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Set up your cohort's safety net

4 min read

Before a single student opens First Six, an admin needs to make sure the safety net under them is real. This guide is the pre-go-live checklist: configure the crisis protocol the platform defers to, confirm who gets paged, make sure the right people hold the right access, and prove that a request actually reaches a human. None of it is hard, but all of it has to be done before students arrive, not after.

The thing to hold onto throughout: First Six detects and pages, but it points to your institution's protocol for what happens next. It never invents an escalation path or prescribes clinical wording. That makes the configuration step the one that everything else rests on.

Configure the crisis protocol before go-live

The platform defers to your institution's configured crisis response. If the crisis (talk-to-someone) help route is not set up, a responder opening a crisis-flagged ticket has nothing to follow — First Six will not invent an escalation path for them. Configuring the protocol is a hard prerequisite for going live, not a nice-to-have you can backfill.

Walk through it

  1. Configure your institution's crisis protocol and resources

    In Library, set up the crisis (talk-to-someone) help route and your support resources. First Six points to this; it does not prescribe it. Write your institution's actual on-call path, contacts, and student-facing wording here so a responder always has something concrete to follow. This is the step the rest of the safety net depends on.

  2. Understand what fires when a crisis is detected

    Read what fires when a crisis is detected so you know exactly what is automatic. A crisis is detected twice (in the app and again on the server, which can only ever upgrade), the student is shown immediate-support resources, and your team is paged across every configured channel — email, Slack, and SMS — in parallel. More configured channels means more independent ways to reach a human, so do not leave email as a single point of failure.

  3. Make sure at least one responder is assigned with the right scope

    A page is only useful if someone is on the other end. Confirm at least one support responder is set up and scoped to the cohort, and that roles and access are right: admins run the institution, content editors build the student experience, responders work the inbox and the pulse for their scope. Check that crisis channels (email, Slack webhook, SMS numbers) point at people who will actually see them.

  4. Test triage so a request reaches the right person

    Send a test help request and watch it land in the inbox. Confirm it can be acknowledged, assigned, and handed off with a note, and that a crisis-flagged ticket pins to the top and pages the channels you configured. Walk a responder through respond to a help request so the path is familiar before a real one arrives.

  5. Confirm before go-live

    Run the checklist below end to end. The point is to never be working out how the system behaves for the first time during a real crisis. When every box is ticked, the cohort is safe to open.

Checklist before go-live

  • Crisis (talk-to-someone) help route configured in Library
  • Support resources and student-facing wording set by your institution
  • You have read what fires when a crisis is detected
  • More than one alert channel configured (not email alone)
  • At least one responder assigned and scoped to the cohort
  • Roles and access checked: admin / content editor / responder all correct
  • Test help request lands, can be acknowledged, assigned, and handed off
  • Crisis-flagged test ticket pins to the top and pages the right people
  • A responder has read the crisis branch of respond to a help request

Common questions

Does First Six tell my responders what to say in a crisis?

No. The platform never prescribes crisis wording of its own — it defers to your institution's configured protocol. That is why configuring the crisis help route before go-live matters: without it, a responder opening a crisis ticket has nothing to follow, and First Six will not invent an escalation path.

How many alert channels should I configure?

More than one. Crisis alerts fire across email, Slack, and SMS in parallel, and any single channel succeeding is enough to reach someone. Email can stall silently in a queue, so Slack and SMS are cheap insurance against the path that most often fails quietly.

What if no responder is assigned when a crisis fires?

The student is still shown immediate-support resources and the configured channels are still paged — but a page with no one scoped to receive it is a gap you do not want to discover live. Assign and scope at least one responder before go-live, and confirm the crisis channels point at people who will see them.

What fires when a crisis is detectedThe full crisis path — how a crisis is detected, who gets paged and through which channels, and what you see in the inbox.What counts as a crisis?How First Six decides a help request is a crisis, and what that means for you.Roles and accessThe three staff roles, what each can do, and how scope limits who sees which students.TriageHow help requests arrive, how to read priority and SLA, and how to work the inbox top-down without dropping anything.Respond to a help requestTriage a ticket. Reply or assign. Resolve. The crisis branch defers to your institution's protocol.
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