The news feed allows for site admins to relay messages to their users.

Introduction

The site news feed allows admins to send messages to their users.

A news item consists of a title and short message, with the option to link to an external article.

Managing News Feed Messages

The page to manage news feed items can be found under the system configuration menu, within the content & designs submenu.

Navigating to this page will bring you to the messages page, displaying a list of existing messages.

The page displays information about each message.

Title - appears as the header of the message.
Content - a short blurb describing what the article is about.
Article Link - a link to the full article or a related web page.
Visible - shows if the message is visible to users or not.
Published - the date on which the message will appear on the news feed of users.
Options - actions that can be taken regarding the message. From here, it can be edited or sent to archived.

At the top of the list, the button to create a new message can be found.

This will navigate to the message content page.

Enter the required content for the news post.

Title - the title of the news post.
Description - a short blurb describing what the post is about.
Article Link - a link to a related web page or full article.
Link Text - the text that will appear on the link button.
Published - the date on which the message will appear on the news feed of users. The message will not appear to users until this date, so messages can be made to appear on a set date in the future.
Visible - controls whether the message will be visible to users or not.

The message will only appear to site users if it has been marked as visible and the publish date has already passed.

Press save changes to save the contents of the message.

It is now ready to be received by users.

A message can be archived by clicking on the archive button next to the record.

Once a message has been archived, it will no longer appear in the list of messages or be available to users, regardless of its viewable status.

Archived messages can be viewed by clicking on the view archived button.

This will open a page containing a list of messages that have been archived.

From this page, messages can be unarchived or deleted from the system.

Once a message has been deleted, it cannot be recovered.

Once a message has been created and published, it is able to be viewed by users from within the OPS-COM app.

When logged in to the site, an alert indicating the number of new messages will appear above the menu icon.

The page checks for new messages once every 15 minutes.

Within the main menu, news can be accessed by clicking on the news feed menu option.

Opening the menu will display the news feed. Unread messages will be indicated by an icon.

After new messages have been viewed, they will be marked as read.

An alternative way for users to stay up-to-date on news posts is through the RSS feed.

An RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed is a form of standardized content distribution designed to be read by a news aggregation program.

The RSS feed for the site news feed can be accessed from any OPS-COM website by ending the URL with: