This article tours the Messages XR Enterprise dashboard, explaining what each area of the home screen displays and how to navigate to Messages, Accounts, Reports, Settings, and other key areas.
💡Quick answers
- What does the top row of the dashboard show? The top row displays messages sent, data that needs attention, and system status - a quick overview of how things are going.
- Where do I go to configure platform-wide settings? Click the Settings tab in the left navigation bar to access global configuration options for your district.
- What is the News Feed on the dashboard? The News Feed shows a live stream of platform news and upcoming items relevant to your district.
- Where can I find release notes and training resources? The right column of the dashboard includes Release Notes for recent platform updates and a Resource Center with quicklinks to training options.
- How do I manage my personal account settings from the dashboard? Click the My Account dropdown in the top right corner to access your profile, login settings, delivery addresses, and personal preferences.
District admin dashboard
The Messages XR Enterprise dashboard is the central command center for monitoring communication health across every school in the organization. Messaging volume, contact data quality, and school-by-school performance are all surfaced on login, eliminating the need to run individual reports for routine awareness checks.
District admin: Messaging overview widget
The messaging overview widget provides a district-wide snapshot of outbound communication activity for the past 30 days. It rolls up messages sent by the district itself and all child organizations (individual schools) into a single view.
Two headline numbers appear in this widget:
- Recipients: The number of unique recipients the system tried to contact across all channels during the period. This reflects attempted contacts rather than confirmed deliveries.
- Messages/Student. The average number of messages sent per student per month, including messages sent to a linked parent or guardian on that student's behalf. This rate reflects overall communication volume across all senders and message types.
What your messages-per-student rate is telling you:
| Rate | Status | What it signals |
|---|---|---|
| Fewer than 2 per month | Low | Families may be under-informed |
| 2 to 10 per month | Healthy | Balanced communication |
| More than 10 per month | High | Risk of messaging overload |
The center displays a channel distribution breakdown showing which delivery methods were used. The right-hand panel lists the schools that sent the fewest messages, sorted from lowest to highest. District admins can use this list to identify schools that may need outreach guidance or technical assistance. The View report link opens the full breakdown for all child schools.
Pro-tip
Use the low-sender list as a proactive coaching tool. A school that consistently appears at the bottom may have a data or training issue that a short conversation can resolve.
District admin: Reachability of accounts widget
The reachability of accounts widget shows how well email addresses, phone numbers, and text message numbers are populated across all accounts in the district. If a contact field is missing, MXRE cannot reach that person through that channel.
A district might have strong email coverage while phone and text numbers are largely absent, effectively limiting outreach to a single channel. Seeing this gap on the dashboard makes it possible to prioritize data cleanup efforts where they will have the most impact on communication reach.
- Contact info completeness: The right-hand panel ranks schools from least to most complete contact data, so district admins can immediately identify which schools need attention.
- View all organizations: Click the View all organizations button to pop out a modal where you can view more detailed information.
Best practices for checking reachability
Make a habit of checking reachability during periods of large-scale roster changes: back-to-school season, open enrollment, and any major account imports or updates. These are the moments when data quality issues are most likely to surface, and catching them early prevents communication gaps before the school year or enrollment cycle gets underway.
District admin: Manage dashboard options
Exclude an organization from analytics
Shell schools or placeholder organizations can distort district-level metrics. To remove an organization from all dashboard analytics:
- Step 1: Navigate to organization settings for the school to be excluded.
- Step 2: Locate the Exclude from analytics setting and enable it.
- Step 3: Save the settings.
The organization will no longer appear in the reachability of accounts widget or any other dashboard metric.
Access resources and system status
The following widgets are also available from the dashboard:
- Blog: The Finalsite Blog is a resource built specifically for school and district communicators. It covers the full range of challenges admins actually face: keeping families informed, improving enrollment, making websites more accessible, and keeping up with AI without getting overwhelmed. The tone is approachable and actionable rather than academic.
- Release notes: Stay current with the latest enhancements to MXRE and other Finalsite services. Click through for full details on each release.
- Resource center: Choose a training offering and enjoy the convenience of learning at your location.
- Get the CommHQ app: A direct link to the MXRE mobile application for both Google Play and App Store users.
- System status: Found in the top right corner, this live indicator shows whether all services are operating normally. Any degradation or outage surfaces here immediately, enabling proactive communication with staff before support tickets accumulate.
