Guides / How-to

How to add an AI chatbot to your school website: 5 steps

You do not need a new website to give families a chatbot. Most school sites can add one with a single line of code. Here is how to do it well.

School Compass team · · 4 min read

A parent checking school information on her phone at home.

A chatbot on your school website lets families ask a question in plain words, at any hour, from any page. The answer comes from your own website, with a link to the page it used. Here are the five steps to add one.

1. Check that the chatbot can read your website

A school chatbot can only answer from what it can read. Before you start, check three things:

  • Public pages. Information behind a parent login cannot be read. Decide what is fine to make public.
  • Crawl rules. Your site's robots.txt file may block crawlers. The vendor should tell you if it is blocked, and what to allow.
  • PDFs. Handbooks and forms are often PDFs. Ask whether the chatbot reads PDFs, not only web pages.

2. Choose the sources it answers from

Many of the most common family questions are not on normal web pages. Dates live in a calendar. Menus live in a lunch system. Game times live in an athletics system. Connect these too:

  • Calendar: a Google Calendar or iCal feed. See how a calendar chatbot answers date questions.
  • Lunch: your lunch menu system, for example Nutrislice.
  • Athletics: your schedule system, for example EventLink.
  • Newsletters: forward your weekly family email, so news from this week is included.

3. Paste the widget code into your site

A chatbot widget is a small button in the corner of every page. With School Compass, the code is one line:

<script src="https://your-school.compasschat.org/widget.js" async></script>

Where to paste it depends on your website platform. Most school website platforms and content management systems have a setting for custom code, often called "embed code", "custom scripts", "header code" or "footer code". Add the line once, in a place that appears on every page. If you cannot find the setting, ask your platform's support team or your web vendor. It is usually a five-minute job.

No access to your website code?

Your School Compass also has its own address, like your-school.compasschat.org. Share that link in newsletters and texts, or print the QR code. Families can use it with no widget at all.

4. Test it with real family questions

Before you tell families, ask the chatbot the questions your office hears most. Check each answer against its source link. Try at least:

  1. A date question: "Is there school next Friday?"
  2. A menu question: "What is for lunch tomorrow?"
  3. A question whose answer is only in a PDF handbook.
  4. A question that is not on your website at all.

The last question is the most important. A good school chatbot says it does not know and gives the family your office's contact details. It does not make up an answer. Also test the widget on a phone, with a keyboard only, and with a screen reader.

5. Tell families where to find it

A chatbot helps only if families know it is there. Mention it in your next newsletter. Add the link to your parent handbook and your "Contact us" page. Put the QR code on posters at pickup. Your front office can also reply to common emails with the link.

After launch: use the unanswered questions

The questions a chatbot cannot answer show you what is missing from your website. Check them every week. Add the missing information to the right page. The chatbot then answers the next family that asks. For more ideas, read how to answer parent questions faster.

See the widget on a school site

Open our demo school's website and press the button in the corner.

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