How to Optimize GoGuardian Beacon for Summer

As students work on turning in their last assignments for the year and teachers submit their final grades, admins and counselors have one more important assignment of their own: Ensuring GoGuardian Beacon continues to serve their school community over the summer. Although the season signals a break for learners and educators alike, it's also a time to thoughtfully consider how we can continue to provide effective support through tools like GoGuardian Beacon.

Whether you're an admin, tech leader, or counselor, now is the perfect time to optimize your GoGuardian Beacon settings to align with your school's summer schedule to ensure you’re prepared for the next academic year. Here’s how to get the most out of GoGuardian Beacon and ensure success during summer break.

Ensuring effective summer support

In the summer, it’s not unusual for there to be fewer staff members available to respond to alerts. Nevertheless, student safety remains a priority. It’s crucial to update your GoGuardian Beacon escalation paths and alert settings to avoid missed alerts or overwhelming your team. Follow these steps to ensure you’re ready:

1. Update your escalation path
   Your escalation path during the school year might include staff members who are unavailable over the summer. Remove any 10-month employees (such as those on a school-year contract) from the escalation list. This ensures alerts are routed to the appropriate 12-month employees who are available and able to respond promptly.
   
   Tip: If you have GoGuardian Beacon 24/7, don't forget to update your 24/7 escalation paths as well to reflect only the staff who are available during summer.
   
   
2. Adjust alert phases
   You may want to reduce the volume of alerts during the summer. One effective strategy is to turn off alerts for all phases except Active Planning. This ensures only the most critical alerts, including those requiring immediate attention, are flagged, minimizing distractions and allowing your team to focus on what is most pressing.
   
   Why it matters: Summer break is a time for non-essential planning, so limiting alerting to Active Planning will help your team focus only on pressing issues like safety concerns or mental health alerts.
   
   
3. Thoughtfully consider a temporary pause over the summer
   If your school doesn't have sufficient staff to monitor alerts during the summer, pausing GoGuardian Beacon temporarily is an option. This decision, when made carefully and with a plan for clear communication, can help prevent alert fatigue for a smaller team during the summer. If you do decide to pause GoGuardian Beacon, be sure to follow the instructions for properly disabling it for the summer, so you don’t miss out on critical issues when the new school year begins.
   
   
4. Use after-hours email summaries
   For schools that still want to monitor key alerts over the summer, consider using GoGuardian Beacon’s after-hours email summary. This feature sends a daily email with a summary of all the alert activity from the previous day. You can customize the email to go to the right staff members, ensuring only critical information reaches the right people, without overwhelming them.

Proactively preparing for a successful fall

Summer is also the perfect time to get ready for the upcoming academic year. You don’t want to wait until the last minute to ensure everything is in place for new classes and students. As new students join the school or move up to middle or high school, be sure to sync new OUs as soon as they are created. This helps you stay organized and ensures new students are included in GoGuardian Beacon’s alert system for the upcoming year.

Enhancements for the 2025-26 school year

We’re constantly working on improving GoGuardian Beacon to meet your needs. Building on the capabilities we introduced with the Gmail API in 2024, we’re excited to announce an upcoming enhancement for the 2025-26 school year: The Microsoft Outlook API.

This new feature will help you identify concerning emails sent through a student’s school-issued Outlook account, including those from smartphones and personal devices. By integrating directly with Outlook, we can provide more accurate alerts and richer context, helping you respond more quickly and effectively to potential concerns.

Make the summer count

By taking these thoughtful steps now, you're not just optimizing settings; you're ensuring that support systems remain effective and responsive to student needs throughout the summer and that you’re well-prepared to continue prioritizing their well-being when the school year begins.

Optimizing GoGuardian Beacon for the summer isn’t just about reducing alert volume; it’s about ensuring the right people get the right information at the right time. By taking a few simple steps now, you’ll ensure your team is prepared for summer and set up for success when the new school year begins.

Whether you need help with your settings or have questions about new features coming down the line, we’re here to support you every step of the way. Let’s work together to make sure GoGuardian Beacon continues to protect and support students year-round.