What is the Difference Between "Informational" and "Emergency" in Messages?

When you're creating a new message or editing an existing message, you may notice that you can set the Message Priority as either "Informational" or "Emergency." This article explains the difference between the two priority options to help you determine which one you should use. 

Informational messages

By default, when you start creating a new message the message priority will be set to "Informational." If you are sending a regular message, such as a general notification or newsletter that is not an emergency, you should leave the message priority as "Informational." 

Emergency messages

If you are sending an emergency message, you should change the Message Priority to "Emergency." 

With the "Emergency" message priority level, your messages will get a higher priority on our servers to make sure they send out before any "Informational" messages that are pending on our servers. Please reserve the "Emergency" message priority for only true emergency messages to avoid slowing down the message sending times on our servers for other customers.

With the "Emergency" message priority, you will also ensure that the message sends to anyone who is added to the Do Not Contact list as an "emergencies-only" recipient. See here for more help with adding contacts to the Do Not Contact list to receive only emergency messages. 

If your contacts use the BrightArrow ParentHub app to receive notifications, you can also set the end date in the "Mark as Urgent in App Until (optional)" section to bring attention to the importance of your message. With the end date added, your recipients will see an "alert" in ParentHub to bring attention to your message. Once the end date/time has expired, the message will stop showing as an Alert and will start showing as a regular message in your recipients' ParentHub Feed. See here for more information about emergency alerts in the app.