are endless with the filtering functionality in Orah.

Enhanced Transparency

Schools can send information to students and know if it has/hasn’t been received and read. This way it allows schools to ensure that people are getting the information required and when they need it so you can follow up with the students if need be.

Around the corner….

  • The first release is simply email, but very soon to come is the ability to send text messages and push notifications directly to the your students phones.
  • You’ll also see the ability to communicate with parents and other staff members very shortly.

Later in the year….

We’ve got plenty more on the roadmap for Connect and are furiously building out the product so we’re inviting users to sign on and be a part of our beta program to provide feedback on our roadmap and help develop the future path for such an important part of school life. If that interests you or other members of your team, click here to sign up.

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Paul Organ

I live in Auckland, New Zealand. I enjoy exercise, sauna's and cold plunges, video games and design. Prior to Orah (10 years ago now!) I was a University Student studying my Masters of Architecture. There are two important things that keep me enthused at work - Using creativity to solve complex problems and working with good people.

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