Events and Announcements: Documentation

Here is a tour of how to navigate through Simmons alerts, events and announcements, and to manage them by setting your own personalized flags and reminders, moving items to and from the trash, and finding old events, alerts, and announcements. To see all Simmons alerts, events, or announcements (not just public ones) and to flag or remind yourself about any, first you have to Sign In, or Log in to personalize this page.

Add an Announcement

If you are a Simmons student, faculty, or staff member, you can add an announcement to MySimmons and to the email daily digest.  Announcements are date-independent, like about a policy, a workshop series (not the specific workshops), technology information, or an invitation to join an organization.  If your information is time-dependent, such as a lecture, a gathering, a Sharks games, or other Simmons happening, instead add an event.

Anyone at Simmons can create or add an announcement, but before it actually gets posted on MySimmons or sent in the daily email digest, the owner of the category you choose (see instructions below) has to review (or "moderate") and approve what you have submitted.

Basic Steps

  1. From the Dashboard Welcome page, next to "create," click An Announcement.  Or, on Your Announcements page, click Add an Announcement. 
  2. A form with many fields appears.  Put the relevant information in each box.  The fields marked with red asterisks (*) are required.
  3. When you are done entering the information, click Preview. 
  4. Look over the preview of your announcement.  Below the preview, all of the boxes appear again, so you can make changes, and preview again as many times as you would like.  When you are satisfied, be sure to click Submit.  Beware:  if you do not submit your announcement, it will not go to a moderator for approval, and everything you wrote will be lost.
  5. After you submit, a list of people who are moderators for the category you chose will appear. 
  6. You will receive an email notification saying that you have submitted an announcement for moderation.  You will receive another email message when your announcement has been moderated and either denied or submitted. Both of these email messages will be from "no-reply@simmons.edu" with a subject line beginning "[MySimmons]." If you notice it has been several days and your announcement has not been released, contact one of the moderators for the category you chose.

When you are creating or editing your announcement, you can format the summary and posting.  See the examples on the right of the Submit Announcement page, under Formatting for how to add a bulleted list and add links, or bold and italicize your text.

Field Names & Quick Tips

  • Title: make it informative and short. 
  • Summary: a brief description of the announcement (just a couple of sentences). This information appears in the email digest, and on the Your Announcements page of MySimmons
  • Posting:  your full announcement.  Consider starting the full post with a reprise of your summary. This information appears in the Announcement Details page.
  • Name, Email, and Phone number: who should people contact to find out more?  The email address has to be an @simmons one.
  • Privacy Settings: choose who will receive a notice about your announcement through the email digest, and can see your announcement on MySimmons.  If it's public information, or would be good publicity if people outside Simmons knew about it, choose Anyone.
  • Send email or Don't send email:  choose whether you want the announcement notice to appear in the daily email digest (or, if this is an Alert, whether you want it sent immediately through direct email).  You may not want to send email if you post an announcement and the next day make a minor change; you can make the change on the web site without re-sending it through the digest.
  • Standard (digest) or Alert (immediate delivery): the vast majority of announcements should be standard.
    • Please use Alert sparingly.
    • If you choose Alert, you will be prompted to choose an Audience (e.g. all staff, GSLIS students, etc.).  Only people who are members of that audience will receive the notice, which will go directly to their email boxes (rather than being published in the digest).
    • On MySimmons, Event alerts appear in red, under Alert, on MySimmons.  You can post an event alert on MySimmons without sending email (choose Don't send email).
      Dashboard showing event alert
  • Category: select the category that best matches your announcement.  Is it specific to SOM students?  Are you a member of a department (e.g. Facilities)?  Is the announcement about Accreditation?

Need to make a correction? Edit the announcement!

Once a moderator has approved your announcement, it is easy to make changes and submit it back to the moderator.

  1. Find the announcement and click the title so that you see the Announcement Details
  2. Choose the Edit tab, right next to View, and follow the same steps as before.
  3. Think about whether this is a minor change: do you want to Send email, or Don't send email?
  4. After you Submit it and the moderator approves your announcement, Updated will appear next to the announcement title on MySimmons to let people know that you have modified something about it.

You can also edit an announcement  after you submit it to a moderator, and before the moderator has approved it. To edit an announcement while it is still in the Moderation Queue:

  1. Go to the MySimmons Dashboard Welcome page. 
  2. On the right hand side, scroll down until you see Moderation Queue.  This will tell you have many events or announcements you have submitted for review.  Click the announcement title you want to edit and follow the steps as before, being sure to click Submit when you are done.