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CTools Help Document

Announcements

Includes

Description
Examples of use
Displaying announcements
Creating an announcement
Posting an announcement that you previously saved as a draft
Adding an attachment to an announcement
Sending announcements to specified groups of students or participants
Deleting an announcement
Revising an announcement
Merging announcements from more than one site

Description

Announcements are used to inform site participants of current items of interest. Announcements can have multiple attachments like documents or URLs. Site owners and instructors can choose to have an announcement automatically emailed to all of the site participants by using the "required notification" setting shown below.

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

Announcements from all sites you are a member of are displayed in your My Workspace.

Examples of use

Announcements is a useful tool for posting a notice about an important change in deadlines, meeting times, or meeting locations.

Displaying announcements

If it is critical that all students or site participants get an announcement, use "high" notification to make sure the announcement is emailed to them.

The Announcement list

When you click Announcements in the menubar, you will see a list. To reorder the list:

- click Subject to arrange the announcement titles alphabetically.Click Subject again to reverse the order

- click From to arrange the announcements by the author' last names. Click again to reverse.

- click Date to arrange the announcements chronologically. Click again to reverse.

You can also choose how the announcements are displayed:

1.. Click Options.

2. Under Display Options, you can choose

- Sortable table view

- Sortable table view with announcement body

- List view with announcement body

If you choose the latter, you can pull down the "Characters in body" menu and choose how many characters to show.

2. You can add an RSS Feed (for public announcements only -- those that anyone, not just course members, can see.)

RSS Alias (Type in an alias.)

RSS URL -- https://testctools.ds.itd.umich.edu/access/announcement/rss/5dae5077-9e27-404c-85af-

3. Under Display Limits, you can type in:

- the number of days of announcements to show

- the number of announcements to show

4. When you have finished, click Update.

Creating an announcement

1.. .Click Announcements in the menubar.

2.. .Click Add along the top of the main window (to the right of the menubar).

3.. .In the form that appears, type in a title for the announcement.

Note: Field s marked with a red asterisk are required.

4.. Type the text ("body") of the announcement.

5.. Under Access, you can choose to have your announcement displayed publicly, or only to members of the site.

6...Under Availability, choose whether you would like to show or hide your announcement at this time. If you choose Show, you can specify when you want the announcement to automatically begin showing and when you would like it to be automatically hidden. If you choose Show but don't specify a beginning and end, the announcement will show all the time.

7.. If you want to add an attachment to your announcement, see the section "Adding an attachment to an announcement," below.

8.. You can choose to have your announcement emailed to participants.

- if you do not want it emailed, choose None -- No notification . (the default setting)

- if you want to send it to only those participants who have chosen to receive only low-priority mail notifications, choose Low.

- If you want *all* participants to see it, choose High. (Participants have the option to choose whether they want to all announcements or only hight priority announcements.)

9. If your site has groups (see the section, Sending announcements to groups, below) then you will see this option with a checkbox. If you want to send your announcement to a specified group In the new announcement form, check the box next to "Display to selected groups." In the list of groups that appears, check the box next to the group you would like to send the announcement to.

10.. .You can then either post ("add") the announcement, preview it, or save it as a draft. Drafts are visible to anyone with "maintain" access to the site.

- to post your announcement at this time, click Add Announcement.
- to see how your announcement will look, click Preview.
- to save your announcement as a draft, click Save Draft.

Are you finding what you're looking for? Please send feedback about this online help guide to ctools-doc-comments@umich.edu Thanks! (For questions about using CTools, please click this link: CTools Consultants )

Posting an announcement that you previously saved as a draft

1.. .Click on Announcements in the menubar.

You will see one or more announcements listed.

2.. .Click on the title of your draft announcement.

3.. In the window that appears, click Save Changes.

Adding an attachment to an announcement

1.. Complete steps 1 through 6 under "Creating an announcement".

2.. Click the Add Attachments button. You can add any number and any combination of types of attachments.

A... Attach a local file from your computer

A local file is a file that resides in your computer's hard disk.

To add a local file, click the Local File... button and then either:

- type in filename in the box provided, or

- click Browse , find the file in the list that appears, select it, and click Open .

- click the Attach button.

- click the Save button to attach the item(s) to your announcement.

- click the Add Announcement button to post your announcement. You can also preview your announcement or save it as a draft.

B... Attach a website URL

To attach a URL, click the Website URL... button and then:

- type the url in the box provided. For example, www.umich.edu

- click the Attach button.

- click the Save button.

- click the Add Announcement button to post your announcement.You can also preview your announcement or save it as a draft.

C... Attach an item from the resources section of your website

- click the From Resources button...

- check the box(es) next to the resource(s) you want to attach.

- click the Continue button.

- click the Save button.

- in the next window, click the Add Announcement button to post your announcement.You can also preview your announcement or save it as a draft.

Note : After you have created your attachment, remember to click Add Announcement, Preview , or Save a Draft of your announcement.

Sending announcements to specified groups of students or participants

It is now possible to specify groups of students or participants in your CTools site and then choose which group(s) to send announcements to.

To do this, you must first create groups in your site. This is explained in the section, "Group Management," under Using the Tools in the table of contents of this online help.

Once you have created your groups, you can designate who will receive announcements when you create the announcement. The option to select a group to receive an announcement will appear near the bottom of the new announcements form. (It will not appear if the site has no groups.)

1. In the new announcement form, check the box next to "Display to selected groups."

2. In the list of groups that appears, check the box next to the group you would like to send the announcement to.

3. Then complete your announcement.

Deleting an announcement

1 .. Click Announcements in the left-hand menubar.

2.. .Check the remove box(es) next to the announcement(s) you want to delete.

3.. Click the Update button.

4.. .You will see a confirmation screen. Click Remove or Cancel.

Are you finding what you're looking for? Please send feedback about this online help guide to ctools-doc-comments@umich.edu Thanks! (For questions about using CTools, please click this link: CTools Consultants )