Announcements are used to deliver news or notifications to users of the service portal users. They are displayed on the portal and/or sent via email.
When displayed on the portal, the announcement list is located in the Announcements area that is shown below:
Announcement types
There are five announcement types in SimpleOne. They are used to categorize announcements based on the information they provide.
| Announcement Type | Description |
|---|---|
| Recovery | Informs that some service or CI recovery activities have been started. |
| Recovery Completion | Informs that some service or CI recovery activities are over. |
| Maintenance | Informs about updates, backups, or maintenance. |
| Urgent Maintenance | Informs about an unexpected breakdown. |
| General Information | Shows notifications. |
You can customize the highlights of the announcement type and the view of the announcement widget on the service portal. You can also customize the announcement highlight in the agent interface. See the Style Rules article.
Create an announcement
To create an announcement, complete the steps below:
- Navigate to Service Announcements → New Announcement.
- Fill in the fields.
- Click Save or Save and Exit to apply the changes.
Announcement form fields
| Field | Mandatory | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Number | Y | Announcement number. This field is populated automatically and has the ANCMXXXXXXX format. It is always read-only. |
| State | Y | Announcement state. Available choice options:
Only active announcements {state IS Published^via Portal IS Yes} are displayed to Portal users. |
| Announcement Type | Y | Select needed announcement type. Available choice options are:
|
| Service | Y | Specify the referenced IT service. |
| Recipient Email | N | Specify the recipient's email for this announcement. You can enter more than one email separated by commas. |
| Reviewer's Email | N | Specify the reviewer's email for this announcement. You can enter more than one email separated by commas. |
| Subject | Y | Define the announcement subject. |
| Announcement body | N | Type the announcement body in rich-text format. In this field, you can design the announcement body using the built-in editor functionality, such as formatting, working with tables and media, lists, styles, and headings. |
| Signature | N | Refer to the Announcement Signature. |
| Description | N | Type short announcement description. It will not be shown to the Service Portal user. |
| via Email | N | Select this checkbox to send this announcement via email. It will be sent to all addresses specified in the Recipient Email field. |
| via Portal | N | Select this checkbox to display this announcement on the Service Portal in the Portal Announcements area. |
You can make announcements available for unauthorized users on the Self-Service Portal. In this case, you share an announcement link with partners and clients who do not need to log into the system to read it. This feature is disabled by default, but you can enable it.
To activate the feature, you should select the Public checkboxes in relevant records:
- Announcement portal page record in the Page table.
Announcement widget instance record in the Widget Instance (sys_widget_instance) table.
If a page contains several widgets, you should allow access to all of them. Otherwise, the system will display an empty page.
Public Announcement page
You can allow access to announcements to users who do not have a user account and/or have not logged in.
To configure the announcement portal page, complete the steps below:
- Navigate to Portal Structure → Pages.
- Find the Announcement record using the search boxes or the Condition Builder and open it.
- In the Options section, select the Public checkbox.
- Click Save or Save and Exit to apply changes.
To configure the announcement widget instance, perform the following steps:
- Navigate to Portal Structure → Widget Instances.
- Find the Announcement Page Portal Widget record using the search boxes or the Condition Builder and open it.
- Select the Public checkbox.
- Click Save or Save and Exit to apply changes.
As a result:
- Unauthorized users follow a link to a published announcement, they can read it without logging in.
- Unauthorized users can open other records displayed in the Last Announcements widget.
