Announcements (BETA)

Announcements are a BETA feature in Plecto that allows you to send or schedule time-sensitive messages across your organization via slideshows, emails, cell phone push notifications, Slack, or Microsoft Teams.

With announcements, you can send info and warning messages to your employees and teams, inform your organization about critical situations, send reminders, and more.

There are four types of announcement messages. The message type determines the color of the announcement bar on the slideshows or the icon displayed on push notifications on the phone. You can also see a preview of your announcement when creating one. The available message types are:

• Critical (red)

• Warning (yellow)

• Info (blue)

• Success (green)

1. Go to Visualization > Announcements > + New announcement.
2. Add an announcement title and message.
3. Choose the announcement type.
4. Select if you want to send the announcement immediately or schedule it for later.
5. Choose where you want to distribute the announcement.
6. Once you're ready, click Save.

You can send the announcements to different channels:

1. Slideshows – Send the announcement to all slideshows or select specific slideshows. Once sent, it will permanently display your message on the slideshow. You can set an end date after which the announcement will be removed.
2. Emails – Send the announcement to all employees or selected teams on their email.
3. Phone as push notifications (requires having Plecto mobile app) – Send the announcement to all employees or selected teams on their cell phones. People need to have the Plecto mobile app to receive notifications.
4. Slack – Add or select your Slack credentials and choose a channel. To create new Slack credentials from the announcement editor, you need to follow a similar routine as for notifications. Click on the ➕ button on the right of the credentials field and follow the instructions on your screen.
5. Microsoft Teams – Add your MS Teams credentials and type in a team and channel. The MS Teams configuration here is the same as for notifications.

Once you send an announcement, it will show on the selected channels (slideshows, emails, Slack, mobile). If you send an announcement to a slideshow, it will pop up on the screen and continue displaying your message in the info bar at the slideshow bottom.

If the announcement has an end date, it will automatically remove the message from the slideshow. You can also end the announcement manually:

1. Go to Visualization > Announcements
2. Click on the "Actions" button on the right of an announcement. There you will have the option to end it.

You can see the list of ended announcements in the Ended tab.