In any company, there will be situations where a message or notice of important information needs to reach your employees.
e.g. about a scheduled fire drill, reminders about national holidays, instructions on changes in processes, reactions to News items that affect the company or office location, etc
Traditionally, this update may have been sent as a mass email to all users, but with Claromentis, this can instead be facilitated in the Intranet using the Announcements application.
There are various styles and options available to send important messages, which also determine how this will appear in the Intranet.
This guide will cover how to configure each kind of Announcement and provide examples.
Sending a new message
Application administrators of Announcements are the only users who can create and manage thesenotices.
A new message can be configured by clicking the plus symbol on either the front-end or admin side of the application.
A pop-up will appear asking what type of message you would like to create. Read more about each below:
Add 'Announcement'
The message will appear on screen in the Intranet and can require the user's acknowledgement to disappear.
The message can be set to send to the user's email as well as on screen, so it appears in both areas.
1. Style: There are 3 types of Announcement displays to choose from, each will remain on the screen until the end-user acts to accept and/or dismiss the notice. Users can still navigate the Intranet despite the Announcement unless a modal style is used.
- Banner (shown with acceptance required) appears at the bottom of the screen
- Modal (shown with acceptance required) appears in the middle of the screen. Prevents users from navigating away. This style is recommended if you wish to ensure users have accepted/viewed very important information.
- Overlay (shown with the default 'dismiss') appears at the top of the screen
2. Language: Choose a language from the dropdown to target only those users with that language set on their Intranet profile. Selecting 'All languages' will push the Announcement to all target users regardless of the language they have set.
3. Title: Text entered here appears at the top of the Announcement in a larger font size.
4. Message: The main body of the Announcement, which should contain the most important details needed to give and expand on the title.
5. Publish date: When should the announcement go live, and how long for? (Once the user has dismissed/accepted the notice once, they aren't pushed it again within this duration, but can still view it from the front end of the application if required)
6. Acknowledgement required?: Check this box if you require users to formally accept the Announcement. Acceptance will be recorded in the statistics area. If unchecked, the option given in the Announcement pop-up will be to 'Dismiss', which does not have tracking.
7. Acknowledgement text: This option will appear if acknowledgement has been enabled. Enter text here that will appear alongside the acknowledgement checkbox. ("I accept" is an example of this shown in Banner and Modal styles above)
8. Target users: The users/groups/roles entered here will be pushed to the new Announcement once saved. This will appear on their screen at their next login or intranet page refresh (if they are already logged in)
9. Send email to targeted users: Select this option if you would also like the target users to receive email notification of the Announcement to the address entered on their user profile. Announcements cannot be controlled by user preferences, so selecting this option ensures users are emailed.
10. Add announcement: Click to save the Announcement to save it. If within the 'Publish date' the announcement is live, so will appear to targeted users, and the email will be sent this was configured. If the 'Publish date' is in the future, the announcement will only trigger once this is reached.
Broadcast Message
A static notice that appears under the menu bar, and remains there until the time period set on it elapses or an administrator deletes it.
Cannot have acknowledgements, so works for more general messages, but can be sent to users' email addresses too.
It's possible to have a different broadcast appearing for different users/roles/groups based on who is targeted.
1. Language: Choose a language from the dropdown to target only those users with that language set on their Intranet profile. Selecting 'All languages' will push the message to all target users regardless of the language they have set.
2. Title: Text entered here appears first and in bold.
3. Message: Add extra information to support the title if required
4. Publish date: When should the message go live, and how long for?
5. Background colour: Set the desired background colour of the bar containing the message
6. Text colour: Set the colour of the text of the message
7. Target users: The users/groups/roles entered here will see the message under the menu bar when logged in.
8. Send email to targeted users: Select this option if you would also like the target users to receive the message as an email to the address entered on their user profile.
9. Add Broadcast message: Click to save the message and make it live. Targeted users will see this on screen.
The front end
Users can view the Announcements they were targeted for at any time from Applications > Announcements
This acts as a reference area if a user needs to re-read the message or check the details of it.
The Admin side
From here, administrators can manage all announcements and track acceptance (as applicable)
The landing page of the admin side will list all previous Announcements in a table with various information given about each.
(This area will be blank upon first use!)
Check box: Select this to delete an Announcement (delete button at the bottom of the screen)
Title: The subject of the Announcement
Language: The language the Announcement was written in
Publish date (from-to): The date the Announcement was created and will display (until dismissed/accepted by the end-user)
Target Users: Users/roles/groups that were sent the Announcement
Statistics on views and acceptance (If applicable): Percentage totals on view and acceptance rates amongst the target users, this updates as users view/accept.
Actions: The pencil icon allows edits to the Announcement itself, which will push it to end-users once saved again - The edited version will not re-appear to the users who have already clicked 'Dismiss'.
Please note: The pencil icon will not be available for announcements that require formal acknowledgement. This is to maintain the integrity of the initial acceptance. Any edits required would need to be created as a new Announcement and sent to users again to accept.
Audit log
A filter is available for Announcements in Admin > Audit > View logs.
Information on the actions below can be searched in Claromentis and/or downloaded in a CSV for further analysis/reference.
