Use your Learning Center to push relevant Training Announcements, directly to your Users, with our quick and comprehensive Announcements Tool! This article will outline the steps to setup the Announcements Tool, award permissions to Users, and manage your Announcements.

Links to Topics within this Article:

• Enable the Announcements Feature   
• Announcements Permissions 
• Create an Announcement
• Managing Announcements

Enable the Announcements feature

Toggle the Feature on or off using LMS Options Menu

The first step is to make sure announcements are enabled in your LMS.  To do so, go to the LMS Behavior sub-menu item under the main administrator menu/page.

1. Navigate to the LMS Options menu

• Admin >> LMS Behavior >> LMS Options 

2. Check the box for >> Enable LMS Announcements Widget

3. Click SAVE CHANGES to Save your changes and exit

Announcements Permissions 

Award Users the abilities to add, edit or delete Announcements Using the Permissions Manager Tool

1.  Navigate to the Permissions Management Tool

• Admin >> Users >> Manage Permissions for Users
• Select the User to managing in Step 1

2. Select the Announcements Permissions for the targeted user(s) 

3. Ensure all Group(s) the User should be managing Announcements for, are correctly Assigned.

Users will only be able to post announcement to the Groups they are assigned to Manage in this Step. 

More Reading about Group Assignment/ Management:

• User Permissions - Group Administrator Access Level
• How to Assign Groups to an Administrator

4. Users with correctly configured Permissions will see the Announcements Link appear in their Admin sidebar and Dashboard.

Admin Sidebar view 

Dashboard Card view

Create an Announcement

How to write a new Announcement and post it to a Group view.

1. Navigate to the Announcements Tools

• Admin >> Announcements  

2. Click the 'Post New Announcement Button

All currently created Announcements (visible by Group Administration Assignment) will be listed on this page, by date of creation.  

To create a new Announcement, click the "Post New Announcement" Button

3. Enter the Title and Post Body

4. Add any links to Internal Courses, or External Sources

Internal Course links will show for all Users eligible to see the Announcement. 

• ***If a Course has been set to have Self Enrollment - Disabled" Users will not be able to enroll themselves.
• More information on configuring Courses for Self-Enrollment below:

• • Enrolling into a Course

External Course Links can point users to resources including the following popular sources:

• other repositories (Drive, Dropbox, Azure, Youtube, Vimeo, soundcloud, etc.) 
• external Websites
• download links 

5. Filter your Announcement audience by Group

Use the groups Filter to determine which Groups you manage can see the Announcement. Groups on the right-hand column "Selected for Announcement " will be able to see the Post.

6. Click "Save Announcement to confirm your changes, and post your announcement.

Managing Announcements

System Administrators or Group Administrators can manage Announcements from either the Widget or the Announcements Tool. Users can manage their announcements from the Widget only. 

Management via the Announcements Tool 

From the Announcements Tool, Administrators will have the options to Vew/ Edit Announcement or Delete Announcement

Management via the Announcements Widget

Announcements can be managed by Users from the Widget,

Announcements can be sorted into 3 categories 

1. Current 
   • Announcements which have not yet expired, or been viewed
2. Saved
   • Current Announcement which have been viewed
   • Can be manually Archived 
3. Archived
   1. Announcements which have expired or been manually moved to the Archive