Introduction
This service is used to broadcast announcements to all or specific user/user groups.
How to create a service announcement
1. Login to the CCS application with your Internal Admin or Terminal Admin credentials.
Go to Configure → Settings → Announcements.
2. Click on Create Announcement.
3. Fill up the form for creating a new announcement. Follow the guidelines in the following steps to fill the form.
3. Announcement Summary
3.1 Click on the respective radio buttons(Immediate, Schedule) - to time the announcement to appear immediately or schedule it for later
3.2 Select the terminal(s) for which the announcement needs to be created from the Terminal dropdown.
3.3 Select the announcement type(Service, Critical) from the Announcement Type dropdown.
The difference between Service and Critical announcements will be explained in subsequent sections
3.4 If the Immediate radio button was selected, the user needs to enter the Expiry date and time for the announcement
If the Schedule radio button was selected, the user needs to enter the Effective date and time and Expiry date and time of the announcement
The dates are in DD/MM/YYYY format
3.5 Select the target audience groups who should be able to see the announcement from the Target Groups dropdown.
3.6 Enter a title for the announcement, in 40 words or less.
3.7 Enter the announcement in the text box(Less than 500 words).
3.8 Use the toolbar for
a. Undo/Redo
b. Text formatting(Bold, Italics, Underline, Strike-out)
c. Change the text color
d. Provide/remove hyperlinks
e. View HTML code
3.9 Click on the PUBLISH button at the end of the page.
4. The new announcement created will appear on the Service announcements home page, with status as ACTIVE(for Immediate announcements) or SCHEDULED(for Scheduled announcements), as is shown in the image below.
Service Announcements vs Critical Announcements
Service Announcements
1. Service Announcements once created, will be displayed in the Service Announcements section on the home page of the users belonging to the Target Groups selected in step 3.5
The title of the announcement will appear on the Service Announcements section of the CCS homepage, for the targeted audience(Immediately after publishing or at the scheduled time).
2. The user must click on the title or down arrow to view the full announcement, as shown here
Critical Announcements
1. Critical Announcements once created, will appear as a pop-up for the users belonging to the Target Groups selected in step 3.5. This will appear irrespective of the page the user is currently in.
2. The user needs to click on the ACKNOWLEDGE button in the pop-up to close the announcement.
3. The user can click on the VIEW ALL button to navigate to the Notification Management page to see all notifications.
Search announcements
Terminal admins and Internal admins can search and view announcements. To search for an announcement, enter desired search criteria and click on Search.
The search criteria are as follows:
Announcement Title: The title of the announcement
Effective from - Effective To: The scheduled (or immediate) date for publication of the announcement, and the expiry date respectively.
Announcement Type: The announcement type - Service or Critical.
Status: The announcement status. More on the status is described below.
Terminal: The terminal for which the announcement is targeted.
2. The following details of the announcements satisfying the search criteria will be displayed - Title, Type, Terminal, Effective from, Expires On, Status
All the dates in the search results are in DD/MM/YYYY format
View an announcement
Click on the Announcement Title from the search results to see the details of an announcement. The details will load on a new page, as illustrated below.
Delete an announcement
To delete an announcement, click on the bin symbol located on the right of each announcement record.
Lifecycle of an announcement
When an announcement is created, if it is scheduled for immediate display, its status is Active.
An announcement which is scheduled for later has the status as Scheduled.
An announcement is Expired after it passes its expiry date.