Announcement Database: Getting Started

Site Manager's Announcements Database is a tool that allows the easy building, organizing and communicating of regular announcements.

While there are dozens of methods to create announcements on your website, the Announcements Database is geared for organizations who need to categorize and communicate announcements on a regular basis. It is also ideally suited for effectively managing a large volume of announcements, although the database and tools can be used for any volume.

The other advantage of the Announcements Database is that it allows you to create announcement categories, and then provide admin user permissions by category, as well as filter announcements on your web pages by category.

If you have already set up your announcements database and need to know how to add announcements to a page, here are the instructions.

Get Started

Administrators (Admin Users) Permissions

If you have not used the Announcements Database before, you will need to turn on admin user permissions for the database tools.

1. Under People, click Administrators
2. Select yourself or the user you wish to give the permissions for
3. Half way down the module permissions list, you'll see Announcements Database. Check the box, which will expand an additional inset menu.
4. Select if you wish to have this admin user manage categories, and if they should manage categories in certain or all categories.
   

Creating Categories

Start building your announcements database by adding categories. Only one category is required to start building announcements, and you can add or edit your categories at any time.

In Site Manager:

1. Under Tool Databases menu, click Announcements Database
2. In the Options menu, select Edit Categories
3. Click Add Announcement Category (or click to edit an existing category), type in the category name as you want it to appear and then click Add.
   
4. Continue to add additional categories as desired. Your categories will now display on your Announcement Categories screen.
   

Building Announcements

Like the calendar admin and other database tools, you'll build your content - announcements - here in the database first. Once announcements are created, adding page level tools through the Navigation Builder will setup how, and what categories, are displayed on webpages.

To build a new announcement:

1. In Announcements Database (ADB), select options drop down menu and choose Add Announcement.
2. By default, all new announcements will be positioned at the top. For convenience, you can change the position as you build, edit or on the ADB list screen.
3. Check the category or categories where you would like your announcement. You can also create a brand new category on the fly in this add announcement menu. (Categories added here are system wide and can then be edited in the Edit Categories menu.)
4. Create the title
5. Create the text. With a full editor, you can create as little to no content here.
6. Thumbnail image allows you to upload a small 100 pixel square image for the announcements. NOTE: some organizations may elect to have set icon images for each type of category. Alternatively, it can be an image related to the announcement, or no image at all. 
   
   Thumbnail images do not have to be an exact 100 pixels or even square in size. The system will automatically resize your image to 100 pixels wide.
7. If you upload an image, a menu will expand to add a field to add Alt Text to your image. 
   
8. Hyperlink Image & Title: Select "Yes" if you would like to hyperlink the title of the Announcement, and the image if one is available. If no image is available, the title will still be hyperlinked if you select this. For the link "type", select "Open in a New Browser Window" if this takes users off of your website or "Open in Existing Browser Window" if they stay within your website.
9. You can choose to schedule the Status of the Announcement. By default, all announcements are immediately active. 
10. Scheduling -  Now you can schedule two changes in advance, allowing you to go from Inactive to Active or vice-versa! Only one status change is required to activate Schedule Status Change.
    
11. Click Add Announcement to create (save) the announcement. If this announcement was active AND you have a page level tool for this category already added to a page(s), the announcement will be immediately visible on your website.

 To learn how to add announcements to a page, read this article.