Introduction
In your platform, you can send a newsletter directly from the Superadmin to platform users. Newsletters may include details about upcoming events, new training material, and catalogs within the program or anything else that you may need to communicate to your users. As the Superadmin, you can choose whether to send your newsletters to all of your users in your platform, or specific groups and branches of your organizational chart. This article will give you a step-by-step reference for creating and managing newsletters in your platform.
Please note that the newsletter functionality is not available on trials.
Requirements & Limitations
In order to grant a good level of performance and reasonable delivery times, it is recommended to select a maximum of 1,000 recipients when sending a newsletter. When a newsletter is sent, the platform takes time to process the sending, in addition to the time taken by the SMTP sender and the SMTP recipient. The time needed to complete the action and the risk of the newsletter being considered spam is also influenced by the number of recipients. The more recipients are, the longest it will take for the newsletter to be delivered, and the higher the risk of being considered spam. The average delivery time for a newsletter sent to 1,000 recipients is 180 minutes, though this cannot be guaranteed as some steps involve external systems.
Creating a Newsletter
Log into your platform as the Superadmin. Then, access the Admin Menu by scrolling your mouse over the gears icon. Then, in the E-Learning section, select the Newsletter item. Now, you can create your newsletter.
Begin by pressing the Add button in the Recipients section at the top of the page. In the Recipients pop-up box, use the tabs on the left side of the box to determine whether you want to select specific users, branches, or groups. You can also use the search bar at the top of the box to search for specific users, branches, or groups. Simply flag your recipients using the checkmark next to the names, then press Confirm.
Please note: When you are selecting branches of users of your organization chart to send a newsletter, please note that in order to make it easier and faster to select branches, you will see a text input field to type in branch names rather than a list of branches to select if you have more than 1,000 branches in your platform.
Now, in the Inactive Users section, you can flag the option to exclude suspended users from the newsletter recipients' list. This way, if you have flagged any groups or branches to receive a newsletter and there are suspended users inside these groups or branches, these users will not receive the newsletter. Then, flag how you want to deliver your newsletter: by email, in the user's notification area, or both by email and the user's notification area.
Next, insert the email from which you want to send the newsletter into the corresponding text box.
→ The sender address must use a properly configured email domain.
Then insert the title and the text of your newsletter. You can edit the text using the toolbar at the top of the text box and use the photo button to insert photos into the text. Please note that emojis are not supported at the moment.
If required, you can use the < > (source code) toolbar button to directly enter the html of your message. Please note that, for security reasons, the code between <style> and </style> tags is automatically stripped when the newsletter is sent out. Accordingly, any styling applied must be inline, for example:
<p style="color: blue; font-size: 16px; font-weight: bold;">This text has inline styling applied to it.</p>
You can also upload a file to your newsletter if needed. Accepted file types are DOC, XLS, PPT, JPG, GIF, PNG, TXT, DOCX, PPTX, XLSX, PDF, FLV, ODS, ODT, ODP, and CSV. The maximum file size allowed for attachments is 5MB, while the maximum email size (attachments + text/HTML) must not exceed 10 MB.
Attachments will not appear in newsletters that are received via the user's notifications area. However, they will appear in emails. If you need to send an attachment with your newsletter, you should send the newsletter using one of the two options via email.
When you've finished creating the newsletter and it's ready to be sent, press Send. You will receive a confirmation from your platform verifying that your notification has been sent. Your users will then receive the newsletter via email or in their notification area.
Checking Newsletters in a User's Notifications Area
Once users have logged into their platforms, they will see that the bell icon at the top of the screen will have a small number in the corner, indicating how many notifications are waiting to be opened. When the user presses the bell icon, a dropdown list will appear, displaying a preview of the user's most recent notifications.
The user should press the title of the newsletter, then the newsletter will appear in a pop-up box.
Managing the Email Settings for Newsletters
If necessary, you can manage how many notifications are sent at one time. This is useful if you are sending a massive amount of newsletters, or if your email server has specific policies. To do so, access the Admin Menu by scrolling your mouse over the gears icon. Then, press the Advanced Settings item in the Settings section. Once you're on the Advanced Settings page, select the Advanced Options tab from the left side.
In the Newsletter section, you can designate how many newsletters will go out in one block. This parameter is set to 50 by default, if you leave it empty, it will be set back to its default value.
Underneath, you can decide how many seconds the system will wait in between the sending of the newsletter blocks. When you’re finished, press Save at the bottom of the tab.