Write an announcement

What is this?

With Write an announcement you send an announcement to all or selected members of your choir. Announcements are the right tool for information that should reach everyone. Unlike a chat, they are not aimed at a single recipient but at the whole group.

Typical reasons for an announcement:

• Rehearsal info: short-notice cancellation, room change, extra rehearsal
• Performance info: directions, outfit, sound check, program
• Organizational matters: new rehearsal music, rehearsal schedule, club topics
• Votes: finding a date, choosing pieces, board elections
• Social: birthdays, parties, outings

How to write an announcement

1. Open Messages › Announcements in the sidebar.
2. Click "New announcement" at the top right. In the app, tap "Announcement" at the bottom right.
3. Select the choir under "Recipients", or several if the announcement should go to more than one choir.
4. Restrict the visibility if needed: turn on "Only visible to certain people" and select permission groups, functions, voice parts, chat groups or individual people.
5. Enter a meaningful title (up to 100 characters). It appears in the overview and in the push notification.
6. Write the message. Links are detected automatically.
7. Attach files if needed, or link them from the Files area with "Link from files".
8. Optionally turn on "Add a poll" and enter the question and answers.
9. Tick "Send notification to all members" if everyone should get a push notification and an email.
10. Click "Publish announcement".

Format your text

The toolbar at the message field offers bold, italic, underline, heading, bullet list, numbered list and link. Select your text and tap a tool. For a link, select the words and then enter the address. On the web, Preview shows how the announcement will look. The formatting also appears in the app and in the email.

Link sheet music

If there is, say, a new recording for a piece, link the piece right in the announcement: tap “Link sheet music” and pick one or more pieces from your choir’s sheet music. In the announcement they appear under Sheet music. One tap opens the piece, in the app in the sheet music viewer, on the web on the sheet music page.

• Anyone who may not see a piece, for example because it is hidden or belongs to another choir, sees it greyed out.
• For announcements to several choirs the sheet music comes from the first selected choir.
• You can link your choir’s own sheet music, not publisher titles.

Announcement to several choirs

If you lead several choirs, you can tap more than one in the choir selection. All selected choirs then receive one shared announcement, not a copy per choir. This has consequences you should know about:

• Comments are shared across choirs. Anyone who comments writes for all involved choirs to see, with their name.
• So are reactions and poll results. Participation is counted across all choirs together.
• Restricted visibility is not possible then. Permission groups, functions, voice parts, chat groups and people only exist within one choir. As soon as you select more than one choir, this option is disabled.
• Everyone sees that the announcement is shared. The announcement shows which choirs it goes to and that everyone sees the others' comments.
• Anyone with the matching permission in one of the involved choirs may edit and delete it. The mobile app can't do this for shared announcements yet; it shows a note instead.
• The choirs can't be changed after publishing.

Requirement: you need permission to write announcements in each selected choir. Choirs where you don't have it don't appear in the selection at all.

What recipients see

After publishing, the announcement shows up in the announcements overview right away. If you ticked the notification option, recipients also get a push notification and an email, depending on their settings.

Recipients can comment on your announcement, react with an emoji, download attachments and take part in polls. You automatically follow your own announcement and are told about new comments.

Permission

You need the Create & edit announcements permission to write an announcement. By default the Administrator and Moderator permission groups have it. You manage this under Choirs › Choir › Choir settings › Permissions.

Tips

• Choose a clear, short title. It is also used as the email subject.
• Put the most important point in the first sentence so it shows in the preview and the push notification.
• Restrict visibility on purpose when only one group is affected, for example to one voice part. Others then aren't notified needlessly.
• Combine a poll and an attachment, for example for piece suggestions with sample sheet music as a PDF.
• Select several choirs only for topics that really concern everyone, such as a joint concert. For internal matters, one announcement per choir remains the better choice, because then nobody from the other choir reads along.

Turn off comments

Not every announcement needs a discussion. When creating and editing, you'll find the Allow comments switch. If you turn it off, members can only read the announcement; the comment field disappears, on the web and in the app.

This makes sense for pure information where no response is wanted. You can allow comments again at any time: edit the announcement, turn the switch on, save. Existing comments are kept and stay visible.