New Communication Page Layout

New Communication Page Layout

The send announcement and send message page may look different but you will find that it shares the same functionality along with a few quality of life improvements. This article will give you a bit of insight into how the new layout works and why we chose to go down this route. We know this page is vital to your daily workflow and any change can slow you down but we hope that this will increase your efficiency in the future once you learn the ropes. 



New Layout Vs. Old Layout

The old layout had all of the message content at the top of the page and everything else crammed at the bottom. Usually, when someone is going to be sending out a message they already have the recipients and the type of message in mind. Because of that, we moved the recipient information to the top of the page. 


One of the main advantages of this change is that we can now dynamically adjust the form based on the information you add to the top of the page. For example, we can hide certain fields based on what you select above. This will reduce the clutter on the form. 


Recipient Detail 

Recipient detail is the topmost section of the new form and is where you select who is going to receive the message and what general type of message it is. 

Message Type

This is where you choose between sending the standard message type or setting it as an emergency notification. 


Standard messages follow the normal preference set by each resident and should be the one you use when sending out updates and general notifications. 


Emergency notifications should only be used during dangerous or life-threatening events. It will override all communication preferences and try to send a phone, email, and text message to every resident. Emergency notifications do require you to have communication credits; in the event you do not have credits you can temporarily use this feature and agree to pay for the credits later. 


Note: Emergency notifications are prepended with a message that this is an emergency message. 

Send To

“Send to” has not changed. Select all communities, filter down to specific locations or use our distribution group feature. 


Don’t know about distribution groups yet? Read our help article here. 

Include

Include has not changed. You can still filter and narrow your message down based on user types. Send to only owners, tenants, board members, etc. 



Message Content

Message content is where you create the messages to send out. 


Template

Here is where all your saved past message templates are. You can select from them to automatically pre-populate the message content. 


Send Using

This field has changed. Previously you could only select all or non. Either send to phone, email, and text, or just one of them. Now you can customize this however you want. If you only want to send text and email check both of those boxes. Whichever box you check automatically adds the relevant field below it. 


You can now select just text and email. 

Subject

This has not changed. This is the subject of the email and is the heading for each message in the message center. 


Text/Phone/Email Fields

These fields have not changed other than the fact they are hidden when not checked off in the “Send Using” field. 



Sending Preference

Here you can adjust any additional settings. 


Send has not changed. You can still send immediately or schedule for up to 2 weeks ahead. 


When sending has not changed. You can send without previewing the recipient list or previewing the recipient list. We always recommend previewing but some larger communities may have to wait as the list gets generated. 


Save as a new template has been moved to the bottom of the page. This will save the content in the templates area so you can add it to future messages.