Announcements and notifications
Two different things, and the product keeps them apart on purpose.
An announcement is what somebody chose to tell a room. It is written deliberately and addressed to an audience.
A notification is what happened to somebody. Their work was graded. A class moved. They earned a badge. Nobody writes these; events raise them.
They live on separate pages, one click apart, in every console.
Sending an announcement
Section titled “Sending an announcement”All Announcements lists everything sent in the organisation and is where you send one. Instructors can send to their own courses and cohorts; administrators can send to anyone.
An announcement takes:
| Field | Notes |
|---|---|
| Title | What it is about |
| Message | The body. Markdown formatting |
| Audience | The whole organisation, a cohort, or a course |
| Importance | How prominently it is shown |
| Email as well | Whether to mail it, not just post it |
Choosing an audience
Section titled “Choosing an audience”A course reaches everyone enrolled on it. Right for anything about the material, a deadline, an assignment.
A cohort reaches the group. Right for timetable changes, intake logistics, anything specific to that intake.
The organisation reaches everybody. Right for genuinely everybody: a policy change, a holiday closure, a platform outage.
Over-broadcasting is the failure mode here. An organisation-wide announcement about one cohort’s rescheduled Tuesday teaches four hundred people that announcements are not for them.
What people can opt out of
Section titled “What people can opt out of”Announcements have no opt-out. They are always delivered, in-product and by email if you send them by email. An organisation addressing its learners is not something a learner unsubscribes from.
That is a responsibility rather than a convenience. The channel works because it is rare.
Everything else has a switch, in each person’s own preferences. Turning one off stops the email; the notification still appears in the product. Nothing is lost, it just stops arriving in an inbox.
The notification catalogue
Section titled “The notification catalogue”What the platform sends on its own, and where each starts:
| Notification | Who | Emailed by default |
|---|---|---|
| Announcements | Everyone | Always — no switch |
| Grades and feedback | Learners | Yes |
| Enrolments | Learners | Yes |
| Completion and certificates | Learners | Yes |
| Classes and schedule | Learners, instructors | Yes |
| Class recordings | Learners, instructors | Yes |
| Attendance | Learners | No |
| Badges and levels | Learners | Yes |
| Streaks | Learners | Yes |
| New submissions | Instructors | Yes |
| Account and integrations | Everyone | Yes |
| Product updates | Everyone | No |
Attendance starts off because a mail per register is the fastest way to teach somebody to filter mail from their school. Product updates start off because they are ours, not yours.
Each person is offered only the rows that apply to their role, so a learner never sees “New submissions” and an instructor never sees “Streaks”.
Choosing a channel
Section titled “Choosing a channel”| You want to | Use |
|---|---|
| Tell a cohort about a change | A cohort announcement |
| Tell a course about an assignment | A course announcement |
| Tell everybody something important | An organisation announcement |
| Interrupt people about a deadline today | A pop-up banner — sparingly |
| Give one person feedback | The feedback on their submission |
| Publish something permanent | A quick link, or the course description |
Pop-up banners are set up under Custom Links. They are the loudest thing available. See Your organisation’s profile and branding.
Practical advice
Section titled “Practical advice”Put dates in the message. “Next Tuesday” ages badly in a feed that people read a week later.
Say what to do. An announcement that reports a fact without an action is a notice; one with a clear next step is useful.
Do not email everything. In-product-only is fine for most announcements. The email flag is for the ones that should interrupt somebody’s day.
Announcements are not deleted quietly. They stay in the feed, which means they are also a record. Write them as though somebody will read them in six months, because somebody will.
If email is not arriving
Section titled “If email is not arriving”The order to check:
- Is your outgoing email configured and tested? See Custom domain and email. Use the test-send control.
- Has the recipient turned that category off? They can see it in their own preferences; you cannot change it for them.
- Is it an invitation rather than an announcement? Those have their own resend, on the user’s row under Manage Users.