Creating a system-wide Notice

Catapult LMS allows Admin users to set up in-system Notices, which appear like banners at the top of the page for selected user types. This allows Admins to notify users of ongoing or upcoming events without having to manually message everyone individually.

Setting up a Notice

To set up a Notice, click Administration > Notices on the top menu bar...

... followed by the Add new notice button;

On this page you will be able to specify a Start Date and End Date. The Start date is when the notice will start appearing to the relevant users, and the End date is when the notice will stop being automatically displayed.

Next, you'll be able to provide a Title for the notice. This should be a very short sentence, ideally no more than eight words.

Following that, you can specify who you would like to see this notice via the Target Group field. You can choose;

1. Everyone inside your organisation. All Admins, Trainers, Students, etc.
2. A limited subset of users inside your organisation, based on a selection of roles. For example, you can create a notice that is only seen by students, or one that is seen by admins and trainers but not students, etc.

Next, you can specify a Body for this notice. You can include as much information as you'd like here, and all of this information will be displayed to the selected users via the page banner (see below). Note that while there are limited styling options, attachments cannot be uploaded as part of a Notice.

Lastly, you can select the Priority level. This is the order that Notices are displayed in, if multiple Notices are active at the same time.

Click the Submit button when you are ready to proceed. This will take you to the "Edit Notice" page, where you can review the Notice and make any necessary changes.

Important note: The Notice has not yet been scheduled, and therefore will not be sent at the specified Start Date. 

To schedule the Notice, click the green schedule button circled below;

The system will schedule the Notice and automatically push it out to selected users. This process can take up to five minutes, depending on how many users the Notice has to be pushed out to.

User interaction with Notices

Notices will appear near the top of the page for any users that have been selected to receive them, like so;

The Title of the message is clearly shown, along with the first part (or all, if it's short) of the Notice's Body. If the notice is too long to be shown entirely, users can click the read notice text to reveal it entirely;

Users can then click the Mark as read link to remove the Notice entirely. Doing this will cause the notice to disappear and it will not ever be returned to the top of the page. However, users can still view Notices they've previously marked as read by clicking Logged in as [username] > Alerts;