Announcement Manager & Acknowledgement Reports
for Administrators

Table of Contents

Overview 3

Managing Administrator Responsibilities 3

Understanding Learner Responsibilities 4

Announcement Manager 4

Viewing Announcements (All, Active, Expired and Archived) 4

Viewing ALL Announcements 4

Viewing Active Announcements 5

Viewing Expired Announcements 5

Archived Announcements 6

Sorting Announcements by Column 6

Understanding How Learners View Announcements 6

Learner’s View from the Personal Page 6

Learner’s View by Sorting 7

Learner’s View of a Late Acknowledgement 7

Learner’s View of Announcement Types 7

Learner’s View of High Importance 8

Learner’s View of Required Acknowledgement 8

Understanding How Administrators Assign and View Announcements 8

Adding and Viewing High Importance 8

Requiring Acknowledgements 9

Administrative View of a Required Acknowledgement 9

Adding ‘Persistent’ Announcements 10

Managing Acknowledgement Text 10

Managing Types (Categories) 10

Creating an Announcement 12

Assigning/Publishing an Announcement 15

Assigning/Publishing an Announcement to ‘All’ Learners 16

Assigning/Publishing an Announcement to ‘One or More Learners’ 17

Assigning/Publishing an Announcement to Groups 19

Assigning/Publishing an Announcement to Departments 21

Assigning/Publishing an Announcement by Job Code 23

Assigning/Publishing an Announcement by Facility/Dept/Job code 24

Editing an Announcement (before publishing) 27

Editing a Published Announcement 28

Deleting Announcements 28

Copying an Announcement 28

Archiving an Announcement 31

Acknowledgements Report 31

Drilling-down for Details 32


Announcement Manager & Acknowledgement Reports

Overview

As an Administrator (depending upon your administrative permissions) you can create and assign announcements to Learners in your scope, as well as, require your Learners to acknowledge that they have read and understood the announcements as needed. Announcements are assigned to active Learners.

You can make an announcement “persistent”, meaning it remains on the Learners list of announcements even after the expiration date. If you require the Learners to ‘acknowledge’ an announcement, ‘Persistent’ is automatically added to the announcement. When a Learner acknowledges an announcement after the Due Date, the date displays in red on the Learner’s list, and your Acknowledgement Report denotes it was acknowledged after the Expiration date.

Note: All new Learners added to the LMS by department, group, job code, or facility, will gain access to all ‘active’ announcements assigned to that department, group and so on.

You can run Acknowledgement reports to see at a glance the names of the Learners that have acknowledged an announcement, and the names of the Learners that have not acknowledged an announcement by either inactive or active Learner status.

Managing Administrator Responsibilities

Administrators have the following responsibilities:

·  Assign a ‘type’ (e.g., General information, Meeting Minutes, Practice Change) to new announcements. Types are similar to categories. Some types have been added for you, and you can also add or edit types.

·  Assign ‘Acknowledgement Text’ when a new announcement requires an acknowledgement. The text then displays in the Acknowledgement window for the assigned Learners.

·  Publish the announcement to one or more of your Learners, facilities, departments or all Learners depending on your administrative scope. Keep in mind that once an announcement is ‘published’ you can no longer edit the announcement or remove it from the assigned learners; however, you can change the ‘Expiration Date’, and assign the announcement to additional Learners.

·  Run an ‘Acknowledgements Report’. The report includes summary information and a detailed list of Learners by the number of active and inactive Learners assigned, active and inactive acknowledged and active due announcements. You can also print or export these reports into an Excel spreadsheet.

Understanding Learner Responsibilities

Learners have the following responsibilities:

·  Review the number of new announcements that display on the Learner’s Personal Page’ and the number of Announcements due and overdue. Note: The number of new announcements includes any announcements added since the Learner’s last log in and any unread announcements remaining from previous logins.

·  Acknowledge announcements as needed by the due date specified. When an acknowledgement is required, the announcement remains visible on the Learners announcement list after its expiration date – called ‘Persistent’. All announcements that are marked “Acknowledged’ are also ‘Persistent’.

·  If an announcement is acknowledged late, the date displays in red.

The example below shows the Learner acknowledged announcement late. The green checkmark means it was acknowledged by the Learner and the red date text means the acknowledged announcement was acknowledged late.

Announcement Manager

From the ‘Announcement Manager’, you can manage all announcements as well as create new announcements. You can view announcements by all, active, expired and archived and you can sort the announcements by all of column headers (e.g., Acknowledgement).

