myHill Targeted Announcements

Introduction

Targeted announcements within myHill are the primary method of communication to the Stonehill community as a whole and to various groups within the community. The ability to send targeted announcements may be granted to authorized users based on the needs of their department to communicate with specific groups. College departments are encouraged to limit this access to individuals (typically two people) who have attended the required training on the use of the announcements features. Departments with only an occasional need to send targeted announcements may do so through the custodians for the targeted role or the appropriate Division Head (see below for specifics).

Targeted announcements within the portal can be sent as:

• Campus Announcements - targeted to the entire campus community
• Personal Announcements - targeted to specific audiences

Campus Announcements Overview
Campus Announcements are sent to all portal users and appear within the Campus Announcements channel located on the myHill Home tab. The Home tab is delivered to all users except prospective students. Campus Announcements are the primary method for communicating information of interest to the entire college community. Campus Announcements can only be delivered to the channel and not to email.

Who is authorized to send Campus Announcements?
Campus Announcements are reserved for use by the President's Office, Division Heads, Campus Police, Information Technology, Human Resources, and Communications and Media Relations.

Personal Announcements Overview
Personal Announcements are sent to specific portal audiences and can be sent as email or to the Personal Announcements channel located on the myHill Home tab. The Home tab is delivered to all users except prospective students. The Personal Announcement channel is delivered to prospective students on the welcome tab. Personal Announcements are the primary method to target information to specific groups within the community based on their role, group membership, enrolled course or a student attribute like Major.

Current roles include:

• All Students
• Class of XX (for current classes)
• All Faculty
• All Employees

Personal announcements can also be sent to imported groups which must be created from
information residing in Banner. For example, an imported group could be used to target
announcements to full time faculty. Requests for additional imported groups can be initiated as
an Information Systems Request and will be evaluated based on volume of use and scope of
impact.

Who is authorized to send Personal Announcements?
Access to send personal announcements will be authorized by custodians for each primary role
as listed below. Custodians will also authorize access to roles or imported groups that are
subsets of the primary roles, for example access to the Class of 2012 will be authorized by the
Dean of Students. Custodians may authorize more restricted access to the student role through
permissions based on student attributes, for example by major.

Procedures to acquire authorization to targeted announcements

1. Departments assess their need to communicate to groups within the Stonehill community
   and identify the individuals within their department who will be responsible for those
   communications.
2. The department head sends an email to the custodian for each of the roles they need to
   send announcements to requesting permission for access to the role, identifying the
   individuals responsible and briefly describing their need. Discussion of the need may
   ensue with the custodian and department head to understand the requirements.
3. The custodian forwards their authorization to the IT Help Desk in an email that includes
   the names of the individuals that can send targeted announcements to the specified role.
   Restricted access to the student role based on a specified attribute should be included, if
   necessary.
4. The IT Help Desk enables access, notifies the individuals, and schedules training.
5. Individuals with access to targeted announcements follow the guidelines when sending
   their announcements.

Guidelines for sending targeted announcements

• Campus announcements should be pertinent to all myHill users, including students,
  faculty and staff. For example, information about campus wide events like
  Commencement or an announcement about closing parking lots could be considered
  campus announcements.
• With appropriate authorization, Personal Announcements can be sent to the channel or as
  e-mail. Careful consideration should be given to whether email distribution is required as
  channel use will encourage portal access for information and help to minimize the number of messages in email inboxes. Sending the same announcement to both email and the channel is discouraged.
• It is appropriate to send announcements related to critical security or safety issues by both email and the channel.
• Messages are shown in the announcement channels in descending order by date added. When a new message is posted, previous messages move down in the list.
• The message subject should be 50 characters or less and concisely describe the message content. Portal users will click on message subject to display the message detail. The message display includes a list of all of the user's announcements in the header.
• Message text should be concise; most users do not read long messages online word for word. Consider placing a link to more information within the announcement or referring the reader to another tab and channel with more content.
• Announcements include a delivery date and time. The default delivery date and time is set to the date and time of message creation. Delivery date can be set to deliver the announcement in the future.
• Announcements include an expiration date and time. The default expiration date is set to 7 days from the default delivery date. The expiration date should be no longer than 7 days and may be set shorter depending on the message content. For example, if a parking lot closing is only an issue for today, the expiration date and time should be today at 11:59 pm.