In short. Announcements go out to the school, events go on the calendar, messages are one-to-one inside the platform, and notifications are the alerts Academiq raises itself. Complaints are a separate channel for things that need resolving.
Announcements
Communications › Announcements publishes a notice to the school. Announcements appear on the teacher, student and parent portals under Announcements, so one posting reaches everyone without an email list.
Use this for things that are true for a group — term dates changing, a closure, an event reminder. For something that concerns one family, use a message.
Events
Communications › Events records dated events, which appear alongside the academic calendar on every portal. Sports day, parents' evening, examinations, holidays.
Messages
Messages is direct communication between users inside Academiq — a parent to a teacher, a teacher to an administrator. Messages are private to the people in the conversation.
Messages are private between the sender and recipient. A user cannot open a conversation they are not part of, including staff. If you need a record of a conversation for a safeguarding or disciplinary reason, ask the participants rather than expecting an administrator to be able to read it.
Notifications
Notifications are raised by Academiq rather than written by a person — a new admission application, a leave request awaiting approval, a payment received, a trial about to end. They appear on the relevant portal and, where appropriate, are emailed.
Complaints
More › Complaints is a channel for issues that need following up. Students, parents and teachers can raise a complaint from their own portals; open complaints appear in the Needs attention panel on the administrator dashboard so they are not lost among messages.
Support tickets
Complaints are internal to your school. Support Tickets are different: they go to the Academiq team about the platform itself. Use these when something in the software is not working, not for school matters.
Support tickets are a plan feature and may not appear on every plan.
Academiq sends transactional email — invitations, password resets, verification links, absence and payment notifications. Recipient addresses and message content are passed to the email provider named in the Privacy Policy.