Cloud-based messaging system that boosts school-parent interaction to be introduced

In a bid to improve communication between students, parents, teachers, and officials of the School Education Department, the state government has decided to introduce an outsourced enterprise messaging solution.

The proposed cloud-based system will enable faster and more efficient interaction and reduce the turnaround time of responses. At present, the department’s messaging system only sends transactional text messages via SMS. A senior official from the department told DT NEXT that currently, messages were sent with limited resources, which was one way. “The proposed system will accept inward SMSs from the stakeholders, who will be configured in our existing online application. This will help us respond to them with the information they sought,” he added.

Stating that messaging services including SMS, voice, and WhatsApp will be both in Tamil and English, he explained, “Now, parents will also receive messages about student welfare schemes, school promotional activities, new scheme launches, and others. It’d also connect all teachers, including those in private schools, and officials. This will ensure they receive common messages to complete the required tasks on time.”

Pointing out that an agency would be outsourced for implementing a new message system, he said that a huge database will be created to store mobile numbers of parents, teachers, and officials in the School Education Department.

“A system would be put in place to segregate all the numbers systematically so that the messages would be routed to the required person at any time,” he pointed out. “The solution proposed would be able to automatically monitor message delivery and attempt retries.” The official said that the planned enterprise messaging solution would be implemented in the coming academic year. The selection of a firm to implement it is under process.