Viewing Announcements (All, Active, Expired and Archived)

You can view the announcements several ways. By default the announcements display only the ‘active’ (current) announcements. You can also view ‘All’, ‘Expired’ and ‘Archived’ announcements.

It is helpful to understand how the Learners view and manage announcements.

Viewing ALL Announcements

By default, when you open the ‘Announcements’, only the ‘Active’ announcements are listed. If you select the ‘All’ view, you can view active, expired and archived announcements all at the same time.

Tip: Sort by any of the column headings.

Viewing Active Announcements

An announcement is considered active any time before its expiration date.. It displays both on the Learners list of announcements and in the ‘Active’ view of your administrative announcements.

Note: If an announcement requires an acknowledgement, it continues to display on the Learner’s list of announcements after the Expiration date. However, it moves to the ‘Expired’ announcements for Administrators.

Administrator Example: Notice the two announcements listed have not expired. Today’s date is December 22, 2009. So both announcements are ‘Active’.

Viewing Expired Announcements

When an announcement expires (passes its expiration date), it automatically moves to the ‘Expired’ view list of announcements and is removed from learners announcement list unless it is a Persistent announcement

Note: Announcements that require an Acknowledgement or are marked ‘Persistent’ when created, remain on the Learners list.

Administrator Example of ‘Expired’ announcement view for Administrators: Notice the two announcements listed have expired and now display in the “Expired”. Today’s date is December 22, 2009.

Archived Announcements

Once an announcement expires, you can ‘Archive’ the announcement. Find the name of the Announcement you want to archive from the ‘Expired’ view. To the right of the announcement you wish to archive, click the ‘Archive’ button.

Note: Archived Announcements are removed from the learners list of announcements including all Persistent Announcements.

Sorting Announcements by Column

You can sort any column from the different announcement views when its title is underlined.

The example below shows the columns you can sort by: Type, Priority, Acknowledgement, Announcement, Active, Inactive, Start Date and Expires.

Understanding How Learners View Announcements

Learner’s View from the Personal Page

Your Learners can view the number of new announcements, the number of acknowledgement due and the number of acknowledgement overdue from their Personal Page.

Example of Personal Page and Announcements:

Once the Learner opens the announcement page, she can view the details of each announcement as well as read each announcement and acknowledge each announcement if needed.

Learner’s View by Sorting

Your Learners can sort announcements by the Date, Type, Acknowledgement, and Title columns.

Example of the Announcements page for a Learner:

Learner’s View of a Late Acknowledgement

If a Learner acknowledges his/her announcement after the due date, the acknowledged date displays in red as shown below.

Note: The due date was 11/30/2009 and is red because it was acknowledged after the due date, on 12/1/2009.

Learner’s View of Announcement Types

When an announcement requires an acknowledgement, it contains an ‘Announcement Type’. It displays from the Learner’s open announcement in the upper left. See the example below.

Learner’s View of High Importance

The example below shows how the Learner sees the ‘high importance’ announcements. A red exclamation mark displays to the left of the announcement’s Title link.

Learner’s View of Required Acknowledgement

The example below shows how the Learner sees an announcement that requires an acknowledgement. A red flag displays to the left of the announcement’s Subject link.

Understanding How Administrators Assign and View Announcements

Adding and Viewing High Importance

To give an announcement more visibility and show its importance to Learners, you can add the ‘High Importance’ icon.

An announcement of High Importance.

The example below shows how an administrator sees an announcement of ‘high importance’. A red exclamation mark displays in the ‘Priority’ column.

Requiring Acknowledgements

You have the option to require an acknowledgement from your Learners for any announcement you assign. Learners are alerted on their Personal Page for all new, due and overdue announcements. After the Learner opens, reads and acknowledges the announcement, she receives a green checkmark for acknowledging the announcement.

You have access to an ‘Acknowledgement Report’ to view what announcements your Learners have or have not acknowledged. (See Acknowledgement Reports at the end of this document.)

Note: An announcement can be both of High Importance and require an Acknowledgement.

An announcement requiring acknowledgment displays a red flag. After the Learner acknowledges the announcement, she receives a green checkmark, meaning she acknowledged the announcement. (Announcements that require an acknowledgement remain on the Learner’s Announcements page.)
An announcement of High Importance and requiring acknowledgment displays a red exclamation mark and red flag.
An acknowledged announcement. After the Learner acknowledges the announcement, she receives a green checkmark, meaning she has acknowledged the announcement. (Only shows on Learner side.)

