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 Event

If you are a Simmons student, faculty, or staff member, you can create an event for the MySimmons calendar.  Events are time-dependent notices, such as lectures, parties, workshops, Sharks games, and other Simmons happenings.  If the information you want to transmit is date-independent, like about a policy, technology information, or an invitation to join an organization, instead add an announcement.

Anyone at Simmons can create or add an event, but before the event 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 Event.  Or, on Your Events page, click Add an Event. 
  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 event posting.  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 event, 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 event for moderation.  You will receive another email message when your event 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 event has not been released, contact one of the moderators for the category you chose.

When you are creating or editing your event, you can format the summary and posting.  See the examples on the right of the 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. If this event is one in a series, use the name of this date's event as the beginning of the title.  This makes it easier for people to skim and find your event.
  • Summary: a brief description of the event (just a couple of sentences), including an appealing invitation and the most important feature. This information appears in the email digest, and on the Your Events page of MySimmons
  • Posting:  a complete description of your event.  Consider starting the full post with a reprise of your summary. This information appears in the Event Details page.
  • From and To: the date and time of your event.  You must enter a begin date and time, but don't have to indicate an end time.  Follow the instructions under the fields for the exact format for the date, followed by the time.
  • Location: where your event will be held
  • 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 event through the email digest, and can see your event on MySimmons.  If it's open the public, 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 event notice to appear in the daily email digest (or, if this is an Alert, whether you want it sent immediate through direct email). Here are a few examples of when you might want to choose not to send email.
    • If you post an event and the next day make a minor change, you can make the change on the web site without re-sending the notice through the digest.
    • If you post several events at the beginning of the semester that occur later, you might put them on MySimmons without sending email, and then, closer to the event, edit the notice and send it through email for more timely publicity.
    • If you post a series of events that look similar and may lead a reader to skip over them, you can choose to post the events without including them in the digest.  Then you could submit a summary announcement with the setting "Send email" to draw attention to the entire series.
    • Regardless of whether you send email or don't send email, on the date of your event, it will be highlighted under "Today's Events" right at the top of the daily digest.
  • Standard (digest) or Alert (immediate delivery): the vast majority of event notices 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 event.  Is it specific to SSW students?  Are you a member of a department serving a group (e.g. Dix Scholars) or managing a event space (e.g. Trustman Art Gallery)?  Does the event promote Diversity?

Need to make a correction? Edit the event!

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

  1. Find the event and click the title so that you see the Event 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 event, Updated will appear next to the event title on MySimmons to let people know that you have modified something about the event.

You can also edit an event notice after you submit it to a moderator, and before the moderator has approved it. To edit an event notice 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 event title you want to edit and follow the steps as before, being sure to click Submit when you are done.