Introduction

The purpose of this quick reference guide is to outline the intended uses of the Announcements Page template on the UChicago Intranet for Sitecore content authors. The document also includes best practices for components most commonly used on this page template. 

If you are unfamiliar with the terms in this guide, you may find this Glossary helpful. If you are unfamiliar with navigating the Sitecore Ribbon, you may find this guide helpful.

Where to use the Announcements Page template

The Announcements Page template should be used only to create announcements for the UChicago Intranet. Both internal and external announcements can be created with the same template. All announcements must be created in an Announcements folder. 

Examples in use

• https://intranet.uchicago.edu/news-and-events/announcements/2024/02/feb-28-important-changes-to-duo-two-factor-authentication
• https://intranet.uchicago.edu/News-and-Events/Announcements/2024/02/Feb-27-Chicago-French-Press-to-Open-in-University-Bookstore-in-March-2024

How to create a new announcement 

While you can create a new announcement template from scratch, it saves time to duplicate an existing announcement. 

1. Click on a recent announcement that you'd like to duplicate. (If the "External Announcement Link" field is populated, it is an external announcement. If that field is empty, it is an internal announcement hosted on the intranet.) It will save time to duplicate the same announcement type you would like to create. 
2. Right-click on the announcement in the content tree to duplicate it. 
3. Click "duplicate" and rename your announcement starting with the date (e.g. Aug 31) followers by a descriptor for your announcement (e.g. Aug 31 Workday Outage Announcement). 
4. Once your announcement has been created you can edit and update the fields detailed below. 

Intranet Announcement Style Guide

An announcement must pertain to or be of potential interest to all/most academics and/or staff to be placed on the home page/announcements landing page. Once posted, announcements will remain on the intranet, even if their relevancy or timeliness has passed, for archive/reference purposes.

Personalization vs Security

Personalization

Authors can use personalization to create an announcement that appears only in certain views of a personalized news list using the "Targeted User Role" field. Announcements will only appear in News Lists with a matching Targeted User Role. For example, on the UChicago Intranet Homepage, the announcements list in the upper right corner is personalized to show a different component for different user roles. If an academic logs into the intranet, they will only see announcements with a Targeted User Role of Academic or All. A staff member will only see announcements with a Targeted User Role of Staff or All. However, the Targeted User Role is not a security measure and will not prevent a user from accessing (via direct link or Search) an announcement targeted to a role other than their own. 

Security

To create an announcement that is only accessible to a certain role, content authors must use Security permissions. In the Ribbon, under the Security tab, you can use Security Presets to limit an announcement to only the Academic role or Staff role, or you can make it accessible to everyone (with or without a CNET ID) with the Public User role. For example, if you select "Grant Access - Academic," only users with an Academic role will be able to view the announcement. Other users with the direct link will be taken to a 403 error page, informing them that they do not have access to the content they are trying to access. 

Note: Only certain levels of Sitecore users have access to the Security tab. 

Page Title 

• Announcements should use an active, news-like headline, rather than a topic or subject line.
• There should be a subject and verb. 
• Use present tense when possible. 
• Do not include the sender name in the headline. 
• If there is a specific date in the headline, abbreviate the month.  
• Capitalize all words in the headline, except conjunctions/prepositions that are three letters or less. 

Note: In many cases, following this guidance will mean re-writing the subject lines of the email or web page with the announcement.  

For example:  

1. University Announces Winter Recess as Annual Benefit (rather than just "Winter Recess")  
2. Open Enrollment Starts Today and Runs Through Nov. 15 (rather than just "Open Enrollment")

Publish Date 

Enter the date the announcement was initially made or distributed (such as the date of the email with the announcement), rather than the date it is being posted to the intranet if those two dates are different. Include month, day of month, and year. (Select from the dropdown menu in Sitecore; formatting is automatic.)  

Author

Always populate this field. This is a different field from "source." If the announcement came from a specific leader or person, the by "field" should be populated with that leader's name. (More than one person can be included if there is more than one sender/signer.) The person's title (capitalized) should follow their name. 

Note: You do not need to enter the word 'By,' as that is automatically populated.  

For example: 

• By Paul Alivisatos, President, and Ka Yee C. Lee, Provost 

If the announcement did not come from a specific leader, include the school/division/office/department that it came from instead.  

For example: 

• By Human Resources  

News Source 

This appears on the listing of announcements on the Announcements landing page and should always be populated. Follow the guidance above for the "by" field, including leader(s) name and title if the message came from a specific person and the school/division/office/department if it did not come from a specific person. This should typically replicate what you entered for 'Author.'

