How do I add an announcement?

Go to the Announcements tool.

Select the Announcements tool from the Tool Menu of your site.

Click Add.

Title your announcement and add content.

Give your announcement a title in the Announcement title field, and then enter the content of the announcement into the Rich Text Editor. Use the formatting options in the editor to modify the font size or color, add images or links, or embed other content.

Highlight the announcement.

If you would like this message to be highlighted in the list, select the check box to Highlight this announcement.

Highlighted items appear in bold with a star next to the title, as shown below:

Determine who can view the announcement.

By default, all people enrolled in this site can view the announcement.

Making the announcement publicly viewable means that you can send a link to the announcement to users outside the course, or even outside your instance of Sakai, and the announcement will be viewable by them.

You may also select to display the announcement to selected groups. (Groups must already exist in your site to see this option.) Participants that are not part of the selected groups will then not be able to view the announcement.

Or, you may display the announcement to selected roles. (Users with the designated roles must be enrolled in the site in order to see them in the list.)

Select when the announcement will be displayed.

Select Show to display the announcement immediately when it is posted. You can also choose to Hide the announcement (saving as a draft until you are ready to fully post it), or you can Specify Dates when the announcement will be available.

Select availability dates. (Optional)

Optionally choose Specify Dates to display the announcement only during a specific time frame. Activate the box beside Beginning and/or Ending, and click the calendar icon to insert the properly formatted date and time when the announcement will begin and/or end. Note that you activate a Beginning date without activating an Ending date, or activate an Ending date without activating a Beginning date.

Add attachments. (Optional)

Click the Add Attachments button.

Browse for the file.

If the file is not already in your Resources in the course, click Choose File to locate the file on your computer. Click Continue to attach the file.

Or, if the file is already available in Resources, click Select from resources and click the Attach a copy option associated with the file. Click Continue to attach the file.

Notify participants of announcement by email. (Optional)

By default, no email notification is sent. To send email notifications, select one of the following options:

High - All group members, which sends an email to everyone in the course
Low - Not received by those who have opted out, which sends an email to everyone except people who have intentionally changed their settings so that they don't receive low priority messages