Assemble's built-in Messaging Centre helps to keep all communication between SSAFA and its volunteers in one place. It is an internal messaging system rather than full email. Nevertheless, it has many of the usual functionalities of an emailing system but has the advantage of enabling communication without personal email addresses being shared.
Select a message to reveal all actions menu
The permission held by your role controls this feature like any other in Assemble; your administrator sets these permissions; please contact them if you have any enquiry related to yours.
The New message shortcut will open up the composing message window at the bottom right-hand corner of the page you are in. This window has the same functionalities of the composing message screen you access from your Message Centre page by clicking the Compose new button in there.
Click the See all in message centre link at the bottom of the drop-down to access your inbox or simply click on any of your more recent messages to open it.
Composing a new message
You will only have access to users within your team unless your role holds a high permission level.
Cc and Bcc fields are also available and clicking on them will add the person's name to that field instead. You don't need to use Bcc to hide email addresses from other recipients as no email address is ever shown within Assemble's internal messaging. However, the list of recipients' names will be shown. If there are a lot of recipients, it's a good idea to use the Bcc field so that the long list of recipients is not displayed as it may take up a lot of space.
Click on top of “To”, “Cc” and “Bcc” to reveal the advanced search.
From the advanced search, you will have the option to add individual recipients, have access to Assemble or to send to an external email.
There are also options to send a bulk message to all users of teams and roles, but you will only see these options if you have the right permission.
Sending a message to an external email address
It's possible to send an email from Assemble to someone who doesn't have an active Assemble account; e.g. an applicant. To do so click on top of “To”, “Cc” and “Bcc” to reveal the advanced search, and select the external option from the drop-down.
When typing in the person’s email, Assemble will suggest some of the most used email domains.
External email addresses also need to be selected from the drop-down list to save them.
Saving a message
The system will automatically save your message every 15 seconds. You will find the saved message in the "Drafts" folder.
Add as a touchpoint
The message will be added to recipient's touchpoint timelime. You can add a message to the volunteer's record in this way when you are sending the message. However, you can also do this after you've sent the message as well as to messages received from volunteers in your Message Centre. Open the relevant message and using the More option in the message window, select Add as touchpoint. This option is not available if you've already saved the message to the user's record.
Please note - you cannot delete a touchpoint that was added to the timeline in this way.
Blocking users
You need to have permission to block users, and the user you want to block also needs to have the "allow to be blocked" on. You can't email users you have blocked -- neither can they message you.
Click the More tab on a message received from the user you want to block and select the block/unblock option from the drop-down.
NB It is standard practice only to allow volunteers to block others or be blocked themselves. Volunteer managers should always be able to communicate with their volunteers but the organisation's Assemble administrators control the permissions for different users.
Required permission(s)
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Message Centre:
- Can block
- Send new message
- Send to hierarchies
- Send to roles
- Send external
- Receive external
- Highlight to timeline