The Mana Families experience has been redesigned. Families now have a cleaner, faster app with better navigation, translated catch-ups, goal visibility, and a more organised home feed. Here's what's changed and what it means for your centre.
💡 This article describes Families 2, the updated family experience, which is available now — you turn it on for your centre under Settings → Team → Features → Families. From 24 August 2026 Families 2 becomes the standard experience for everyone and Families 1 is no longer available. Note that families cannot switch themselves; it follows whatever their centre is set to.
New layout and navigation
Families now have an updated navigation panel with easier access to the new documents shared, child goals, chat and Coach Sue.
On Home, families see a feed of catch-ups and updates for their children. If a family has more than one child enrolled, they can filter the feed by child, tapping a child's name shows only their catch-ups. The default view shows all children.
Catch-ups in the family's language
Families can set a preferred document language in settings. Once set, catch-ups will display in that language automatically. Families can switch between the translated version and the original at any time.
Child goals
Families can now see the goals set for their child, including both journey goals and room program goals. Continue at home (if enabled by your centre) suggestions appear under goals, giving families practical things they can do at home to support their child's learning.
Comments and chat
Families can respond to a catch-up directly from their feed using Discuss — the speech-bubble icon on any catch-up card. This creates a chat message linked to that document, visible in Chat under the relevant child's conversation. Educators will see the message in their existing chat view.
Families can also send regular messages to the centre or child educators in the chat without linking a document.
Photo tagging (coming soon)
⚠️ Photo tagging is not live yet. It is expected to be released in the coming weeks. The rest of this section describes how it will work once it ships — it is not something your educators can do today.
When photo tagging is released, educators will be prompted to tag the children who appear in each photo before sharing a document with families. This will mean families only see photos that involve their own child.
If a photo has no children in it, educators will be able to mark it as "no children involved" to clear the tagging requirement. Photos tagged to a different child, or marked restricted, will not be visible to families who aren't connected to that child.
Families can already disable photo sharing for their child. If a family turns this off, photos involving that child are hidden from all families, not just their own view.
Coach Sue in Families
Families have access to Coach Sue directly from their app. Sue is available to answer questions and provide guidance in the context of their child's learning.
Notification customisation
Families now have proper control over their Mana notifications. From Account → Notification preferences, families control two push alerts separately — New documents shared and Messages from staff — and two email types, Document summaries and Important announcements. Email frequency has four settings: Immediate (sent straight away, except between 8 pm and 7 am), End of day (one digest at 6 pm), Weekly (one recap each Friday at 6 pm) and Off.
If a family hasn't turned on push notifications, they'll see a "Notifications are off" card on their Home screen that takes them straight to settings.