Announcements Feature Overview


Document version history

Version number

Modified by

Modifications made

Date modified

Status

1.0

Shelf

Initial release of the document.

30 April 2024

Expired

1.1

Shelf

Multiple additions/corrections have been introduced to the document to reflect the Feature’s new and improved functionality: UI, email notifications, etc.

29 May 2024

Active
























     

Enabling the Announcements feature

In order to confirm Announcements are enabled for your Shelf environment, as an Admin User, go to Admin Panel > Customize > Features and toggle the Announcements option on.

Figure 1. Enabling the Announcements feature for Shelf account


      

Configuring user role access 

The Announcements feature in Shelf enables those with granted user role access to push important notifications to other users. Typically, this is associated with Shelf Administrators and/or Content Managers. Admins can grant this permission on a User Group level within the App Permissions tab > Announcements:

Figure 2. Enabling announcements management for user group



Creating announcements

Now that designated users have been given permission to manage Announcements, they should see the Manage Announcements option in the Organization section of the left sidebar in Shelf’s Admin Panel (see the figure below). Once this permission is granted, users should be able to see all announcements, including those sent by other users.


       

Creating new announcements

To create a new announcement, follow the below steps.
1a. If you already have some announcements created, click the Add Announcement button.

Figure 3. Viewing existing announcements and adding new announcement

1b. If you do not have any announcements created yet, click the Create Announcement button.

Figure 4. Creating new announcement

2. You then expect to see the Message tab with two text fields to fill in: Title and Content.

Figure 5. Viewing and working with the announcement options and settings

Note that when creating an announcement, you must not exceed the maximum length for its title and text which is 255 and 5,000 characters, respectively.


           

Adding Gems (attachments) to announcements

Once the title and message have been created, the next section is Attached Gems. By selecting the Add Gem button, you can now attach up to 100 Gems to the announcement. Be sure to create these attachments as Gems first, and then link to your announcement from this section.

Figure 6. Adding attachment (Gem) to announcement

If for any reason you would need to attach more than 100 Gems to one announcement, consider creating a Wiki page containing multiple links. You can still create the announcement but avoiding a cluttered message will help agents review in a timely manner.


Adding/configuring announcement recipients 

The next step in creating a new announcement is choosing which users are to receive the message. Senders can choose to either select individual users, whole user groups, or even organizational units of their company. 
To save time, it is highly recommended to choose by either organizational units or user groups; however, if you have not segmented your users yet, this is an opportunity to decide how messages are to be delivered to different groups (i.e. Team Leads, Agents, Executives, Departments, etc.) or business units (European HQs, USA HQs, etc.).

So, to add the needed recipient(s) for your announcement, follow these steps:
  1. Click the + Add Recipients button to start adding the required groups of users or individual users.

    Figure 7. Viewing the Recipients section in the Create Announcement form 

  2. in the window that appears, pick up the needed user range - Users, User Groups, or Organizational Units - check the box next to the needed entity(-ies), and click Select to confirm and save your choice.

Figure 8. Adding specific type recipient(s) to announcement 

Note that you can select multiple individual users in addition to multiple user groups for each announcement (as shown above). 

Once the needed individual user(s), user group(s) or organizational unit(s) are selected, they are displayed under the relevant tabs in the Recipients section.

Figure 9. Viewing how many recipients of different types were added to announcement



Sending announcements

After selecting the Announcement recipients, you as a sender may use one or more of the following options in the Settings section:
  1. Assign a Due Date for recipients to read the announcement
  2. Assign a Due Date for recipients to read the announcement and enable the Require Confirmation option
  3. Send the announcement without a Due Date 
  4. Send the announcement without a Due Date but with the Require Confirmation option enabled
  5. Enable email notifications for your announcement.

Figure 10. Viewing announcement settings 

If you decide to enable the Require Confirmation option, you can customize the note attached to the requirement. See below for the default message.

