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Getting Started with Announcements
Thursday October 5, 2023-7 min readIntroduction
Whether it’s a recurring message giving members of your organization updates, or a one-time activity aimed at building team cohesion, announcements play a pivotal role in enhancing communication and laying the foundation for strong relationships within your team. Announcements, alongside Announcement Director gives your organization the ability to send messages that won’t be overlooked. This guide provides a step-by-step tutorial on how to view announcements and actively participate in discussions, share files, and ensure acknowledgment.
Getting Started
To open Announcements, go to the Productivity section in the main navigation bar and select Announcements.
When you first launch the app, you’ll be shown a screen displaying all the announcements you have personally received while in your organization. Within the main list of announcements, there are some important fields organizing announcement information. Let’s go over these fields.
Note: If you have never received an announcement in the organization you are logged into, this screen will be blank.
ID – The ID field is associated with the announcement ID, essentially serving as a reference number for each announcement record. This unique ID allows for easy referencing of specific records within your organization’s data tables.
Image – You have the flexibility to select any image of your choice to serve as the announcement image. This image doesn’t have to identical to the one included in the announcement’s content, although it can be if the creator of the announcement prefers.
Title – Titles should provide a clear and concise description of what the announcement is about. It should help the author(s) of the announcement as well as the people receiving it quickly understand its purpose and know what to expect from its content.
Type – In Appward, Types are a way of classifying announcements into their own category for better organization and searchability. In Announcement Director, you can create types pertaining to anything that suits your business and associate them with announcements. For more information on Types and how they are used, please check out Using Types.
Posted by – Posted by refers to the contact within your organization that sent out the announcement. It’s important to remember that this is not always the same as the contact who created the announcement.
Sent On – You can determine when an announcement was sent, down to the minutes and seconds within the Sent on field.
Message – One of the crucial components of an announcement lies in the message content you are conveying. Within the Message field, you have the freedom to compose messages of varying lengths and include text, images, and videos with the integrated HTML editor.
How to view the announcements you have received
Announcements serve as a hub for you to view all of the announcements you have received from people in your organization, or the Appward server itself. Announcements act as a central hub where you can access and review all the announcements sent to you by individuals within your organization or by the Appward server. To gain a deeper understanding of the process behind creating and sending announcements, we encourage you to explore our Getting Started with Announcement Director guide.
To view the details of an announcement, click on the row of the record you wish to view.
Next, you’ll see a flyout showing you details of the announcement you selected.
Author – The Author of an announcement is the name of the contact who originally created the announcement. This should not be confused with the person who is sending out the announcement which can be denoted by the Posted by field.
Announcement –This is an exact copy of the Announcement you originally received. Please refer to Getting Started with Announcement Director to get an in-depth understanding of how announcements are created, and what options are available for you to customize. The ability to create fully customized announcements enhances their versatility, making them suitable for a wide range of topics and purposes.
Frontline features of Announcements
Posts – A post is a comment which can be replied and reacted to by other users in your organization. As an example, you can write a post with a simple comment or to inform members of your organization of important details regarding an announcement.
Files – Through the Files tab, you can attach essential documents to an announcements record. You can add files directly from your computer or from the Appward cloud. After adding a file, you can view it through an integrated document preview within the Files section. Individuals within your organization with access to the record can download the file to their personal computers.
History – You can monitor changes and updates made to an announcement through the History tab. Within this tab you can track the changes made, date of change, and the individual responsible for making the change.
Additional features of Announcements
Tour – You can discover tours in most of the apps on Appward. These tours are created to provide you with an interactive, step-by-step guide for the application you are using. You can take advantage of tours as a user-friendly and effective onboarding solution.