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Administering news, events and announcements

Overview

The news feature in Workplace allows Workplace users to keep their colleagues informed through a news article, an event or an announcement, all of which are collectively refer to as news items.

Learn more about news items in Working news, events and announcements in the Using Workplace guide.

This guide provides Workplace system administrators with details on how to administer the news, events and announcements features within their Workplace instance.

As a Workplace system administrator, you have full access to all news items created in Workplace, including the ability to delete news items and configure access permissions to individual items, customise various aspects of the news item creation process, and apply workflows to news items.

Delete a news article, event or announcement

Deleting a news item prevents a Workplace user from accessing that news item. However, this action only moves the news item into Trash, where any Workplace system administrator can then restore it.

To delete a news article, event or announcement:

  1. Ensure you are logged in to Workplace as a Workplace system administrator and have accessed admin mode.

  2. In the asset map side nav on the left, locate the Squiz Workplace Mk III  Squiz Workplace - Site  Squiz Workplace  News page asset and expand its tree.

  3. Within the News page asset, right-click the relevant news item’s asset, whose name is the Headline/Event name specified when the news item was created or last edited, and choose Details (and Acquire locks on the right if necessary).

  4. Set the Change status field’s value to Archive.

  5. In the Status section, set the Change Status asset value to Archive.

  6. Click the Commit button to save your changes.

  7. Right-click the new item’s asset again and choose Move / Link / Clone  Move to Trash. If the HIPO Processing dialog box appears, click its Next button to proceed.

  8. If the news item you are deleting is an event, then in the asset map side nav on the left, locate the Squiz Workplace Mk III  Squiz Workplace - Site  Squiz Workplace  Calendar page asset and expand its tree.

    1. Within the Calendar page asset, right-click the matching calendar event’s asset, whose name is the Event name/Headline specified when the event was created or last edited, and choose Details (and click Acquire locks on the right if necessary).

    2. Repeat steps 4 to 7 inclusive (above) for this calendar event asset.

You can also:

  • Prevent Workplace users from editing and deleting a news item, by granting these users (or group of them) Read permissions to the news item (soon after its creation), and denying or removing the news item’s default Write permissions. All of these permissions can be configured from the news item’s Details page.

  • Restore a news item by moving its asset/s out of Trash and back to their original location in the asset map, as well as changing their status back to Live. If you purge the Trash, then any news items that were contained within it can no longer be restored. If you want to purge the Trash, ensure the status of all new items' assets have been set to Archive before doing so.

Customising the news item creation process

Each of the three stages of the news item creation process can be customised, including the ability to specify additional fields as mandatory, customise Topic options, configure existing personalisation options/event categories, as well as disable/re-enable the news item promote feature.

Specify additional fields as mandatory or optional

The ADD CONTENT stage of Workplace’s news item creation process defines certain existing fields as mandatory and others as optional.

The existing mandatory fields include:

  • News/Announcement headline, Event name

  • Start date/time, End date/time

  • Predefined Topic options, and the Body of the news item.

To specify additional fields in the ADD CONTENT stage as mandatory or make them optional again:

  1. Ensure you are logged in to Workplace as a Workplace system administrator and have accessed admin mode.

  2. In the asset map side nav on the left, locate the Squiz Workplace Mk III  Squiz Workplace - Site  Site Configuration  News Builder  Configurations folder asset and expand its tree.

  3. Within this folder asset, right-click the News …​, Events …​, or Announcements Configuration page asset, and choose Content (and click Acquire locks on the right if necessary).

  4. In the "title": "ADD CONTENT", section of the JSON file, locate the relevant fields to make mandatory (whose names are defined by the "label": property), and change their sibling "required": property values from false to true.

    If there is a field you previously made mandatory and want to make it optional again, change this field’s "required": property value from true back to false again. It is not recommended that you make the default mandatory fields (listed above) optional fields.

  5. Upon completion, click the Commit button to save your changes.

Customise news item 'Topic' options

The ADD CONTENT stage of Workplace’s news item creation process defines a default set of Topic options to choose from. These options, however, can be customised.

To modify existing or add new Topic options in the ADD CONTENT stage:

  1. Ensure you are logged in to Workplace as a Workplace system administrator and have accessed admin mode.

  2. In the asset map side nav on the left, locate the Squiz Workplace Mk III  Squiz Workplace - Site  Site Configuration  Metadata  (Client) Custom news, events and announcements  Custom news, events and announcements general metadata section asset and expand its tree.

  3. Within this asset, right-click the News.Topic metadata select field asset, and choose Details (and click Acquire locks on the right if necessary).

  4. In the Settings > Select Field Options section:

    • To modify an existing Topic option, modify its OPTION KEY and corresponding OPTION VALUE. By convention, use kebab case for the OPTION KEY value.

    • To add an new Topic option, click Add Option and specify a new OPTION KEY and corresponding OPTION VALUE for the new option.

    • To delete an existing Topic option, select the DELETE? check box of the option’s corresponding OPTION VALUE.