Administrative View of a Required Acknowledgement

The example below shows how an administrator sees an announcement that requires an Acknowledgement. A red flag displays in the Acknowledgement column.

The example below shows that announcement has a ‘Type’ of ‘Polices & Procedures’, has a ‘Priority of ‘High-importance’, requires an acknowledgement because of the red flag, has four (4) active Learners assigned, and ‘Expires’ on 12/1/2009. Because the announcement requires an acknowledgement, when it expires it will remain on the Learners list of announcements.

Adding ‘Persistent’ Announcements

You can create a persistent announcement so it remains on the Learners’ announcement lists even after the expiration date. If you select ‘Acknowledgement Required’, ‘Persistent’ automatically selects. If you want an announcement that does not require an acknowledgement to remain on a learners list past the Expiration date then you can choose ‘Persistent’ only. You can only see from the ‘Add/Update Announcement’ page if an announcement is marked ‘Persistent’.

Note: Inactive Learners will retain ‘Persistent announcement assignments and gain access to all active announcements assigned to that department, group, job code, facility and so on when they are returned to ‘Active status’.

Managing Acknowledgement Text

When you create an ‘Acknowledgement Required’ announcement, you can create your own ‘Acknowledgement Text’ or use other available text.

Managing Types (Categories)

Overview

You can group your announcements by ‘Type’ (e.g., Meeting Minutes). Think of ‘type’ as a category.

Steps to Create a Type
  1. From the menu bar, select System — Manage Announcements.

The ‘Announcements’ page opens from the ‘Active’ selection.

  1. Click the (Add New) button in the upper right.
  2. Click the Add/Edit Announcement Types link.
  1. Enter a name for the new type in the ‘Add’ text box
  2. Click the Add button.
  3. Click the Close Window button to return to the Create Announcement page.
Steps to Edit a Type
  1. From the menu bar, select System — Manage Announcements.

The ‘Announcements’ page opens from the ‘Active’ selection.

  1. Click the (Add New) button in the upper right.
    The ‘Add Announcement’ page opens.
  2. Click the Add/Edit Announcement Types link.
  3. Click the Edit link to the right of the name of the type you want to edit.
  4. Click inside the text box, and edit as needed.
  5. Click the Update button to the right.
  6. Click the Close Window button to return to the Announcement’s page.
Steps to Remove a Type
  1. From the menu bar, select System — Manage Announcements.
  2. Click the (Add New) button in the upper right.
    The ‘Add Announcement’ page opens.
  3. Click the Add/Edit Announcement Types link.
  4. Click the Delete link to the right of the name of the type you want to remove.
  5. Click OK from the popup.
  6. Click the Close Window button to return to the Announcement page.

Creating an Announcement

If you create an announcement with a current date, it’s available for Learners to see the next time each assigned Learner logs on. You can also set the date to a future date so the announcement waits and then appears automatically on that date.

After an Announcement is created and saved, it will need to be ‘Published’ to assign it to the chosen Learners. See “Assigning/Publishing an Announcement.”

Note: Announcements are only assigned to active learners.. If a new Learner is added to the LMS or an Inactive learner is activated they gain access to all active announcements assigned to that department, group, and so on.

Steps to Create an Announcement

The steps below include showing you how to select a type, set high-importance, require the Learners to acknowledge an announcement and an explanation of persistence, create an acknowledgement text and where to display the announcement.

Note: You can only use ‘Acknowledgement text’ when an announcement has been assigned the ‘Acknowledgement Required’ property.

  1. From the menu bar, select System — Manage Announcements.

The ‘Announcements’ page opens in the ‘Active’ view. Active list includes all announcements that have not reached their expiration date.

  1. Click the (Add New) button in the upper right. And the ‘Add/Update Announcement’ page opens as shown below.
  1. From ‘Title’, enter a Title for the announcement. Make it descriptive.
  2. Select a Starting Date. Either accept today’s date as the ‘Starting Date’ or click inside the date to open the calendar to select a future date for the announcement to start automatically. You can also change the date manually.
  3. Select an Expiration Date (upper right – you may need to scroll to the right). Either accept the date shown (7 days after the Starting Date is the default) or click inside the date to open the calendar to select a different date for the announcement to expire automatically. You can also change the date manually.
  4. From ‘Announcement Properties’, select from the selections below as needed:

·  High Importance: Optional. Select the High Importance checkbox if you want your Learners to view the announcement as very important.