In your certification program, some messages are just too important to miss. This isn’t only true for your candidates, but for everyone who uses the system. For example, there might be an upcoming deadline, a scheduled maintenance window, or a policy update that applies to all candidates, reviewers, education providers, or employers. Alternatively, there may be a change or update that, while significant, only affects a certain subset of your users.
If the thought of your most necessary, needful news and action items getting lost in the “sauce” (aka, the inbox) induces anxiety, fear not: With our upcoming LearningBuilder 13.7 release, the new Announcements feature offers an easy, effective alternative to Email and SMS. We’ve developed Announcements to get your information in front of the users who need it, make it impossible to ignore, and make it easy to take action.
With the Announcements feature, you can:
- Show urgent messages in a callout as soon as a user signs in.
- Limit the display each message to only those users who need to see it.
- Set Announcements to appear and expire automatically, so you don’t have to remove them yourself.
- Ensure that messages stay visible to each user until they take action to dismiss them, so nothing disappears without being seen.
Complete Your Certification Communications Strategy with Announcements
You probably already use automated emails and maybe even SMS messages to keep your users informed. In fact, emails are usually the best way to share detailed program updates and process correspondence related to accommodations, audits, and other specificities.
However, routine notices about deadlines or system changes can easily get lost in crowded inboxes or missed if users don’t have SMS enabled. This can cause problems for them down the line, and those problems often become your staff’s problem. Additionally, these communication options are tied to specific workflow processes.
But what if you could show news, updates, instructions, or promotions to specific users right when they log in and are ready to act? Announcements do just that, so users can take action right away while already working in the system. This way, your important updates won’t be missed.
Announcements Put the Right Message in Front of the Right User
When people receive too many generic messages that don’t apply to them, they start to ignore them. You know it’s true, because we do it, too. We wanted to avoid that, so we made it possible to target exactly who sees each Announcement by:
- Role and status: For example, show a renewal reminder only to practitioners who are currently in an active recertification cycle.
- The window for when an Announcement starts and ends: For instance, a maintenance notice can show up a week before the event and disappear automatically after the maintenance window ends.
Depending on your program’s unique needs, you can set up custom rules to target Announcements even more precisely. For example, you might create an Announcement just for users who don’t have an SMS-enabled phone number on file.
When those users log in, new Announcements will pop up in the upper-right corner of the page. If there are several messages, users can scroll through them. To remove an Announcement, they simply click the “x.”
If a user closes the callout without dismissing an Announcement, it will appear again the next time they log in. This way, important messages won’t be overlooked by someone in a rush.
The Announcements Configuration Experience
Any client Administrator can create Announcements quickly and easily, with plenty of formatting options. A preview lets them see exactly how the Announcement will look before it goes live.
On the new Announcements page under Admin>Content, Administrators with the appropriate permissions can:
- Write a message, add a title, and use rich text to format the content, add links, and make it easy to read. Admins can also add icons or images to give extra context.
- Preview the Announcement before it goes live. Admins can see it just as users will before publishing.
- Turn Announcements on or off whenever you need. Create one in advance and publish when ready, or take it down without deleting it.
Announcements: Part of LearningBuilder’s Greater Mission
The Announcements feature has the potential to make a mighty impact on your communications strategy. This reflects our ongoing goal to keep improving LearningBuilder: We want to make certification management easier by letting the platform handle more and more of your routine tasks. That includes communication with your users to encourage, support, and empower their work in the system.
Announcements will be enabled by default in version 13.7, and Administrators will get an Announcement announcing Announcements (yes, you read that right) the first time they log in after upgrade. Ready to use Announcements for your program? If you’re already a LearningBuilder client, contact your Customer Success Lead to get started. If you’re investigating certification management solutions, schedule a discovery call with us today.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are system announcements?
System announcements are targeted communications available to end users when they log into the system. They are intended to be an ancillary communications channel, available to reinforce certain messages.
How do system announcements work with email?
System announcements are intended to augment email or SMS messaging, not replace it. Because they are only available to users after they log in, they don’t facilitate engagement within the system. Announcements can serve as valuable secondary communications.
