Have you ever had the need to tell everyone in your employee advocacy program something but didn’t really have a way to do that? Sure, you can email them all, but would it go unread? Or, you could create a Post in a GaggleAMP Channel with the sole purpose of sharing this information, but will your employee advocates read it? Sometimes internal communications can be hard, but we’re hoping to make it easier.
That’s where our Announcements feature comes to your rescue. With Announcements, you’ll have the ability to pass notifications to your Members directly within the GaggleAMP platform. And, if your Members do not log directly into the platform, these Announcements will appear in the “You have messages to share” notification email that is automatically sent by your Gaggle.
Let’s take a look at how to create an announcement as a Gaggle Manager and how to view it as a Gaggle Member.
How to Create an Announcement in GaggleAMP
Desktop
Before you can create an Announcement, you will need to be logged into a desktop device and have Manager permissions. While notifications can be seen on both desktop and mobile by Members, they can only be created from the desktop application.
To create an Announcement, navigate to the Manager view and select Announcements under the Members tab.
Here you can view and create Announcements. To create a new Announcement, select the ‘New Announcement’ button in the upper right corner.
A slide-over will appear. Enter the details of your Announcement.
Here you’ll want to enter the following details:
- Title (required): The text used in the title will be displayed on the Announcements summary page to help you quickly identify different Announcements. A Member will also see the title of the Announcement in the Member view.
- Link: While a link is not required, it can provide your Members with a hyperlink to discover more details about the Announcement. When a link is provided, the Title will be displayed as a hyperlink. This will open the URL provided in a new browser window.
Note: When completing this optional field, the “http://” or “https://” prefix must be included on all URLs that appear in the ‘link’ field. - Summary (required): Text provided in this section will appear in an email notification. It has a limit of 180 characters and will only appear in an email notification if the Announcement remains unread at the time a “You have a new message to share” email is set from the Gaggle.
- Body (required): The content associated with your Announcement will appear in the ‘body’ section. This is a required field and information provided here will be displayed to your Members when viewing an Announcement. If you do not populate this field, you cannot save or send the announcement.
Note: The Announcements slide-over supports a formatting called “Markdown.” If you are unfamiliar with Markdown, it allows for the use of Markdown Syntax, or different characters, to create styling elements, like bolding text, adding an ordered list, or creating headings. This can be really helpful in breaking up text on the Announcement. A cheat sheet for Markdown is linked from the Announcements slide-over and can also be found here - Markdown Cheat Sheet.
- Start and End Date and Time: Using the Start and End fields allows you to pre-schedule and end Announcements on a specific date and time. The start time coincides with when the Announcement will become active in the Member view. The end time coincides with when the Announcement will no longer be active in the Member view.
The default start time is ‘now,’ meaning once you choose ‘Save & Publish,’ the Announcement will be available for Members to view immediately.
Once you have curated the details of your Announcement, you have two options:
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Save Draft: Choosing this option will place the Announcement in pending. It is neither live nor viewable by Members, only Gaggle Managers. It will remain as a saved draft until it is published at a later date.
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Save & Publish: Choosing this option will publish the Announcement. It will be displayed to your Members during the start and end dates and times.
How to Review Announcements as a Gaggle Manager
Desktop
All Announcements created will appear on a master grid which can be found in the Manager View under ‘Announcements’ on the Members tab.
Here you will see all Member Announcements.
In this view, you will see:
- Announcement: This is the title of the Announcement.
- Status: Here you will see the status of your Announcement. There are three potential statuses that will appear here.
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- Published: The Announcement has been published and is available to be displayed to Members when they first access the Member view.
- Expired: This Announcement was once published but no longer is. A published post becomes expired once the ‘end’ date and time have passed.
- Draft: The Announcement is in a ‘draft’ state and is neither published nor expired. They are available for editing and scheduling to be published.
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- Start Time - Indicates the date and time the Announcement was, or is, scheduled to be available to Members.