Taxonomy

The Taxonomy section of your Announcements Page is important for adding tags to help categorize your news story to reach its intended audience.

To make edits to Taxonomy, navigate to your page in the Content Editor, and find the Taxonomy section (toward the bottom). 

Department

While "department" does not appear as a field when viewing an announcement on the intranet, populate this field with one of the options in Sitecore, as "department" is a search facet for announcements. If your department is not listed, please leave this section blank or contact uchicagointranet@uchicago.edu.

School/Division

While "School/Division/Office" does not appear as a field when viewing an announcement on the intranet, always populate this field with at least one of the following in Sitecore, as "School/Division/Office" is a search facet for announcements (this is a mandatory field). You may only select University-Wide if your announcement has been approved by the Internal Communications team. Please contact uchicagointranet@uchicago.edu if you believe your announcement should be University-Wide. 

To select a School/Division, click on the School/Division of your choosing, and click the right arrow to move it over into the selected box. You can choose more than one school or division if applicable. If you do not see your School/Division in this list, please contact uchicagointranet@uchicago.edu.

Tags

This section is not currently functional. Please ignore this section.

Target User Role

If your news story is meant for a specific user role (i.e., Staff or Academic) you can select that role in this section from the dropdown menu. If you leave this blank, it will be visible to all roles. 

Topic

Please select the topic most relevant to your announcement from the dropdown list. All announcements must have a topic selected. 

Commonly used components

If you are unfamiliar with how to add components, you may find Introduction to Data and Components and Navigating the Experience Editor helpful. You can explore a list of all Sitecore components in the Sitecore Components List.

Default components

The Announcements Page template does not come prepopulated with any components. We highly recommend duplicating an existing announcement rather than creating a new one from scratch.

Recommended components

To comply with Intranet announcements styling, your announcement must have the following components. If you duplicate an existing announcement, these will be pre-populated.

Article Header

Allows content authors to create a small banner at the top of the page with a text title, topic, publish date, and author. The component uses the Announcements Page template as its data source, so you do not need to create a new data source in the data folder. 

To edit the Article Header, navigate to your page in the Content Editor. Under the Content section, you can edit the Page Title. Under the Author section, you can edit the Author and News Source and Publish Date. Please note that if you leave the News Source blank it will automatically populate as "UChicago News." Please see the Intranet Announcements style Guide section for more guidance.

Callout Box

Allows Intranet content authors to place a colorful, outlined box with a header, description, and button in the small column of a two-column page, or in the header component. Users also have the option of adding a background image if desired. Several color themes are available. 

The callout box on the announcements page is used to give readers an option to view all announcements. This is a global callout box used on all announcements pages and should NOT be altered in any way. 

Rich Text 1

The main body of your announcement will live in the Rich Text components. The template comes pre-populated with Rich Text 1, but you can add Rich Text 2-5 if more fields are required. Please use Rich Text 2, Rich Text 3, Rich Text 4, and Rich Text 5 in order. This component uses the Announcements template as its data source, so you do not need to create a new data source in the data folder. 

To edit Rich Text 1-5, navigate to your page in the content editor, find the Rich Text section and the corresponding Rich Text field. If you are unfamiliar with how to edit Rich Text please refer to the Rich Text section in Navigating the Content Editor. 

Please note that it's extremely important to make sure you are not copying over formatting from another source into Sitecore. This can easily lead to accessibility issues and create inconsistent formatting across our site. We highly recommend using the "Paste Plain Text" feature to avoid this issue.

Video Inline

Allows content authors to embed a full-width video that is hosted externally, such as YouTube. Content authors can also add a heading, still image, and set the width of the video. When adding this component to the Announcement Page, create the data source in your page's data folder.

Fields: 

• Embed Script: paste the embed code from YouTube here. You can find your YouTube embed code by selecting "Share" and "Embed" on the YouTube video. Copy the entire script that appears and paste it into this field in Sitecore.

• Heading: If you would like a heading to appear above the video on your page, you can insert the heading here. 
• Still Image: If you would like the video to show a different image than the default before a visitor presses play, you can insert that image here. Make sure it has the same dimensions and pixel size as the video you're displaying.
• Maximum Video Width (in pixels): The height and width of your video will be set in the embed code (in the example above it is 560 by 315 pixels, but if you would like the image width to be smaller, you can insert the maximum pixel width here. To make the image larger the width and height must be changed in the embed code.