School admin dashboard
Those logged in as individual school admin roles see a dashboard that mirrors the district layout but is scoped to a single school. Messaging metrics, contact data health, unreachable account lists, and utility resources are consolidated in one view, removing the need to run separate reports for routine monitoring.
Both the Messaging overview and the Reachability of accounts widgets are filtered to the school only.
- Instead of a list of child schools, the right-hand panel shows a breakdown by message category (attendance, emergency, general communication, etc.), giving insight into how communication is distributed across use cases.
- A View report link provides full drill-down detail for school admins.
School admin: Messaging overview widget
The Messaging overview widget displays the same headline numbers as the district version: total recipient attempts and messages-per-student rate.
What your messages-per-student rate is telling you:
| Rate | Status | What it signals |
|---|---|---|
| Fewer than 2 per month | Low | Families may be under-informed |
| 2 to 10 per month | Healthy | Balanced communication |
| More than 10 per month | High | Risk of messaging overload |
School admin: Reachability of accounts widget
The Reachability of accounts widget for school admins includes an Unreachable accounts panel that highlights the highest-priority data gaps:
- Students with no contact information. Accounts with no email, no phone number, and no text message number. These accounts cannot be reached through any MXRE channel.
- Parents or guardians with no contact information. The same scenario on the guardian side.
- Students with no linked parent or guardian. A critical gap because the Deliver to parent of student feature cannot function without a student-guardian link. Messages targeting students with this option enabled will not reach parents for any unlinked accounts.
⚠️ Important Note
Unreachable account data originates in the Student Information System (SIS). MXRE pulls this data in but cannot modify it directly. To resolve these gaps, update the records in the local school database and allow the next sync to bring the corrected data into MXRE.
Export unreachable account lists
Each category in the unreachable accounts panel includes a View report link. The report displays the full list of affected accounts with phone, text, and email status columns. From the report:
- Export the list to a file for offline review.
- Print the list.
- Send it to the person responsible for SIS data maintenance to get missing information populated.
Parent and student dashboard
The parent and student dashboard puts contact data management and communication preferences in one place, reducing the burden on school staff to chase down missing information. Families can complete their own profiles, review linked accounts, access school documents, and set delivery preferences without contacting the school.
Complete missing contact information
The Profile completion section is always visible on the parent and student dashboard.
- When contact information is incomplete, it identifies exactly which delivery addresses are missing, such as a phone number or text message number, and provides a Complete button to add them immediately.
- Selecting that button opens the Account Info section of the user profile.
- Missing addresses can be entered under the Delivery addresses.
⚠️ Important Note
Information added into the Profile completion widget by parents and students will be saved in this platform only and will not update your school's permanent records or SIS database. This feature allows your community to store supplemental contacts, such as a neighbor or alternate phone number, without modifying records in the permanent SIS record.
When all contact information is on file, the section confirms that the profile is complete. Keeping contact information current expands the channels through which the school can reach that account, improving communication reliability for the entire family.
Access linked Students (parent view)
The linked students panel shows all children or accounts connected to the parent or guardian in MXRE. From this panel:
- Navigate directly to a student's profile.
- Access documents the school has uploaded for that student, such as progress reports, forms, and notices, without navigating through menus.
Set Delivery Preferences
The Delivery Preferences button lets account holders customize which contact method receives each type of message. For example, attendance notifications can be directed to a work email while general school communications go to a personal email or phone number. These preferences are managed entirely from the dashboard.
If a contact method is missing, the corresponding delivery preference option is unavailable until that information is added through the profile completion section.
Learn more about how this works:
- District administrators: Manage your account profile and preferences
- School admins and principals: Manage your account profile and preferences
- Families: Manage your account profile and preferences
Access Uploaded Documents
Here, students and families can access any documents that have been uploaded for their confidential viewing.
Learn more about how this works:
- Help your community access securely delivered documents (for admins)
- Families: Access securely delivered documents (for your families)
Understand the missing parent link warning (student view)
When a student account has no linked parent or guardian in the system, a yellow warning banner appears on the student dashboard. Because this link is managed in the school's SIS rather than in MXRE, it cannot be resolved from within the application.
To resolve the issue, use the School contacts link on the dashboard to find the school's contact information. Reaching out to the school directly allows them to update the SIS record; the corrected link will sync into MXRE automatically.