Figure 11. Enable announcement confirmation requirement and adding confirmation message text

Here is the default view before selecting a Due Date or toggling on the Require Confirmation option:

Figure 12.  Viewing announcement settings with no Due Date set
Finally, you can enable the Email notification option for your announcements and select a date when such an email reminder needs to be sent to the recipient. The email reminders are sent to the recipients’ email addresses indicated in their user profiles.

Figure 13. Enabling email notification for announcement and setting email reminder date


              

Best practices prior to sending

Before sending your Announcement, keep in mind that once sent, it cannot be undone or recalled:

Figure 14. Announcement sending confirmation window
Therefore, it is highly recommended to choose Save as Draft for review prior to clicking the Send Announcement option. There is also the option to Discard the announcement when you create it or after you have saved it as a draft. This action deletes the unpublished announcement and the announcement cannot be recovered.

Figure 15. Viewing options to discard (delete) announcement or save it as draft

  • Once an announcement is pushed through, you cannot change the Due Date,Require Confirmation, or Email notification and Email reminder after it has been published.
  • When deciding whether or not to Require Confirmation, consider the frequency at which you use this task for your agents. Because considering the limited time agents usually have at hand, if a confirmation is required for every announcement, agents may start to confirm everything automatically without giving the announcement the attention it deserves. 
  • Similar to the logic above, keep your message simple. If there is an extensive update that requires further explanation, create a Gem and attach it to the announcement.


Understanding possible scenarios of the Announcements feature use

  • With attached gems and required confirmation: A company policy update is sent to all employees with the policy document attached and the requirement to confirm that employees are acquainted with the changes.
  • With required confirmation only: Announcing upcoming open enrollment dates for the entire organization; this event only happens once a year and should be acknowledged.
  • With attached Gems only: A new Gem is created and could impact customer interactions immediately, across departments, etc.
  • Without attached Gems or required confirmation: Welcoming a new executive or manager to the department; still not as frequent as announcing every new hire as that could lead to overcommunication
  • With the email notification and reminder enabled: Ensuring that the important information on any company-specific events or actions is delivered to and received and read by recipients.




                

Viewing sent announcement as recipient

If the Email notification option is enabled for the announcement, the recipient receives an email message to their email inbox that details the announcement text, confirmation requirement request, and contains the link to jump to the announcement on their Shelf KMS account.

Figure 16. Viewing email notification regarding announcement

If the announcement has not been viewed and/or confirmed and if the Email reminder option is enabled for it, the recipient will get an email reminding them about the announcement to be viewed and confirmed.

Figure 17. Viewing email reminder regarding announcement

If the Email notification option is not enabled for the announcement, the recipient can view it on their Shelf KMS account after logging in. The announcements are displayed in the My Announcements widget on the Shelf Home Dashboard.

Figure 18. Viewing My Announcement widget in Shelf KMS

To view the announcement and its content, you just need to click it. 


Figure 19. Viewing announcement when opened from the My Announcements widget 
Otherwise, you can view all the announcements sent to you by clicking the View All button as shown in Figure 18 above. In this case, you are redirected to the Announcements page in the My Account section of Shelf KMS.

Figure 20. Viewing the Announcements page and list of announcements 
You can see here the announcement title, its receipt date, who sent it, as well as its status - Confirmed or Unconfirmed, and a due date. Unopened announcements will be in bold towards the top of the list.

Remember, if a due date was assigned and a confirmation was set as required, both are shown to the recipient as seen in the figure above. If one or neither were assigned to the message, these columns would be visible but remain blank (see below).

Figure 21. Viewing announcement with no Due Date and Receipt Confirmation enabled
Additionally, you can search for the needed announcement(s) by title or content, entering the respective keyword or phrase in the search field. Also, you can filter the announcements in the list by sender.


                    

Viewing and confirming announcements in Shelf Answer Assist widget

If you are a user of Shelf Answer Assist, you can also view announcements sent to you in the Announcements tab provided your organization’s administrators have enabled this tab for your Answer Assist widget.