  5. Upon completion, click the Commit button to save your changes.

Configure additional categories/personalisation options

The SELECT AN AUDIENCE stage of Workplace’s news item creation process defines the default Location category that reflects a Workplace user’s content preference options, chosen through the user’s Content Preferences  Location area of their My Account page).

However, if existing categories/personalisation options have been configured on your Workplace instance, these can be added as additional category tabs to the SELECT AN AUDIENCE stage.

To specify additional categories/personalisation options in the SELECT AN AUDIENCE stage:

  1. Ensure you are logged in to Workplace as a Workplace system administrator and have accessed admin mode.

  2. In the asset map side nav on the left, locate the Squiz Workplace Mk III  Squiz Workplace - Site  Services  Workplace Social API asset, right-click it, and choose Details (clicking Acquire locks on the right if necessary).

  3. Scroll down the page and under the News and Events Builder Configuration section, add the appropriate metadata select field asset for each additional category/personalisation option to be made available in the SELECT AN AUDIENCE stage. To do this:

    1. In the Select Personalisation Metadata Fields properties sub-section, click the 'add asset' (+) button.

    2. In the resulting empty field, click the Select Asset button.

    3. In the asset map side nav on the left, locate the Squiz Workplace Mk III  Squiz Workplace - Site  Site Configuration  Metadata  Content Personalisation metadata schema asset and expand its tree.

    4. Expand the relevant category/personalisation option’s metadata section asset (which does not end with Configuration in its name).

    5. Right-click the metadata select field asset (which ends with .options in its name) and choose Use Me from the pop-up menu.

      Learn more about adding more category/personalisation options to Workplace in Manage personalisation options.

    6. Back on the Workplace Social API asset’s Details page, click Commit to save your changes.

  4. In the asset map side nav on the left, locate the Squiz Workplace Mk III  Squiz Workplace - Site  Site Configuration  News Builder  Configurations folder asset and expand its tree.

  5. Within this folder asset, right-click the News/Events/Announcements Configuration page asset, and choose Content (clicking Acquire locks on the right if necessary).

  6. In the "title": "SELECT AN AUDIENCE", section of the JSON file, locate the "url": property, and at the end of its existing value (and as part of the filters= component of this URL value), add a pipe (|), followed by the name of the new category’s/personalisation option’s asset. To specify additional such assets, separate each one with a pipe.

  7. Upon completion, click the Commit button to save your changes.

Configure the news item promote feature

The PUBLISH stage of Workplace’s news item creation process provides the Promote item on home page feature by default. This feature, however, can be disabled and re-enabled.

To disable or re-enable the Promote item on home page feature in the PUBLISH stage:

  1. Ensure you are logged in to Workplace as a Workplace system administrator and have accessed admin mode.

  2. In the asset map side nav on the left, locate the Squiz Workplace Mk III  Squiz Workplace - Site asset and expand its tree.

  3. Right-click the Squiz Workplace asset and choose Metadata (and click Acquire locks on the right if necessary).

  4. Scroll down the page and under the global-preferences section (about 2/3 of the way down the page), modify the value of the Show Promote, Pin, Prominent Selector in News Builder property (towards the end of this section) to Hide (ensuring that the Use default check box is cleared).

    To re-enable this feature, change this property’s value to Show.

  5. Click the Commit button to save your changes.

Apply a workflow to news items

By default, Workplace’s workflow feature is not applied to the news items feature. This means that when a Workplace user creates a news item, it is published and made live as soon the user clicks the final Publish button (or when the news item is scheduled to be published).

You can apply Workplace’s workflow feature to the news items feature, so that when a Workplace user 'publishes' their news item, a Workplace system administrator must change the status of their news item to Approve and Make Live for the item to be made live.

To apply a workflow to the news items feature:

  1. Ensure you are logged in to Workplace as a Workplace system administrator and have accessed admin mode.

  2. In the asset map side nav on the left, locate the Squiz Workplace Mk III  Squiz Workplace - Site  Squiz Workplace site asset and expand its tree.

  3. Within this site asset, right-click the News asset and choose Schemas, clicking Acquire locks on the resulting Schemas screen if necessary.

  4. In the Workflow Schemas > Add New Schema section:

    1. Select Apply from the drop-down menu.

    2. Set the Workflow Schema value to the Standard News Article Workflow (Custom messages) workflow schema asset. To do this:

      1. Click the Workflow Schema field’s Select Asset button.

      2. In the asset map on the left, locate the Squiz Workplace Mk III  Squiz Workplace - Site  Site Configuration  Workflows  Standard News Article Workflow (Custom messages) workflow schema asset.

      3. Right-click the Standard News Article Workflow (Custom messages) workflow schema asset and choose Use Me from the pop-up menu.

  5. Click the Commit button to save your changes.

  6. Within the same Squiz Workplace site asset tree, right-click the Calendar asset and choose Schemas, clicking Acquire locks on the resulting Schemas screen if necessary.

  7. Conduct steps 4 and 5 (above) on this Calendar asset’s Schemas screen. This process applies the workflow schema to event-type news items.