> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.zionapp.co/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Broadcasts

> Send one-off or scheduled announcements to parents, students, or staff, with templates, a per-recipient delivery ledger, and resend.

A broadcast is a message an administrator or supervisor sends to a group of people at once, such as a school-wide notice, a centre update, or a note to one grade level's parents. It differs from the notifications other features generate automatically (homework assigned, attendance alerts, meeting confirmations). Those come from the system as a side effect of an action. A broadcast is written and sent on purpose, by a person, to an audience the sender chooses.

<Note>
  Composing, sending, and resending broadcasts is limited to the administrator and supervisor roles. Monitors, parents, and students do not have access to compose a broadcast, though they can receive one and read it from their own notification history. See [Notifications](/features/notifications/overview).
</Note>

## Composing a broadcast

<Steps>
  <Step title="Open the compose screen">
    Go to `/broadcasts` for the history list, or straight to `/broadcasts/new` to compose.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Apply a template (optional)">
    Pick a saved template to fill in the Subject and Message body. Applying a template never changes the audience you have already chosen.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Write the subject and message">
    Subject is limited to 200 characters. The message body is limited to 5000 characters.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Choose the audience">
    Pick a scope: school-wide, one or more centres, one or more grade levels, or hand-picked individuals. Then pick recipient types: parents, students, staff, or a combination.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Check the recipient preview">
    A live "Will reach N recipients" count updates as you adjust scope and recipient types. Submission is blocked until at least one recipient resolves.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Send now or schedule">
    Leave "Schedule for later" off and click Send now, or turn it on to schedule the broadcast for a future date and time.
  </Step>
</Steps>

<Warning>
  A supervisor never sees a usable school-wide option. Supervisors are confined server-side to their assigned centres, so any audience they build only reaches people in centres they supervise even if the option appears to include more.
</Warning>

## Audience and recipient types

| Scope       | Who can pick it                              | What it targets                                         |
| ----------- | -------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------- |
| School-wide | Administrator only                           | Everyone in the org matching the chosen recipient types |
| Centre      | Administrator, supervisor (own centres only) | Everyone in the selected centre(s)                      |
| Grade level | Administrator, supervisor                    | Everyone in the selected grade level(s)                 |
| Individual  | Administrator, supervisor                    | Hand-picked people                                      |

Recipient types (parents, students, staff) narrow any of the scopes above. You can combine more than one recipient type in a single broadcast.

## Channel

Email is the only active send channel, and it bundles an in-app notification for anyone with a Zion account. SMS appears in the interface as disabled and marked coming soon, and is never sent.

## Templates

Save the current subject and body as a named template (up to 120 characters for the name). Templates are scoped to your organization, so any administrator or supervisor in the org can reuse one. Re-applying a template only refills the subject and message. It does not touch whatever audience you already selected.

## Sending now vs. scheduling

<Tabs>
  <Tab title="Send now">
    The server re-checks your role and your org's active subscription, re-resolves the audience against the current roster, and delivers immediately. You land back on `/broadcasts`, where the new row shows its status and delivery tally right away.
  </Tab>

  <Tab title="Schedule for later">
    Pick a future date and time. A past or present time is rejected on both the form and the server. The broadcast is stored with status `scheduled`, and its recipients are not resolved yet. At the scheduled time, a cron sweep (`/api/cron/broadcasts`) claims the row, re-resolves the audience against the live roster (not the roster at the time you scheduled it), delivers, and marks the broadcast sent or failed.
  </Tab>
</Tabs>

<Info>
  Because a scheduled broadcast re-resolves its audience at send time, someone who joined a targeted centre or grade after you scheduled the message can still receive it, and someone who left will not.
</Info>

Sending, scheduling, or resending a broadcast requires an active org subscription.

## Delivery ledger and resend

Open any broadcast from the `/broadcasts` history to reach its detail page at `/broadcasts/[id]`. The page lists a per-recipient delivery ledger with recipient type, contact, channel, status (sent, failed, queued, or skipped), and an error message where applicable.

<Steps>
  <Step title="Check the failed tally">
    If the broadcast has failed deliveries, the detail page shows a "Resend to failed (N)" action.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Confirm and resend">
    Click it and confirm in the dialog. Only the failed rows are reset to queued and retried.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Delivered recipients are left alone">
    Resend never re-contacts recipients who already received the message. It only retries the legs that failed.
  </Step>
</Steps>

## Broadcast history

`/broadcasts` lists past and scheduled broadcasts, 20 rows per page. Each row shows the subject, status, and delivery tally; clicking a row opens its detail page and ledger.

## Related

<CardGroup cols={2}>
  <Card title="Notifications" icon="bell" href="/features/notifications/overview">
    The in-app notification centre, bell, and history every role uses to read what they've been sent.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Deliverability and audit" icon="shield-halved" href="/features/notifications/deliverability-and-audit">
    Email suppression handling and the org-wide notification audit log, administrator only.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Roles and permissions" icon="users" href="/features/organization/roles-and-permissions">
    Who holds which of the five roles and what each can do.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Reference: roles and permissions" icon="shield" href="/reference/roles-permissions">
    Full permission matrix across all features.
  </Card>
</CardGroup>