- Expiration Time - Indicates the date and time the Announcement was, or is, scheduled to no longer be available to Members. Once the expiration date and time of a published post is reached, this view will automatically update to ‘expired’.
Note: A published Announcement that is not expired can be manually expired. To manually expire an Announcement, locate the Announcement, and choose the three dots under ‘Actions’ and ‘Force Expire.’ The date and time found in this expiration time will reflect the date and time in which the Announcement was forced to expire.
- View - Every announcement will have a hyperlinked ‘View’ status appearing in this unlabeled column. By selecting ‘View,’ it displays the page details for the Announcement, similar to the Announcement shown here:
- Actions - There are different actions available for each announcement status type.
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- If an Announcement has a status of ‘Published,’ the actions available include ‘edit’ and ‘force expire.’ Selecting edit will allow you to edit the published Announcement. Selecting ‘force expire’ will cause the Announcement to no longer be available to Members and will change the status from ‘Published’ to ‘Expired’
- If an Announcement has the status of ‘Expired,’ the action available is ‘view details.’ This will allow you to view the details of the Announcement, such as the title, link, summary, body massage, and start and end dates and times. It will not, however, allow you to republish the Announcement.
- If an Announcement has the status of ‘Draft,’ the action available is ‘edit.’ Here you can edit the details of the Announcement and choose to keep it in draft mode or save and publish the Announcement.
An Announcement will be displayed to any Member on the Member view when the following criteria are met:
- An active Announcement is available and
- The logged-in Member has not yet viewed the active Announcement.
How to View Announcements as a Gaggle Member
Desktop
A Gaggle Member can receive and view Announcements from either a desktop or a mobile device, so long as there is a published Announcement that has not previously been seen.
The Member needs to log in to their GaggleAMP account to view an announcement from a desktop device.
Upon doing so, if a new Announcement is available and it has not been viewed, it will be automatically displayed for them to review.
These announcements will be displayed as a banner message near the top of the Member view. Once an Announcement has been displayed, it can only be dismissed by selecting the ‘X’ in the upper right corner. In the instance there is more than one Announcement to be viewed, the Member will see a rather than the ‘X,’ indicating that there is more than one Announcement to be read. The Member will need to see each active Announcement before an ‘X’ is displayed, allowing them to close out the notifications.
Note: An Announcement is considered viewed when it is displayed on the screen. Clicking the ”X” removes it from the screen; the same is true by choosing the to advance to another message. GaggleAMP retains who has ‘viewed’ the Announcement for the purpose of not showing the Announcement to the same Member more than once.
Mobile
On a mobile device, a Member will need to take deliberate action to view their new Announcements.
When there are no announcements available, a mobile app user will see a (help) icon at the top of their screen. However, when one or more announcements are available, that icon will display a (alert) with the number of Announcements available displayed in red. Upon tapping the alert icon, the Announcement will be displayed. Just like a desktop notification, the Member will need to select the ‘X’ option to close out the Announcement. If more than one Announcement is available, a (next) icon will appear instead. The Member will need to use this ‘next’ icon to read each Announcement. When there is only one Announcement remaining, the ‘next’ icon will become a ‘X,’ allowing the Member to exit the Announcements.
What Happens When Members Do Not Log Into the Platform Regularly?
GaggleAMP has Members that access Activities on the platform from other points of entry, like integrations with Salesforce, Slack, or email. Members who do not regularly log into GaggleAMP will still receive the Announcements.
When an unviewed Announcement is available to the Members of the Gaggle, it will appear in the next “You have a new message to share” email. This email is automatically generated by the Gaggle when there are new Activities to perform so there is no extra action needed on your behalf. When a Member receives this email, it will include the contents of the ‘Summary’ field of the Announcement along with a link to ‘Read More’ of the Announcement.
Note: The availability of a new Announcement will not alter the Members email notification frequency or scheduled email settings
Mobile
The ability to set up new Announcements cannot be done from a mobile device, but a Member can consume new Announcements from mobile by following the directions above.
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