Inform your users by sending Announcements

Note: This article is no longer maintained. For updated information, please refer to the corresponding Admin App article. We recommend updating your links if you’ve linked to this article.

With the Announcements feature, you can send notifications and share in-depth updates with your users instantly. Of course, you can also spread recognition and coaching love, but we recommend you use it just for sending valuable information. This information can include rich text and Showpad content. It's automatically pushed out, and users won’t need to update the content to see the message.

If users have push notifications enabled on their device, your Announcement will appear on their device, even when they are not inside the Showpad app. Do not worry about waking up sales reps working across different time zones. You can share the Announcement on their local time.

See how it works

Key features

• Share elaborate updates with your sales reps at their local time in-app and via email
• Users receive the notification even when they're not in the Showpad app
• Use the rich text editor to style your text, and browse Experiences to add documents
• See an overview of sent, scheduled, and archived Announcement
• See how many % of users read your Announcement

You need this to succeed

• Administrator access or Promoted Member permissions related to Announcement
• A valuable Announcement to send

The quick way to awesomeness

1. Navigate to the Announcements tab under Collaboration
2. Write the message to your users
3. Schedule the message if you prefer
4. Publish
5. Check the Insights to see who received and opened the Announcement

Do this step by step

• Create an Announcement
• Get insight into your Announcement
• Manage and archive Announcements

Create an Announcement

1. Click Collaboration in the top menu, then go to the Announcements tab and click New Announcement.
2. Enter a subject in the Announcement.
3. Edit the text with the rich text editor. You can add bold, italic text and create a list.
   

   Note: If you include a longer string of text, such as a URL, when the Announcement is opened on Outlook, it will appear wider and become horizontally scrollable for users without text wrapping. This ensures the format is easy to read and words are not cut off.

   
4. To add an image, click the Picture icon. Click upload image and select a .jpeg, .png, or .gif from your device, or add an image URL. Once you're done, click Insert Image. You can add multiple images, each up to 10 MB.
   

   Note: GIFs are not supported on iOS Announcement.

   
5. Add Showpad content in the Announcement. Browse your content, select it, or search for the content you want to add, then click Insert Items. The links to the content will be added automatically.
   Keep in mind the users will need to have access to that particular content. Available content to add will be assets used in a Page, Experience, or Homepage. Coach content is not available to add to the Announcement.
   
6. Send the Announcement to the selected users. You can select All users, Selected Experiences, or User Groups. When choosing an Experience, the Announcement will be sent to all users assigned to that Experience.
   

   Note: When you use Divisions and send an Announcement to all users, all user groups in all Divisions will receive your message. If you want to send an Announcement to a specific Division, you can select the corresponding user group.

7. If required, select the Request User to update content check box. This is useful when you want to add extra emphasis on your request for users to update their content on a Showpad mobile app or the Windows Desktop app.
   When selected, the Announcement will include an action button for the user to click, which will update their assets. See the screenshot below for an example of what users will be prompted.
8. Notify users by email to avoid delays and that they will receive the message if the notification is not delivered. Your email address must exist on your company domain since that's the address used for user replies.
   Just like standard emails, you receive out-of-office email replies when users are not available.
9. If required, set the date and time on which the Announcement should be sent. Those Announcement will appear in the Scheduled view.

   Note: The timezone of your system is used when creating a scheduled Announcement. If you set an Announcement at 10 am tomorrow, it goes out at 10 am, relative to your system settings.

10. When you’re ready, click the Send button.
    

    Note: Remember that a push notification can only view around 110 characters. When writing your Announcement, be sure to start with a subject that gives an overall idea about what your Announcement is about.

11. For your users, the Announcement will appear on their devices and, when set up, they also can receive it via email. A link to view the content in our Web App is automatically included. See an example of an Announcement sent by email: 
    
    See an example of an Announcement in the Showpad's Web App:
    Clicking an Announcement opens up the Announcement details.
    

Get insights into your Announcements

To get insights into how your Announcement is performing, click on the Announcement you're interested in. 

In the Announcements Details screen, you can see the Announcement's settings and the read rate, which is the percentage of users who opened the Announcement.

The read rate is calculated like this: if you send out an Announcement to ten users, it will result in a read percentage of 60% if:

• Two users open the email and click on the 'View in Showpad' button,
• one user taps the Announcement on his iPad,
• three users click on the Announcement in the Web App.

Manage and archive Announcements