This document outlines the basic function and navigation of the Announcements tool within Trail Life Connect. The ability to create announcements is only available to roles with the ‘Manage Announcements’ permission. Screen shots used throughout the document will be from the perspective of the Troop Ministry Liaison.
Viewing Announcements
You will be notified of any new announcements through three different locations on the Trail Life Connect Dashboard:
- The “Announcements” tile icon will display a red number if any new announcements are present (the number will specify how many new announcements are present)
- The “Announcements” link on the left navigation menu will also display the same red number if new announcements are present
- A banner along the top of the tile icons will also notify of any new announcements, indicating how many and of what type (the bar along the top is specifically designed to benefit mobile users as they will see the alert here first)
All three above items are links, and clicking any of the three will take you to the Announcements page. Upon visiting the Announcements page, the Dashboard notifications will be cleared out such that the red numbers and top banner will be gone the next time you visit the Dashboard. Notifications will appear again if/when any new announcements are posted.
Announcements are displayed in a timeline format, with the most recent announcements appearing at the top of the list and older announcements found by scrolling down the page. Those announcements that are new on your current visit will be flagged with a “New” tag. (This tag is cleared as soon as you navigate away from the Announcements page.)
Along the top of the Announcements page are key icons that indicate the announcement type (Home Office, Troop, Area, and Region.) Each of these icons appear to the left of each announcement in the list to indicate the source of the announcement being displayed. The key at the top will also show the total number of each type of announcement appearing in your current list.
Hiding and Filtering
Announcements will remain in the list for the duration of time set by the announcement creator. If you no longer wish to see a particular announcement in your view, you can click the ‘X’ in the upper right of the specific announcement. This will mark it as read and hide it from your view. If you wish to go back and review that announcement again, however, you can click the “Show Hidden” icon at the top of the list. Clicking “Show Hidden” will temporarily bring those hidden announcements back into your list to view. Clicking that icon again will re-hide the items you marked as read and hidden. (Also, navigating away from the Announcements page will reset things so that when you return those hidden items will be hidden again.)
To filter your list, you can also click any of the four announcement type icons along the top (Home Office, Troop, Area, Region) to temporarily filter/hide those items from your view. So, if you only wish to view Troop announcements, you can click the Home Office, Area, and Region icons to hide those – leaving you with only a list of your specific Troop announcements.
Creating Announcements
If your role has been assigned the permission to ‘Manage Announcements’ you will find the “Update Announcements” link under “Communication” on the left navigation menu.
The resulting page will display a list of any existing announcements that are active for your Troop (or Area, or Region.) The list shows the announcement title (defaulting to showing currently “active” announcements) as well as the start and end publishing dates. To add a new announcement, click the corresponding green button at the bottom of the list. To update or edit an existing announcement, click the pencil icon to the far right of the listed announcement. Creating new announcements and editing existing announcements will bring you to the same interface, with a ‘new’ announcement being a blank slate and the ‘edit’ option containing existing announcement information to potentially be changed.
You can also click the green checkmark in the “Active” column to turn it to a red ‘X’ and effectively deactivate the announcement (if you no longer wish for it to display in members’ Announcement lists.) The drop-down filter at the top of the “Active” column lets you switch between ‘active’ and ‘deactivated’ announcements. You can also click the red ‘X’ in the deactivated list to make an announcement ‘active’ again.
Within the Add New Announcement page, you can also control whether the announcement is ‘Active’ or not. You will provide a ‘Title’ for your announcement, and then select a date to start publishing it. The default start date is set to the current date, but you can change the date if you wish. (This could help if you wish to create announcements in advance and then decide the specific date when they will begin to appear for members.) Select an ‘End Publishing’ date if desired. If you do not select a date to end the publishing of the announcement, it will never stop appearing on members’ Announcements page. A best practice would be to consider announcements as finite, temporary pieces of information with a specific shelf life. Setting an end date will keep your announcements fresh and relevant.
In the next section of creating a new announcement, you will decide who can view the announcement. At the Troop level you can create announcements to appear based on a member’s role and/or also specify the announcement to only appear for specific Patrols. (At the Area level a “Specific Troops” option is added, and at the Region level the additional option of “Specific Areas” is added.)
The final component of creating a new announcement is entering the specific announcement content. This space is similar to creating Calendar events or sending out Emails. You can enter information in simple text mode if that is all that is needed, or you can use text editing features (such as Bold, Italics, ordered lists, indent, add photos, attachments, hyperlinks, etc.) to enhance the look of the overall message. You can also switch between the standard text editor and an HTML editor by clicking the “< >” icon if you wish to utilize HTML, or if you prefer that coding interface.
After all parameters are set and your message content is complete, click the green “Create” button to add your announcement to the viewable list for the specified members. If you find that any information needs to be changed, you can find the announcement in the list of active announcements and click the edit button to go in and make your changes. (Note that an edit does not cause the system to treat the announcement as “new.” If someone has already viewed their announcement page, making an edit to the existing announcement will not trigger a notification that they have a “new” announcement to view – it will only serve to update, or correct, the existing announcement so that the information is accurate upon future viewing of that item in the announcement list.)