How to post to the Newsfeed
The Newsfeed is your setting's virtual bulletin board. Sending posts to the Newsfeed is an easy way of keeping parents or staff informed about what is going on in your setting. A post gives you the opportunity to write a short message and add pictures, video or documents.
Creating a new Post
Start by selecting who you want to send the post as, in the white box at the top of the screen. You can choose:
yourself (you cannot post as another member of staff)
a room/group
or as the setting itself
Next, select your recipients - who you want to send the post to. This is key if you want to share a photo with a specific child's parents, send a reminder about a trip to all the parents of one room, or share some photos of an event with the whole setting. Select as many recipients as you want, by clicking on their name.
Keep in mind, if someone is included in a post to a room, and then moves rooms, they can still see the post from their old room (for example). So whoever was an original recipient, will remain a recipient, even if their situation changes in regards to room, role, etc.
Now you're ready to type your post up. Once you're ready, click on Post and your post will be sent to the Newsfeed for the recipients to see.
Recipients can comment, like or react to posts by clicking on Comment or hovering over the Like button
Likes and comments can be seen under the post and will look a little something like this:
Send a post to signed-in children
You can also send a post to children that are currently signed in to the nursery. To do so, go to your Overview (the home icon in your sidebar) and click on the checkmark icon to see children that are currently signed in
Click Select all children → click Send in the black menu box → select Post.
Now, all children currently signed into the nursery will be the selected recipients for that post.
If you're posting about something private to a specific group, check that your staff do not have the permission to 'view all sent posts' enabled.
You may notice that the name of a room appears twice - that's because you can select children and staff separately.
Adding an attachment
The largest area of the post is where you can write your message, and below that you will find the Media button. Here you can attach:
a picture (a photo, or a scanned drawing or painting, for example)
You can upload all major image file types to Famly, including .jpg, .jpeg, .png, .pdf etc.
Please note, HEIC files are not supported and these will have to be converted to a supported file type locally. If you are using an Amazon tablet, you can go into your camera, swipe over the screen from the left to right and a camera and video will appear. On this screen if you look to the right side there is a small cog looking sign (settings) click on this then ‘Resolution and quality’. Find ‘Image Format’, and change the format from HEIC to JPEG.
The maximum image size is 200kb, with a maximum resolution of 2560 x 2560px
videos
You can upload all major video file types to Famly, including .mov, .mp4, .avi etc.
Please note, audio files such as .wav or .mp3 are not supported
The maximum video file size is 1024mb
documents
multiple pictures, to create a photo gallery
N.B. There's no file size limit on resolution, but images will be resized to fit within a 2560x2560 bounding box upon uploading
Please note, video uploads are not supported on Famly Free
Adding an Activity from the 'Activity Library'
To find out about adding an activity from the 'Activity Library' to your News feed, you can visit the 'Activity Library' article below:
Starting a Famly Live session
To find out about starting a Famly Live session on your Newsfeed, you can visit the 'Famly Live' article below:
Please note, Famly Live is not supported on Famly Free
Famly saves a draft and stores it in the icon in the upper right corner of the post box, in case you get interrupted when writing a post. When you have time, go back and find the draft, finish your post and send it by pressing the ‘Send’ button.
Editing Newsfeed posts
If you'd like to edit a Newsfeed post:
Head to Newsfeed in your sidebar under the Home icon
Scroll down to find the post you'd like to edit
Click on the '...' and select Edit
Make your changes and click Update. If you'd like to make sure recipients of that post see that you've made changes, you can click on Update and notify recipients in the Update dropdown. Recipients will get an in-app message to let them know the post has been updated
Bookmarking a post on the News feed
It is possible to bookmark certain posts if you would like them to be easily accessible. This might be your favourite posts, or ones which you wish to view frequently.
You could, for example, request parents book-mark a post about a certain policy, to refer back to later.
To bookmark a post:
Click on the three dots in the top right-hand corner of the post
Select Bookmark from the drop-down menu
You can un-star it at any point to remove the bookmark
*Note that you can only bookmark items that appear in the My News version of your feed (see below). Newsfeed items for the site cannot be bookmarked.
Bookmarks are all stored in the same place, at the top of the Newsfeed screen. Click 'My News' and select 'Bookmarks' from the drop-down menu.
Changing permissions on a post
You can choose if you want to disable the possibility of parents commenting on your post. You do this by clicking the three dots ( · · · ) next to the send button. These don't appear until you've written something in the text field.
Permissions to view all posts
If you wish to share certain posts with only a specific group, make sure your staff do not have the 'View all news feed posts' permission enabled as part of their role. To check this:
Click the 'Settings' menu (indicated by the cog icon)
Click on 'Staff' then on 'Roles and Permissions'
Click on each role and scroll to the 'Communication and Events' permissions
Make sure 'View all news feed posts' is not checked
Controlling which names are seen in your Newsfeed
The privacy and safety of your children and families is your highest priority, so you can control how names are shown in the Newsfeed, the likes, and the comments. To do this:
Log in to Famly and click on Settings
Select Communication, then Newsfeed. Employees with the ‘Manage enabling/disabling features’ permission can make these changes.
You can choose between:
The full name of the parent/carer and the first name of the child
The first name of parent/carer and the first name of the child
The first name of the parent/carer and no child information
Additionally, you can choose whether the child’s room is shown or not.
Click Save changes
Downloading photos from the News feed
To toggle on photo downloads from your News feed, head to your Settings in the bottom left corner and navigate to Communication. Click on News feed and find the photo downloading section. By default, this feature is toggled off - so parents won't see the option to download any photos until it's switched on by a manger at the setting.
Searching the Newsfeed
You can search for specific Newsfeed posts using the search function in Famly. To do so:
Click on the magnifying glass icon at the top of your screen
In the More tab, select Newsfeed posts
In the What are you looking for? field, type in keywords to find the relevant post
💡 Keep in mind, when searching for Newsfeed posts, the results will not include observations posted to the Newsfeed.