How your school can respond to parents and guardians via WhatsApp with AI
A guide to setting up an AI agent that answers about schedules, tuition, and absences based on your institution's rules and school calendar.
At the start of every school term, someone on a school's staff answers the same question dozens of times over their personal WhatsApp — what's this class's schedule, how much is this month's tuition, whether the student was absent today. That number stays tied to one person, not the school.
This guide shows how to set up an AI agent that answers on the institution's official WhatsApp, using WhatSMS's AI Agents.
Step 1 — Upload the rules, schedules, and school calendar
Upload the internal rules, class schedules, school calendar, and tuition table to the agent's knowledge base. It's from these documents that the agent will answer, without inventing information beyond what the school has confirmed.
Step 2 — Connect the school's official WhatsApp, not a personal number
Configure the institution's WhatsApp Business channel in the Unified Inbox. Answers now go out from a number that belongs to the school, not to a specific staff member.
Step 3 — Set up handoff for questions outside what's documented
Configure automatic transfer to a human whenever the question requires a decision not covered in the uploaded documents — for example, a disciplinary case or an exception to the rules.
Why this reduces the load on administrative staff
Parents and guardians now get an answer at any time, without depending on one specific person being available — and the staff stops repeating the same answer, every day, to different families.
You can create this account for free and test the agent with your school's real rules before any commitment.
Frequently asked questions
Does the AI agent answer about a specific student's situation?
The agent answers based on the knowledge base you upload — internal rules, class schedules, school calendar, tuition table. For questions specific to a student (e.g. a disciplinary case), the conversation is transferred to a human with the full history.
Does the number stop being tied to one person?
Yes. The agent answers on the school's official WhatsApp, not on a staff member's personal phone — if that person is on holiday, sick, or leaves the team, the information and the number keep working.
Can I organize contacts by class or school year?
Yes. You can group contacts by class, school year, or any criteria that makes sense for your school, and use those groups to segment notices or check the conversation history of a specific group.
How is GDPR handled, given we deal with minors' data?
The foundation is privacy-by-design and GDPR from the platform's creation: consent requested before starting a conversation, encrypted data, and the right to export or delete a contact's data at any time, with servers in European territory.
What happens when the question isn't in the uploaded rules?
The agent doesn't make up an answer — it transfers the conversation to a team member, with the full history, so the family gets a correct answer instead of a guess.