How do I send an urgent message?

Veronica D. Joseph

Customer Support

For administrators with urgent messaging, a premium feature available with Remind Hub. To learn more, please contact your Customer Success Manager or Remind Support.

You can send an urgent message to your community members to alert them of emergency situations via your Remind dashboard online or via your Remind app. You can send urgent messages districtwide, schoolwide, or to classes that you own. Participants can reply to your urgent message if you have two-way messaging enabled.

When you send an urgent message, everyone who has an account linked to your organization will receive the message on all of the devices connected to their Remind account (text message, smartphone app notification, email, and landline) whether they've opted to receive messages or not.

We'll send a text-to-voice call to landline users as well as to individuals we can't reach by SMS. If you've rostered via CSV 1.0 or 2.0, OneRoster, ClassLink, Clever, SIS rostering enforcement is enabled by default to make sure that all SIS-linked students, parents, and teachers don't opt out of messages, and are notified in urgent situations.

SMS	iOS app	Android app	Email

You can personalize your urgent message by attaching a voice clip via your iOS or Android app. Urgent voice clips can be up to two minutes long. Community members with an email or phone number associated with their account, or with the Remind app, will receive a message with a link they can click to hear the voice clip. For individuals with a landline, when you attach a voice clip to your urgent message, we'll play the voice clip. When you send an urgent message without a voice clip, we'll send a text-to-voice audio to landline users.

You should only send urgent messages to communicate emergency situations, ranging from lockdowns, weather-related delays and closings to unexplained extended absences.

This article contains the following sections:

To send an urgent message
- Web
To send a personalized urgent message

Prerequisite

To send an urgent voice clip, your Remind iOS or Android app must be updated to version 12.17.1 or later. Follow these instructions to make sure you always have the latest version of our app:

iOS: Go to Settings → tap the App store → turn on App updates.
Android: Go to Google Play Store → tap your Google profile icon on the upper right → Settings → General → Network preferences → Auto-update apps → select one of the following: Over any network (data charges may apply) or Over Wi-Fi only.

Notes

You cannot send a voice clip via web at the moment.
Remind translates urgent text-to-voice messages into Chinese, Catalan, Danish, German, Spanish, Finnish, French, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Dutch, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, and Swedish.
District administrators can enable or disable urgent messaging for school administrators. If you are a school administrator, and you do not see the option to send urgent messages, please reach out to your district administrator.
Urgent messages are marked “URGENT" to allow recipients to quickly see that the message is important.

To send an urgent message:

Web

The GIF above shows an example of an urgent message. It is not a real message.

Click New message on the left navigation menu, and select Urgent message.
Confirm that you want to send an urgent message, and select Continue.
Select recipients and click Continue.
Compose your message and click Continue.
Confirm that you want to send your urgent message by clicking Send.

To send a personalized urgent message:

iOS

Notes:

The video above shows an example of a personalized urgent message. It is not a real message.

Your iOS app must be updated to version 12.17.1 or later.
You can only attach one voice clip per urgent message.
Landline users will hear an audio of the voice clip attached to the urgent message. If you do not attach a voice clip, landline users will receive a text-to-voice of your message.

Open the Remind app.
Tap New message on the left navigation menu.
Select Urgent message and tap Continue.
Select your message recipients from the district, school, or classes list. The default is Everyone, but you can click the dropdown arrow to select recipients by role.
Compose your message. Skip to Step 8 if you do not want to attach a voice clip to your urgent message.
Tap the paperclip icon, and then tap the Voice Clip microphone icon.
- →
Press the red record button to start recording, and press it again to stop.
- →
- You can record up to two minutes of audio.
- To listen to your recording before sending it, tap the play button.
- You can tap the x button to delete the voice clip, and repeat Steps 5-6 to rerecord.
Tap Continue when you're happy with your message.
Tap Send to confirm you want to send your message.

Android

Notes:

The video above shows an example of a personalized urgent message. It is not a real message.
Your Android app must be updated to version 12.17.1 or later.
You can only attach one voice clip per urgent message.
Landline users will hear an audio of the voice clip attached to the urgent message. If you do not attach a voice clip, landline users will receive a text-to-voice of your message.

Open the Remind app.
Tap New message on the left navigation menu.
Select Urgent message and tap Continue.
Select your message recipients from the district, school, or classes list.
- The default is Everyone, but you can click the dropdown arrow to select recipients by role.
Tap the composer to type your message. Skip to Step 8 if you do not want to attach a voice clip to your urgent message.
Tap the paperclip icon, and then tap the Voice Clip microphone icon.
- →
Press the red record button to start recording, and press it again to stop. You can record up to two minutes of audio.
- →
- To listen to your recording before sending it, tap the play button.
- You can tap the x button to delete the voice clip, and repeat Steps 5-6 to rerecord.
Tap Continue when you're happy with your message.
Tap Send to confirm you want to send your message.