Families can email the school a question too
A guardian can email your school address with a question — Elira answers from your verified school info, or hands it to your office and emails them back.
Plenty of families would rather write than text. When your school's inbox is connected and authorized, Elira drafts an answer from your verified information or hands the question to your office. Charter pilots require staff review before an AI answer is sent. Connecting an inbox and turning a channel on are separate steps; publishing code does not connect or activate a mailbox.
Before this, an emailed question had nowhere to go. A reply from a family on file was noted as "they replied" and nothing more. An email from someone not yet on your roster was not read at all. The same question sent as a text was answered in seconds.
What she answers
Exactly what she answers on your text line and your website chat — office hours, school hours, deadlines, required documents, your posted events, your Tell Elira notes, and anything your staff has already answered on AI Knowledge. The same strict rule about dates applies: *"Is there school Friday?"* is only answered when a dated event or note actually covers that day.
Replies mirror the family's language — English, Spanish or Arabic — and come from your own school address, on the same email thread the family started.
Families who are not on your roster yet
A parent who found your address on your website and wrote to ask about open houses or registration gets the same answer, because the address they wrote to is yours and Elira knows which school that is. This is usually the family you most want to answer quickly.
If their email is not a question — "my daughter starts Monday and has a peanut allergy" — Elira has nothing to answer and does not pretend to. It is forwarded to your office email instead, with their address, so a person can reply. Nothing is sent back to them in Elira's name.
When she's not sure — your office gets it
Anything Elira can't answer from your information, and anything sensitive (IEP specifics, medical, legal, discipline, money), goes to your office:
- The family instantly gets: *"Thanks for writing to <your school>. I've passed your question to the office team and they'll email you back soon."*
- The question appears in [AI Knowledge](/dashboard/ai-knowledge), and your hourly question email carries an Improve AI Knowledge button (Answer for this family when it is about one child) — with the address the family wrote from, so you can also just reply by hand.
- Whatever your staff types is emailed back to that family — never texted, even when you hold their phone number, because they chose to write to you. Elira learns the answer for your text line and your website chat at the same time.
Good to know
- A family who has opted out of contact is never emailed back, and their question is not added to your list. Your office is told so a person can reach them another way.
- Automatic mail is never answered. Out-of-office replies, "no-reply" addresses and mailing lists are left alone, and Elira will not send more than 5 replies to one address in a day. This is what stops two robots emailing each other all night.
- Seat decisions, opt-outs and documents emailed in all still work exactly as before. Answering questions is added alongside them, not instead.
- Questions your office answers build up Elira's knowledge: the more you answer, the fewer reach you — on every channel at once.