Articles on: SimplyPrint features

Posting and managing the classroom bulletin board

Posting and managing the classroom bulletin board


The classroom bulletin board is a teacher-to-student broadcast that shows up on both the teacher and student dashboards. Use it to announce printer outages, project deadlines, open-lab hours, build plate changes — anything the whole class needs to know but doesn't deserve an email.


Teachers write; students read. This article covers how to post, edit, schedule and delete bulletins, and what students see at the other end.


The bulletin board is part of the School plan and rides on top of Feature::TEACHER_STUDENT_DASHBOARD. If you've turned the dashboards off entirely, the bulletin goes away too.


Table of contents

  • Where the bulletin lives
  • Who can post
  • Posting a new bulletin
  • Scheduling a bulletin for later
  • Editing or deleting a bulletin
  • What students see
  • When to use the bulletin (and when not to)
  • Related articles


Where the bulletin lives

The bulletin widget shows up on both /panel/dashboard variants. Teachers see it with full add / edit / delete controls. Students see it as a read-only feed of published messages.


Bulletin board widget on the school dashboard


If you'd rather not run a bulletin at all, untick Bulletin in the widget checklist for both dashboards — see the "Setting up your school dashboards" article linked below.


Who can post

The widget gives write access to anyone with the teacher rank (the Teacher checkbox ticked on their account, or admin / partner / owner status). Students can read but can't author or edit.


This is intentional. The bulletin is meant to be a clean, low-noise announcement channel, not another chat feed. If your school wants two-way discussion, route it through the comments thread on a queue item (with print approval) or your existing classroom chat tool instead.


Posting a new bulletin

On the teacher dashboard, click Add bulletin at the top of the widget. A modal opens with three fields:


  1. Title — short, scannable. "Lab closed Friday", "New PETG spool loaded", "Project 3 due 14 May".
  2. Body — supports rich text (bold, links, lists). Keep it brief.
  3. Publish date — when the bulletin should become visible to students. Defaults to "now".


Click Save and the bulletin is published immediately (or scheduled for later, if you set a future publish date).


Bulletins don't currently support image attachments. If you need to share a screenshot, link to it from the body using a markdown-style link.


Scheduling a bulletin for later

If you set the publish date to a future time, the bulletin stays hidden from students until that moment. Teachers can still see scheduled bulletins in their own widget so they know what's queued up.


This is useful for:


  • Posting reminders for an assignment due date a week in advance.
  • Scheduling a lab-closed notice before a holiday.
  • Drafting tomorrow's "today's project" bulletin the night before.


There's no expiry date — a published bulletin stays up until you delete it.


Editing or deleting a bulletin

On the teacher widget, each bulletin row has edit and delete handles. Edit re-opens the same modal you used to create it. Delete removes the bulletin from both the teacher and student views immediately.


Deleted bulletins can't be recovered. Edit instead of delete if you might want to keep the content.


What students see

On the student dashboard, the bulletin widget shows every currently-published bulletin in reverse chronological order, with title and a preview of the body. Clicking a bulletin expands the full body.


Students don't get edit / delete affordances, and they don't see scheduled-but-unpublished bulletins. The student view is purely read-only.


When to use the bulletin (and when not to)

The bulletin is good at:


  • Static announcements that everyone needs to see exactly once.
  • Persistent reminders like lab hours or safety policies that should always be visible.
  • Time-bound notices like "lab closed Friday" or "due date moved".


It's not the right tool for:


  • Two-way conversation — students can't reply. Use queue item comments (with print approval enabled) or your existing chat tool.
  • Per-student messages — bulletins are visible to the whole class. For one-on-one feedback, use the comments thread on the student's pending queue item.
  • Urgent alerts — there's no push notification when a bulletin is posted. If you need to reach students immediately, email or message them outside SimplyPrint.



Updated on: 24/05/2026

Was this article helpful?

Share your feedback

Cancel

Thank you!