Figure 22. Viewing announcements in Answer Assist widget
Note that in addition to just viewing announcements in Shelf Answer Assist widget, you can also confirm them there. 


                      

Viewing and confirming announcements in Shelf KMS

In order to view and, if required, confirm an announcement, click anywhere on it in the My Announcements widget. You are redirected to the Announcements section with the needed announcement opened on the page.

Figure 23. Viewing announcement in Shelf KMS
The announcement shown in Figure 23 requires confirmation and contains some attached Gem. You can also see the status of the announcement and the Gem attached to it, title of the Gem, author of the announcement and when it was sent to you.

Note that if the announcement requires confirmation and has attached Gem(s), you can confirm it only after opening and reading all the attached Gems. Otherwise, the confirmation checkbox will remain disabled.

After you have opened and read all attached Gems, you will see that their status has changed to Read and the confirmation checkbox is enabled. Select the confirmation checkbox to confirm the announcement receipt and reading and then click Confirm.

Figure 24. Reading attached Gems and confirming announcement in Shelf KMS

If the announcement requires no confirmation and contains no attached Gem(s), it has the following appearance:

Figure 25. Viewing announcement that requires no confirmation and has no attached Gems



Managing announcements

After announcements have been sent, users with permission to manage announcements are able to archive announcements no longer needed (read, confirmed etc.) and view statistics on them. 

To do any of the mentioned actions on announcements, you need to access the Manage Announcements menu in the left sidebar panel.

Figure 26. Accessing the Manage Announcements menu in Shelf KMS

Once on the Manage Announcements page, you can see a full list of the available announcements. You can run a search for the needed announcement by title and content, filter announcements by status and/or by sender.

Figure 27. Using the search and filters features on announcements

Archiving announcements

If you no longer need any announcements because they have been already read and/or confirmed, you can archive them. To do so, open the More actions menu (by clicking the … icon) for the needed announcement and select the Archive option from the dropdown menu. Following that, confirm your choice by clicking Archive in the popup window. The announcement becomes archived and changes its status respectively in the list.

Figure 28. Archiving announcement in Shelf KMS

Viewing announcement statistics

If you are responsible for keeping records of the announcements performance—status, number of recipients, dates of distribution, dates of opening, dates of confirmation—you can obtain all these statistics in the Stats tab of the respective announcement.

Go to the Manage Announcement menu, select the needed announcement from the list to open it, and then switch to the Stats tab.

Figure 29. Accessing the announcement statistics

Unlike the list view of all of the sent announcements, the full list of recipients can be seen in this tab. This user information includes their name, when they opened and the announcement and when it was confirmed. For a larger recipient list, you can Search for specific users and also filter by Status and/or Confirmation:



Exporting announcement statistics

In addition to simply viewing statistics for announcements, you can also export this data for any needed announcement. 

To do so, follow these steps.
  1. Once on the Manage Announcements page, find the announcement for which you want to export statistics.

    Figure 30. Selecting announcement for stats export

  2. Open the needed announcement by clicking on it, and then go to the Stats tab. 
  3. Open the announcement’s More Actions menu (...) and select the Export to CSV option in it.

    Figure 31. Initiating the announcement statistics export

  4. Once done, wait for the export completion supported by the success notification, and save the generated CSV file with the announcement’s statistics to your local computer for further use.

    Figure 31. Saving CSV locally



FAQ

Q: Do you have to be an Admin user to manage announcements?
A: Any user that has been granted app permissions can manage announcements!

Q: Is it possible to create a multilingual announcement?
A: Unfortunately, not at this time. However, if you are announcing a new gem and have created it in multiple languages, you could attach each gem to one announcement.

Q: Are announcements only in Shelf or are they sent via email?
A: This feature was created in Shelf as a way to reduce email traffic; however, email notifications about reminders are on the roadmap.