New Sharing Method (for Photo Albums and Bulletin Boards)

In an effort to provide more clarity and accuracy in the visibility of shared information, we have made some changes to the way Photo Albums are shared. The biggest change you will notice is how Custom Albums (and the new Bulletin Boards) are shared. Here's an outline of the changes:

1. We have separated the fields for Viewers and Editors of a photo album. So now, Teachers and Administrators will be listed in the Editors field, while Parents will be listed in the Viewers field. 
2. You will no longer be sharing an album with the Student name, but will need to select each parent individually for a student's custom photo album. In the dropdown list of Viewers, each parent will be listed with the names of any student to which they are attached in parentheses. This will allow you to search for the student's name and select each parent attached to that child. So, Teachers and Administrators will need to make sure they are selecting ALL the parents/guardians of a child, not just one. Sharing an album with a Classroom will still include all parents AND teachers of that classroom, so no changes there.
3. Since you are no longer sharing with the "student" but with the parents directly, the teachers don't get automatic access to custom albums created by an Administrator. The Administrator would need to add the specific Teacher(s) as an Editor of the album created for one of his/her students. A Teacher CAN create custom albums too, in which case they would automatically be added as an Editor (so no Administrator intervention required). Down the road, as students move to new classrooms, the teacher (or administrator) would need to manually add the new classroom's teachers to the photo albums as Editors. 

For Activity Albums, these changes will be automated (which is a big motivation to make use of Activity Albums whenever possible). When a new Activity Album is created, it will automatically be shared with the attached parents as well the teachers assigned to the student's classroom(s). Because the albums are now shared with the parents instead of the "student," deactivating the student does not automatically un-share the photo albums. Also, when a student moves to a new classroom, his/her Activity Albums will be made available to the new teachers (and removed from the previous teachers) automatically. This update should also fix the issue of parents still having access to classroom albums from previous years/classrooms.

As with any change, there may be some growing pains with this new method, but overall it will provide a more efficient and accurate method of sharing photos and files. Please note that while these changes should be applied automatically to any existing albums, it may also reveal where there were some errors in the way albums were shared before. So, this update may require some maintenance in order to correct some issues that were previously hidden. 

These changes are currently applied only to Photo Albums and the new Bulletin Board feature. We do plan to eventually update all features to the same sharing method. But for now, Messages and Calendar Events will continue to be shared the same way they always have been, by selecting the Student's name to share the information with any Parent/Guardian attached to that student. 

Here's a short video showing you the new method of creating and sharing a Custom Photo Album: