One-Off & Scheduled

Sending An Immediate / One-Off Announcement

When you wish to quickly distribute news via the Modr8 Platform you can use the one-off / immediate announcement builder. This lets you send a message which contains rich text as well web links, commands and action execution buttons.

Immediate announcement builder

To issue an immediate announcement complete the following steps:

1. Select "Manage" on your bot profile

2. Select "Announce" on your chat profile

3. Select "Create Announcement" button on the "One-off Announcement" card.

4. Add your content using the "Content" area

5. Add any buttons by clicking the "Message Buttons" button.

6. A direct image link can be added if the address ends in .jpg, .gif, .png or .mp4. You can also upload a file into your chat and reply to the message with /fileid this will produce a long string of text which can be pasted into the Image text box too

7. Elect to "Pin Message" if you want the message to be stickied to the top of the chat once issued

8. Click "Submit" to send

Sending A Scheduled Announcement

You may wish to schedule an announcement to be sent at a later date, as well as have it send on an interval basis every x amount of time. We can also use the Modr8 engine to stop the message being sent at a specific time/date. For all of these use-cases we use the scheduled announcement builder module.

The builder is made up of 3 segments, we will show you how to use each section in the following sections.

Schedule annoucement header information

1. Select "Manage" on your bot profile

2. Select "Announce" on your chat profile

3. Select "Manage Announcements" on the "Interval & Scheduled Announcement" card

4. Click "Create Announcement" to begin building a scheduled announcement

5. Start by providing a name for the announcement in the "Name" field. This shows up on your list of scheduled announcements so you can easily edit or delete it later.

6. You can leave the "Active" toggle enabled, this is useful later if you wish to turn your announcement off and re-use it again another time.

7. Elect to "Pin Message" if you wish. When using scheduled announcements it will be re-pinned each time it is sent. This is useful if you have rotating content you wish to pin.

8. Elect to enable the "Remove Last Message" option. This ensures the bot will clean up the previous announcement and keeps your chat nice and tidy.

That's it for this section - the main thing is to ensure you have a name for the announcement you will recognise later. We have some communities running 10's of scheduled announcements through the year so its useful to be able to spot the ones you wish to turn on or off.

In the following section, we will discuss adding your content and being able to rotate content each time an announcement is sent.

Scheduled & Interval announcements can have multiple content sets which are rotated on each interval

1. Begin by adding your message content into the area marked "Text". You can use the buttons above the editor to make text bold, italic, strike-through, code as well as add emojis and links.

2. Add an image web link or fileid into the "Image" input box. A file id can be obtained by uploading your media to your chat (with the bot in) and replying to it with the command /fileid

3. Elect to add any buttons to your message by clicking the "Message Buttons" button. This allows web links, commands and actions to be executed from button clicks attached to the announcement

4. Click "Add More Content" if you wish to add another message and begin the process again

For each content added using the "Add More Content" button your bot will send the next content in the queue after each interval. This is a great way to have 1 scheduled announcement that contains multiple content blocks which rotate sending through the day.

Next we will move onto scheduling your announcement using the schedule section. This offers a powerful set of options from being able to select which content is sent first through to starting and ending your announcement on specific dates & times.

Modr8 scheduled announcements can be started and stopped at specific times.

1. Scroll down to the "Schedule" section

2. By default "Content 1" will be shown, but if you have multiple content created you can select a different one to send first by amending the drop down

3. Set an interval to send your announcement over by amending the "Send Every" X to a value you wish and the drop down to a period you wish e.g. hours or days.

4. Set whether you wish to "Start Sending" immediately or later.

5. If selecting to start sending later, add a date/time in the "Schedule for" input by clicking inside and using the calendar.

6. Set a "Stop Sending" date/time by clicking in the input area and completing the calendar.

7. Click "Submit" to set your announcement. If you have selected to send "Immediately" then it will begin sending.

Note: Times and dates used in the "Schedule For" and "Stop Sending" inputs are based on your local timezone. Modr8 will convert this to send at the correct times for its location using this information.

If you do not wish to continually send your announcement, simply set your "Send Ever" period to be bigger than the gap between Schedule For and Stop Sending times. Example: Schedule for 1pm today, Stop Sending 2pm today. Interval 1 day. Will send once and stop before executing the next interval.

Managing Scheduled Announcements

Scheduled announcements you have created will be listed on the scheduled announcement page for quick management

Once you have created a scheduled announcement it will show up listed in the scheduled announcement table on the scheduled announcement page.

Here you will be able to see the name, interval it is due to send on, the next time it is due to execute as well as whether it is active or not.

From this table you are able to:

• Toggle whether the announcement is active or not to quickly activate or de-activate it

• Click the pencil button to edit your announcement

• Click the red trash bin button to quickly delete your announcement

❓FAQ & Troubleshooting

I have scheduled announcement but what Timezone does it use?

When creating announcements the date/time picker will translate to your local time. This means you should set your scheduled based on what you would like to see in your timezone.

The modr8 engine will transform this in the background to UTC timezone and issue the announcements at the expected value you set.

If another admin were to go to your scheduled announcement, they would see when it is expected to send for THEIR timezone. This means you are all aware of when it is expected to send for the region you are in.

The spacing of message text is not correct when being sent, but it looks fine on the site.

Sometimes we have found people paste content into their message area which can cause spacing issues with the editor we use.

Delete all of the content out of the are and re-add it.

If you still suffer issues with this let us know in our support chat. We are actively looking for bugs in the editor as there are many different keyboard setups people use that we wish to cater for.