Set up Elira: the six steps

Your dashboard opens with an ordered setup list. It counts how many of the 209 questions families ask Elira can already answer for your school.

Your dashboard opens with Set up Elira at the top. It counts one thing: how many of the 209 questions families actually ask Elira can answer for your school right now. Each step tells you how many questions it turns on.

You can leave at any point. Nothing is lost, and the bar stays on your dashboard until you come back.

The six steps

1. School basics — your school website, your main office number, your office hours, and your weekly bell schedule. Turns on 4 questions.
2. Your calendar — upload your school-year calendar. We read the dates off the page rather than guessing them, and you confirm each one before Elira uses it. Turns on 13 questions.
3. Your people — name who families should be sent to. Turns on 38 questions.
4. Your text line — switch texting on for the office number you already print. This is the only place it is set up. See below.
5. Your answers — the written answers, five questions to a screen. Start by letting Elira read your website. Turns on 154 questions.
6. Try it, then go live — ask Elira a few questions yourself, then put her on your site.

You do not have to finish before Elira starts

Elira is ready to answer families once you have done the basics, added your calendar, named at least one person, and written 40 answers. Everything after that makes her better. Nothing switches off if you stop.

Let Elira read your website first

Your own website already answers a lot of these questions. On step 5, press Read my website. Elira reads your public pages and fills in the boxes she can. It takes about three minutes. On the two schools we tested this on, she filled in about 25 of the 154.

Your web address is the School Website field on the School tab. That is the only site we read.

Three things are true of every box she fills in:

• It is not your answer yet. It is marked in yellow, it does not count toward your progress, and Elira will not say it to a family. Each one gives you three choices: Looks good, Edit, or We do not do this at our school.
• It shows you the sentence it came from. Every filled-in box prints the words on your own page that the answer rests on, and links to that page. If those words do not say what the answer says, delete it.
• It never touches a question you have already dealt with. Anything you answered, edited, or marked as not applicable is left exactly as you left it.

We read only the website on your own account, we obey the crawling rules your site publishes, and we read at most 40 pages. If your site blocks us, or says nothing clear enough to use, you answer the questions here as normal — it works exactly the same.

Your answers save themselves

Five questions to a screen, never all 209 at once. Your work saves as you type and every time you leave a box, so closing the tab loses nothing. Pick any section from the row of chips at the top — two people can split the list.

If a question does not apply, press We do not do this at our school. That is a real answer: Elira will say so to a family instead of sending the question to your office.

Your people, and who gets asked what

Type a job title and Elira suggests what that person should be asked about. "Director of Inclusive Learning" becomes student support. "Attendance Coordinator" becomes attendance. The suggestions are only suggestions — remove any of them, or add more.

Anything nobody is named for goes to your main office number, so a family always gets a working next step.

Anything you put in your staff list can be given to a family who asks. Only add a name, a title and a way to reach that person you are willing to share.

Step 4: your text line

Families text the office number you already print on your flyers. Your phone calls are untouched the whole time.

1. Set your main office number first, on the School tab, and save it. The School tab links straight to this step. There is no field for the number in the text-line form on purpose — we only ever file a number your school has already claimed.
2. Your phone company's partner calls your office to check you own the line. The code is spoken once and is never stored. If nobody answers, ask for another call on the same request — that files nothing new. After three calls it stops, and we tell you.
3. A short authorisation form is emailed to the person you named, to sign.
4. Your phone company switches texting on. This takes about one business day.
5. US carriers review every business that texts. This takes 10 to 15 days. A person files it in your school's legal name. We email you when it is done.
6. Families can text your office number.