Alerts & News Module

The Alerts & News Module is the new and improved version of the old Announcements Module. See the Alerts & News Module: Overview article to for a quick overview of the new features.

The Alerts & News Module is used to add/edit/delete news. News is categorized and allowing the flexibility of displaying them on a designated page, i.e. high school athletic events on the Athletics Page or middle school events on the Middle School landing page. In addition, news will start and stop showing on your site based on the selected dates for each announcement and can be organized with prioritization. 

Note: In order to display news on your website, an Announcements tool will need to be added to the page. Please see the Alerts & News tool article for more information about displaying news on a page.

Actions / Filters

1. Add News: Select to add news. See the Add News section below for more information.
2. Categories: Manage the available announcement categories. See the Categories section below for more information.
3. Timezone: Select to edit timezone to ensure news is released based on the local date and time.
4. Category: By default, all news will display. You can use this filter to select to view news in a specific category.
5. Date Range Visibility: By default, only active news will display. You can use this filter to view Active, Inactive, and View All news.

Alerts & News

1. Show # Entries: By default, 10 announcements will display on each page. You can update this to display 10, 25, 50, or 100 announcements per page.
2. Search: Use the search area to search for specific news.
3. Title: Displays the title of the news and indicates if it is Visible or Hidden.
4. Priority: Displays the priority selected for each alert.
5. Categories: Displays the category for the news.
6. Start Date: Displays the date & time that the news will start showing in the Alerts & News tool.
7. End Date: Displays the date & time that the news will stop showing in the Alerts & News tool.
8. Actions: Select to edit, clone or delete the news. Cloning news creates a copy that can be used as a template for a new news.
9. Use the previous, next, and page options to navigate through the pages of news.

In the Alerts & News table, you can sort by columns by selecting the header. The sort arrows () indicate which columns you can use to sort information.

Categories

Actions

1. Add Category: Select to add a new announcement category. See the Add Category section below for more information.
2. Alerts & News: Select to navigate back to the Alerts & News module's main page.

Categories

1. Show # Entries: By default, 10 announcements will display on each page. You can update this to display 10, 25, 50, or 100 announcements per page.
2. Search: Use the search area to search for a category.
3. Category: Displays the category name. Also indicates which category is the Emergency Category.
   Note that there can only be one Emergency Category.
4. Number of Alerts & News: Displays the number of alerts attached to the category.
5. Actions: Select to update or delete the category.
   Note that deleting a category will delete the category and all news that is attached to it.
6. Use the previous, next, and page options to navigate through the pages of categories.

Add Category

Enter the name for the category and indicate if this is the Emergency Alert Category. Note that there can only be one Emergency Alert Category.

Note that if you sync the announcement category with your app, the category name will display in the app news item.

Add News

Required Settings

1. Title: Add the title of your news.
2. Category: Select the desired category from the "Available" section to move it to the selected section. Multiple categories can be selected.
3. Start Date & Time: Set a Start Date and Start Time of when you would like the news to start displaying on your website.
   Note if you have an app this is the date/time the new item will be created and the push notification sent if applicable.
4. End Date & Time: Set an End Date and EndTime of when you would like the news to stop displaying on your website.
   Note if you have an app this is the date/time the new item will stop displaying in the app as well.
5. News: Type in or copy and paste the news in this text area.
   Note that if you are pasting always use the Paste as Plain Text or Paste from Word tools to remove any outside formatting that could interfere with your website design. You can use the tools on the editor to format the text. Please see the Text Editor article for more information about formatting.

Image Settings

1. Drag and drop an image file or select to browse for an image on your device.
2. Alt Text: Provide text that will show when the mouse cursor hovers on the picture. This is important for accessibility for users that are utilizing screen readers and not visually seeing the screen.

Display

3. Image Width: Set the desired image width using the radio buttons. If "Custom Width" is chosen, enter the number of pixels wide the image should be. If your image is wider than the selected width, it will be scaled down to that width.
4. Image Alignment: Set the justification for the image. If "Above" or "Below" is chosen there is the additional option of choosing left, right, or center.

Link

5. Link Address for Image: Add a URL to have the link open when the image is selected.
6. Browser Window Type: Select New Window or Current Window. The current window option should be used for linking to pages within your site while the new window option should be used for external pages.