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News

In this article, you'll learn how to manage the news items that appear on users' Home > Dashboard views.

The Manage News view on the Populi > Home page is available to anyone with the Staff role. It shows a table of all news items together with pertinent information (author, date published, etc.).

  • Delete a news item by clicking  . Before deleting, make sure you wouldn't rather un-publish the item (see below).
  • To view, edit, or change settings for a news item, click its title.

Adding (and editing) news items

The instructions below work for adding and editing news items.

  1. Click Add news to create a new item, or click a title to edit an item.
  2. Enter a title and compose your post. Use the WYSIWYG to format your post and add links and images.
  3. Choose your publication settings:
  • You can publish immediately (Yes), un-publish (No), or set the item to publish at a certain time.
  • Pinned items remain at the top of the Feed until the date you enter. (You might consider adding links instead of news items for certain things—for example, an online form you want students to fill out.)
  • Do you want to allow users to add comments and likes?
  • News items are visible to everyone unless you select specific roles or campuses. Choose where and to whom you'd like to publish this item.
  • Attach files if you like—these can be downloaded by anyone who can view the item!
  • When you're done, click Save News.

    The news item will appear on the Home > Dashboard view for the users to whom you've made it visible

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    17 Comments

    Date Votes
    • 0
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      Dawn Dirksen

      Could there be an option to add ALL roles to a news item so you wouldn't have to click and add each different role individually if you want everyone in the system to see the news?

    • 0
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      Dawn Dirksen

      Ok, I discovered that by default, if you do not specify any roles, the news item shows up for everyone. Great! Would be good to at that to the help information.

    • 0
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      Brendan O'Donnell

      Nice catch, Dawn. I updated the article accordingly.

    • 0
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      Jason Haché

      When I put an end date of Friday, July 11th when does that actual article come down?

      Midnight on July 10th? Midnight on July 11th?

    • 0
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      Brendan O'Donnell

      The article will come down after 11:59:59 PM on July 11th. The proper way to word something like that is tricky... literally, "end date" is more like "post it through this date" or something to that effect. In internet interface usage, "end" usually means that...

    • 0
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      Jason Haché

      Good to know - thanks!

    • 0
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      Patty Tsai

      So if I no longer want an article to be seen, I have to delete it... correct? It looks like when it "ends" it no longer has a pin, but still shows up in the dashboard.

    • 0
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      Brendan O'Donnell

      Patty,

      The idea behind the new Feed is that older, unpinned News items will "slide" down the Feed as newer news items and bulletins from users you're following are added to the Feed. As the Bulletin Board gets used more and more, you'll see the Feed working more as we intended it.

      So, you don't need to Delete older news items, though right now you may feel that they're cluttering up the Home page. If you want to remove them from most of your users' Feeds, you could limit their visibility to "Academic Admin".

      thanks!

      -brendan

    • 0
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      Patty Tsai

      Sounds good. Just trying to get a feel for the updates. =)

    • 0
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      Joshua Penman

      Is there any way to either: 

      a) mark a news post so that students can't make comments on it or

      b) delete comments once they've been made?

       

      Thanks!

    • 0
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      Brendan O'Donnell

      Joshua,

      Individual users can delete their own comments (but we archive it for you in case you need to deal with someone...). There's no way to take care of "a", however.

    • 0
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      Justin Bleeker

      Brendan,

      Is there a way to control the order which pinned items show up in the news feed?  Currently, some of the older pinned items show up on the top of the feed and the newer news is further down the list.  It's backwards of what students are used to on Facebook.

      Thanks!

    • 0
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      Brad Cowie

      Can faculty add items to the news feed (if so, how)?

    • 0
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      Brendan O'Donnell

      Brad,

      You need to have the Staff role to add anything to the News feed...

    • 0
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      David Stauffer

      Is there a way to post a link within a news item to a file in the 'files section'?  I could link to the file if it was hosted on our website (just paste the URL in) but I don't see a way to connect it with files that are uploaded on Populi.  It would be nice to be able to link directly, instead of writing "check for such and such file in the Files section".

    • 0
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      Brendan O'Donnell

      David,

      We don't have that kind of functionality right now, but that jives with some things we've talked about doing. For now, stick with the "look for this in Files > Shared"...

    • 0
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      David Stauffer

      Ok, thanks Brendan.

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