Announcements
Compose, schedule, and broadcast announcements to a scoped audience — they land in recipients' Webmail Inbox and the Announcement Portal, and can optionally be published to the public website.
Purpose
The Announcements sub-tab is where you broadcast messages to your conference. Each announcement is delivered to a chosen audience and appears in recipients' Webmail Inbox and the Announcement Portal. You can scope an announcement to the whole conference or a single program, target a specific audience, set its priority, pin it, schedule it for later, and optionally publish it to the public website.
The sub-tab has two views: a list of every announcement with its status and reach, and a composer for writing new ones or editing existing ones.
When you use it
Use Announcements whenever you need to tell people something: a deadline extension, a review-process update, registration news, or day-of logistics. Reach for it any time the message should land in inboxes rather than live in a discussion channel.
Walkthrough
- 1
Open the Communications tab and select the Announcements sub-tab. You land on the list of existing announcements, showing each one's Scope, Audience, Status (Draft, Scheduled, Posted, or Withdrawn), when it was posted, and its Reach (the audience-count snapshot).
- 2
Click New Announcement to open the composer. Optionally click Insert from template to pre-fill the title, body, audience, and priority from a lifecycle template.
- 3
Enter a Title (up to 200 characters) and write the Body in the rich-text editor (up to 16,000 characters). Both are required.
- 4
Set the Scope: Conference-wide for everyone, or Specific program and then pick the program from the dropdown.
- 5
Choose the Audience: Everyone in scope, Committee only, Authors only, Registered attendees, or Specific roles — for which you then tick the individual role types (General Chair, Program Chair, PC Member, Author, and so on).
- 6
Under Display, set the Priority (Normal, High, or Urgent), tick Pin to top of Portal to keep it at the top, and tick Publish on conference website to also surface it on the public page.
- 7
To send later, open Schedule, tick Send later, and pick a date and time.
- 8
Finish with the action bar: Save Draft to keep it unsent, Schedule to queue it for the chosen time, or Post Now to broadcast immediately.
- 9
Back on the list, manage existing announcements: Edit any non-withdrawn one, or Withdraw a posted one. Withdrawing opens a confirmation where you can add an optional reason that recipients will see.
Tips
- Use Pin to top of Portal for the few items people must not miss, and reserve Urgent priority for genuinely time-critical news.
- Tick Publish on conference website when the news is also relevant to the public, so one post reaches both audiences.
- Save a Draft while you're still wording things, or Schedule ahead so a deadline reminder goes out at exactly the right moment.
- Start from Insert from template to keep recurring messages consistent.
Once an announcement is Posted, you can still fix the title and body, but its Scope and Audience are locked — recipients also see an "(edited)" marker in the Portal. To change who receives it, Withdraw it and post a new one instead.
A withdrawn announcement isn't deleted from inboxes. Recipients who already received it see a "Withdrawn" overlay (with your optional reason), and the webmail message stays in their inbox so nothing silently vanishes.
Every announcement lands in each recipient's Webmail Inbox as well as the Announcement Portal — so it's both a notification and a durable, searchable record.