Announcements

Overview
Creating/adding an announcement
Editing an announcement
Deleting an announcement
Posting an announcement previously saved as a draft
Reading announcements
Merging announcements
Copyright and announcements
Default permissions for the Announcements tool

Additional materials

Open a pdf document containing step-by-step instructions with screen shots.

Overview

What it does

The Announcements tool is used to inform site participants about current items of interest. Announcements can have multiple attachments, such as documents or URLs. To see the Announcements from all the sites to which you belong, in the menubar of My Workspace, click Announcements.

Key concepts

Sorting: You can sort announcements by subject, sender, access, or date.

Posting: Announcements are posted to a subject or project site . Site owners and instructors can choose to have an announcement automatically sent via email to all site participants by using the "low" or "high" notification setting. For more information on managing email, see Tools for managing site email under Site Info.

Things to consider

Announcements are a useful way to post a notice about an important change in deadlines, meeting times, or meeting locations.

You can draft and save an announcement before you send it out to site participants. Your drafts will be shown with a "Draft" marker in your list of announcements. (Back to top)

Creating/adding an announcement

Note: To complete the procedures in this section, you must be assigned a role having the necessary permissions. To determine your role, see Participant roles in Permissions, Roles & Sites. For a basic understanding of roles and permissions, see Permissions, Roles & Sites: Overview.

To create/add an announcement, follow these steps:

1. In your site's menubar, click Announcements.
2. On the Announcements screen, near the top, click Add.
3. In the text box next to "Announcement title", type the subject of your announcement.
4. In the text box under "Body", use the WYSIWYG editor to create and format the body of your announcement.
5. Under "Access", select how to display your announcement by choosing from the following options:

Display to public : Visible to members of other sites
Display to site: : Visible to site participants only
Display to selected groups : Visible only to certain sections or groups. Use the boxes to choose which groups or sections can view the announcement.

6. Under "Availability", select Show to release your announcement, or Hide to hide it, or select Specify Dates, and then select a beginning date and ending date for the file's visibility.
7. Under "Attachments", you can attach a file from your local computer or from Resources, or specify the URL for a file on the web. For further instructions, see Options for adding attachments under My Workspace.
8. You can choose to have your announcement emailed to participants in addition to being posted. From the Email Notification drop-down list, select the appropriate option:

If you do not want the announcement emailed, choose None - No notification (the default setting).
If you want to send it only to those participants who have chosen to receive low-priority mail notifications, choose Low - Only participants who have opted in.
If you want all participants to receive it, choose High - All participants.

Note: Participants have the option to choose whether they want to receive all announcements or only high priority announcements.

9. To post your announcement, click Add Announcement . To preview your announcement, click Preview. To cancel, click Cancel. (Back to top)

Editing an announcement

To edit an announcement, follow these steps:

In the menubar of the relevant course or project site, click Announcements.
Under your announcement's subject, click Revise.
Make the desired changes to your announcement.
After editing, click Save Changes to save your changes, Preview to preview your announcement, or Cancel to cancel your changes. (Back to top)

Deleting an announcement

To delete one or more announcements, follow these steps:

In the menubar of the relevant course or project site, click Announcements.
Under "Remove?", tick the box(es) next to the announcement(s) you want to delete.
Note: If you don't have sufficient rights to delete a particular announcement, you will not see a box next to its title.
Click the Update button.
On the confirmation screen, click Remove to remove the announcement or Cancel to cancel the removal. (Back to top)

Posting an announcement previously saved as a draft

To post an announcement that you previously saved as a draft, follow these steps:

In the menubar of the relevant course or project site, click Announcements.
The title of any draft announcement that belongs to you will have the prefix "Draft" appended to the title. To open a draft, click its title.
Make any needed updates or changes. To choose how to notify participants about a posting, from the "Email Notification" drop-down menu, select either None - No notification , Low - Only participants who have opted in, or High - All participants.
To preview your draft before posting it, click Preview. To save your changes without posting, click Save Draft. To save your changes and post without previewing first, click Add Announcement. To cancel your changes, click Cancel. (Back to top)

Reading announcements

You may read announcements from within each worksite to which you belong. To do so, enter a site, and from the menubar, click Announcements. To read an announcement, click its title.

Alternatively, from My Workspace, you can view a consolidated list of announcements from all your sites. To do so, enter My Workspace, and from the menubar click Announcements. To read an announcement, click its title.

To change the ordering of the announcements list, do the following:

To arrange the announcements alphabetically by title, click Subject. Click Subject again to reverse the order.
To arrange the announcements alphabetically by the author's last name, click From. Click From again to reverse the order.
In My Workspace, to arrange the announcements alphabetically by the originating site, click Site. Click Site again to reverse the order.
In a subject or project site, to arrange the announcements alphabetically by audience, click For. Click For again to reverse the order.
To arrange the announcements chronologically, click Date. Click Date again to reverse the order.

The title of any draft announcement will have the prefix "Draft" before the title. For more information, see Posting an announcement previously saved as a draft (Back to top)

Merging announcements

To merge announcements (i.e., to display one or more worksite's announcements in another site), follow these steps:

In the site in which you want the merged announcements to display, in the menubar, click Announcements.
Click Merge.
Click the box(es) next to the site(s) whose announcements you want to display in the current worksite. (The announcements will still show up in their originating sites as well.)
Click Save. (Back to top)

Copyright and announcements

Staff have a responsibility to familiarise themselves with guidelines on appropriate copyright compliance relating to the use of resources with a range of CSU Interact tools. See http://www.csu.edu.au/copyright/information/interact-staff-guide.pdf for more information.

An extensive set of resources relating to copyright issues for staff and students can be found at http://www.csu.edu.au/copyright/

Default permissions for the Announcements tool

The default Subject site permission settings for the Announcements tool are as shown below. These can only be altered by a site member who has appropriate permissions.