Announcements are a way to deliver messages to all, or just a subset, of your users. They can include, text, images, and/or video content.

Creating an Announcement

To create an announcement, click on the Administration menu and under the Social heading, select Announcements.

Here you can edit or delete existing announcements. Click the Add New '+' button on the top right to create a new announcement.

Open

Step 1

Enter in the following information:

• Title

• Channel

• Active - if checked, the announcement will start showing on the chosen start date

• Start Display Date - by default this is set to the current date

• End Display Date - an end date is not required and can later be updated

• Highlighted - will add a yellow highlight around the border of the announcement on the All Announcements page.

• Hide from Dashboards - this will hide the announcement from student and administrative dashboards

• Pin to Student Dashboard - this will pin the announcement to Student Dashboards even after being read

• Allow Comments - Announcements can have comments enabled if they are grouped in a Channel with moderators

Open

Step 2

The Media drop-down menu is set to the default None. This is is preferable for text-only announcements. Should your announcement contain either a video, audio, or image, select the respective media format. For video media, you can link to a MP4 file previously uploaded to your server, YouTube, or Vimeo.

For optimal image dimensions, see Common Image Dimensions.

Note: If your announcement contains a video, a thumbnail is optional. On the other hand, if your announcement contains audio, a thumbnail will be required. If you don't want either of these announcements to contain text, make sure to check the No Message Text box otherwise text will be required. 

Step 3

Here you can optionally select a specific audience that you want this announcement to go to. You can select a previously created Audience from the dropdown. If you want the announcement available to your whole organization, you can skip this step and select “Finish.”

If there is not a previously created audience you can use, click “Use custom filters instead.” This will bring up filters you can use to narrow down who the announcement will go to by using Division, Roles, and Positions. There is also an optional “Additional Filters” section at the bottom where you can further filter your intended audience by Hire Date or Date in Position.