Not every staff member will be logged in to Signal when they need to report a concern. Email reporting lets staff flag a safeguarding issue from their inbox — without opening the app.
An emailed concern arrives as a draft incident in the My Drafts section of the sender’s own dashboard, ready for them to complete and publish.
A draft is private to the person who sent the email. Nobody else sees it — not even a DSL — until that person completes and publishes it. Email reporting is a shortcut for staff who are away from the app, not a way to hand a concern to the safeguarding team. If a concern is urgent, follow it up in person.
Email reporting must be switched on by an Owner in Settings. Until it is, the My Drafts section still appears on the dashboard, but only to explain the feature — there is no email address to send to and no drafts can be created.
How email reporting works
A staff member sends an email
The staff member emails your school’s dedicated Signal address from the account they use to log in to Signal. The email should describe the concern in detail, ideally naming the student involved and providing as much context as possible.
Signal processes the email
Signal receives the email, matches the sender to their Signal account, and creates a draft incident. The AI rewrites the email into a factual incident description and works out the date the concern occurred — including from phrases such as “yesterday”. Any attachments are carried across.
The draft appears on the sender's dashboard
The draft appears in the My Drafts section of the sender’s own dashboard, showing the date it arrived. Nobody else can see it.
Review and complete the draft
The sender opens the draft and completes the incident by:
- Selecting the student the concern relates to — this is required, and the AI does not suggest one
- Adding categories and a location
- Reviewing the AI’s suggestions
- Editing the description if needed
- Setting any visibility exclusions
Publish the incident
Click Save to publish. The draft becomes a full incident — visible on the student’s timeline, checked against your workflow rules, and visible to colleagues under the normal access rules.
Signal only creates a draft when the sender’s email address matches a staff account in your school. An email from a personal address, a parent, or anyone outside the school is discarded silently — the sender gets no bounce message and no warning. Tell staff to email from their school account, and to check the draft appeared.
Finding your school’s Signal email address
An Owner can find the address in Settings, under Inbound Incident Emails. Turning the setting on generates the address and makes My Drafts appear on staff dashboards.
There is also a Copy email button in the My Drafts section of the dashboard, which copies the address to your clipboard so you can share it.
Share this address with all staff who might need to report concerns — teachers, teaching assistants, lunchtime supervisors, office staff, and anyone else with a safeguarding responsibility.
Turning Inbound Incident Emails off permanently releases your school’s address. If you turn the setting on again later, Signal issues a different address and emails to the old one stop working.
Consider adding the Signal email address to your school’s safeguarding noticeboard, staff handbook, or induction materials so it is easy to find when needed.
Managing drafts
Reviewing a draft
Click a draft in the My Drafts section to open the incident form, pre-filled with the description written from your email and any attachments that came with it.
The description is the AI’s write-up of your email, not the email itself. Read it before publishing and correct anything it has misread — the original email is not kept alongside the incident.
Editing a draft
You can edit the description before publishing if you need to add detail, correct information, or format the text. You can also remove any attachment you did not mean to send.
Publishing a draft
Once you have selected the student, added categories, and reviewed the details, click Save to publish the draft as a complete incident. It will follow the same process as any other incident — AI analysis, workflow checks, and appearing on the relevant dashboards.
Deleting a draft
If a draft is not a safeguarding concern — for example, if it was sent in error — you can delete it. Only the person who sent the email can delete their own draft, and deletion is permanent.
Only delete drafts that are genuinely not safeguarding concerns. If in doubt, publish the incident and manage it through the normal process. It is better to have a record that turns out to be minor than to delete something that matters.
Tips for staff sending email reports
Send it from your school email account — the one you use to log in to Signal. Emails from any other address are discarded.
Include the student’s full name in the email so you can quickly identify who the concern is about when you complete the draft.
Be specific. Describe what you observed, heard, or were told. Include dates, times, and locations where possible. Saying when it happened helps Signal set the right incident date.
Attach evidence if you have it — photographs, screenshots, or scanned documents can all be included as email attachments and will be carried across to the draft.
Finish the draft the same day. A draft is not a safeguarding record and nobody else can see it. The concern is only shared with your safeguarding team once you publish it.
