Overview

This article explains the application setting that controls whether a Teacher, when viewing the list of other Teachers assigned to the same Class (Course/Subject), can see those colleagues’ personal contact details – specifically their phone number and email address.

This setting is a privacy/visibility control. It does not affect whether Teachers can see who their colleagues are (i.e. the names on the list) – it only controls whether contact details (phone and/or email) are shown alongside those names.

 

What This Setting Does

When a Teacher opens the list of colleagues who teach the same Class together with them (for example, co-teachers of the same Subject or Group), Classter can optionally display each colleague’s phone number and/or email address next to their name.

This setting determines exactly what contact information, if any, is revealed. It offers four options:

• None – colleagues’ phone number and email address are both hidden. Only the name (and other non-contact details, such as role) is shown.
• Phone only – colleagues’ phone number is shown, but the email address is hidden.
• Email only – colleagues’ email address is shown, but the phone number is hidden.
• Both – colleagues’ phone number and email address are both shown.

The setting applies per field: if the option chosen does not include a given field (phone or email), that field is left empty for every colleague in the list – it is not partially masked or abbreviated, it is simply not displayed.

Only the fields controlled by this setting (phone and email) are affected. A colleague’s name, photo, job role/speciality, and class assignment continue to appear regardless of how this setting is configured.

Main Settings / General Settings / Teachers Portal Rights / Basic Settings / Teachers can see colleague’s phone and email
Here we define whether the teacher will be able to see the contact phone numbers or emails or both of his colleagues.

Setting -> Active -> Phone (Figure 1)

Figure 1

Setting -> Active -> Email (Figure 2)

Figure 2

Setting -> Inactive
When not filled, it is set as default to show both email and phone. (Works like the both option, Figure 3)

Figure 3

 

Where It Is Used

This setting is applied in the Teacher Portal, specifically wherever a Teacher can see the list of colleagues teaching alongside them:

• The “My Classes” (My Groups) area of the Teacher Portal, where a Teacher can open a Class/Group and view the list of co-Teachers assigned to it.
• Any “colleagues” list generated for a Class or Group – for example, when a Teacher wants to contact a co-Teacher of the same Class.

The setting also affects a related convenience action: if colleagues’ email addresses are visible under this setting (options “Email only” or “Both”), Teachers additionally see a “Copy Emails” option that lets them quickly copy all visible colleagues’ email addresses at once (for example, to paste into an email client). If email visibility is not enabled, this shortcut is not offered, since there would be no email addresses to copy.

This setting affects only what Teachers see about their colleagues. It has no effect on what Administrators, Secretaries, or other back-office roles can see – those roles are not restricted by this setting and continue to have full access to Teacher contact details through their own administrative screens.

 

Business Logic / Behavior

The following business rules apply:

• The default configuration is None – out of the box, Teachers cannot see any colleague’s phone number or email address until an Administrator changes this setting.
• The setting is applied consistently everywhere the colleagues list appears – a Teacher cannot see a colleague’s phone/email in one place and not another; the same visibility level applies system-wide.
• The restriction applies only to contact fields. It does not hide the colleague from the list itself, and does not affect any other information about the colleague (name, role, assigned classes, etc.).
• This setting is independent of whether colleagues are hidden entirely. Classter also provides a separate, broader setting that can hide the colleagues list altogether (see “Related Settings” below); if that broader setting is used to hide colleagues completely, this setting becomes irrelevant, since there would be no colleague entries left to show contact details for.
• This setting only governs what one Teacher sees about another Teacher (peer-to-peer visibility). It is unrelated to, and does not affect, whether Teachers can see contact information belonging to Students (that is governed by a separate, dedicated setting – see below).

Assumption (not explicitly confirmed in the interface, but reasonably inferred from the setting’s design): the intent of this control is to let an institution balance two competing needs – enabling Teachers to coordinate directly with co-Teachers of the same Class (which benefits from having contact details on hand) against protecting staff members’ personal contact information from being broadly visible to all colleagues (a privacy consideration, especially for personal mobile numbers or private email addresses).

 

Example(s)

Example 1 – Setting Disabled (“None”)

Sunrise Academy has this setting configured to None. Teacher Maria Adams opens her “My Classes” page and selects the “Mathematics – Grade 8B” class, which she co-teaches with colleague John Miller. In the list of Teachers for this class, Maria sees John Miller’s name, photo, and role (“Co-Teacher”), but the phone number and email fields are empty. She cannot see how to reach him directly through Classter.

Example 2 – “Email only”

Riverside International School changes the setting to Email only. Teacher Maria Adams now opens the same class and can see John Miller’s email address (for example, j.miller@example-school.edu) listed next to his name, along with the “Copy Emails” shortcut to copy it quickly. His phone number is still not shown.

Example 3 – “Both”

Lakeside University sets the option to Both. Teacher Maria Adams now sees both John Miller’s phone number and email address when viewing the colleagues list for their shared course, making it easy for her to call or email him directly to coordinate a lesson plan.

 

When to Use

When to Enable

• The institution wants Teachers who share a Class/Course to be able to contact each other directly (for example, to coordinate lesson plans, discuss shared students, or arrange substitutions) without needing to go through an Administrator or Secretary.
• Staff contact details (institutional phone/email) are not considered sensitive within the organization, or Teachers have already agreed to share this information internally.
• The institution wants to offer the “Copy Emails” convenience shortcut for quickly messaging all co-Teachers of a class (requires the Email option to be included).

When to Disable (leave as “None”)

• The institution has a policy of keeping staff personal contact details private between colleagues, and prefers that all cross-Teacher communication go through official channels (e.g. Classter’s internal messaging, or via an Administrator/Secretary).
• Teachers’ registered phone numbers are personal mobile numbers rather than institutional/work numbers, and broad visibility to all colleagues is not desired.
• There is no operational need for Teachers to contact colleagues outside of Classter’s built-in messaging features.

 

Notes

K-12 vs. Higher Education Mode

This setting behaves identically in both K-12 mode and Higher Education (College) mode. There is no difference in its available options, its default value, or where it applies, regardless of which mode the institution operates under.

Pre-requisites

• None. This setting can be configured independently and does not require any other field or setting to be set up first.
• For the visible contact details to be meaningful, Teachers should have a phone number and/or email address recorded in their Teacher profile – if a colleague’s profile has no phone number or email on file, nothing will be shown for that field regardless of this setting.

Related Settings

The following settings are related to, or interact with, this one and may be worth reviewing together:

• Hide Teachers’ Colleagues/Check_apokripsi_synadelfwn_kathigitwn (Teachers Portal Rights > Basic Settings): a broader switch that, when enabled, hides the entire colleagues list from Teachers (so no names, and therefore no contact details, are shown at all). Currently this broader hide option only applies to the Teacher mobile application, not the web Teacher Portal.
• Teachers do not have access to their Students’ contact and demographic data/Check_apokripsi_stoixeion_epikoin_ton_mathiton_se_kathigites (Teachers Portal Rights > Access to Student Information): a similar, but separate, privacy control – this one hides Student contact information from Teachers, rather than Teacher-to-Teacher contact information. The two settings are shown on the same “My Classes” screen but are configured and applied independently.
• Hide Teacher’s contact information from Students/Check_apokripsi_stoixeion_epikoin_ton_kathigitwn_se_mathites (Student & Parents Portal > Visibility Settings): the mirror-image control on the Student/Parent side – it hides a Teacher’s own contact details from Students and Parents, rather than from fellow Teachers.