Parent/guardian receives an email notification that there's a message for their attention on SMP
They login but now there's a red notification pending message count (number of messages they're yet to read) on the messaging item in the side menu
They go to the message page, also now each message item on the list has the same notification as above indicating the number of pending/unread messages/replies under that thread
They select/click the desired message and it opens in a dialog box, now the notification is gone as they've opened it (the app registers this as the messages have been read)
On the message screen they can now reply, as many times as possible
Then the staff/school recieves an email notification of their reply, then everything else follows the steps from 3 above for the staff/school