Announcements
Schedule an announcement
Write your announcement now and have it go out at the time you choose, with the option to cancel before it goes.
Write today, send later. A scheduled announcement reaches your chosen audience at the date and time you set, and appears on your portal at the same moment.
When to use this
- You want a launch email to land at 9am on launch day.
- You want to write a batch of updates in one sitting.
- You want a reminder to go out the day before an offer ends.
What you schedule is the broadcast. Until its send time, a published announcement with a scheduled broadcast is hidden from your audience: it isn't on your portal and its link doesn't open for them. At the send time it appears on your portal and the emails go out together.
Write the announcement
Go to Audience → Announcements, click Create New, and write your title and post.
Choose who's notified
Keep Notify members on and choose your audiences under Send to.
Pick the time
Choose Scheduled and set the date and time fields to when you want it to go out. They start at roughly the current time, so always change them.
Preview and publish
Click Preview to send yourself a test, then Publish. In "Ready to publish?" check Scheduled is still selected and the date and time are right, then click Publish & Notify.
Check it's queued
On the announcements list, the card shows Sends [date]. Open it: the Broadcast panel shows Scheduled, the send time and the recipient sources.
Change or cancel
Cancel
Open the announcement and click Cancel Broadcast on the Broadcast panel. You'll see "Broadcast cancelled successfully". Nobody is emailed, and the announcement stays published. Without a scheduled broadcast it's visible on your portal straight away, so set it to Unlisted or move it back to a draft first if it isn't ready to be seen. Once the panel shows Sending or Sent, it can't be cancelled.
Change the time, audience or words
The editor doesn't remember the audience and time you chose before. Saving always replaces the broadcast with what's in the publish dialog:
Open the editor
Open the announcement and click Edit. Make your changes to the words if needed.
Save
Click Save Changes. In the dialog, keep Notify members on, choose Scheduled, set the date and time, and pick the audiences again under Send to.
Confirm
Clicking Save without notifying on a scheduled announcement removes its broadcast. Nobody will be emailed, and the post becomes visible on your portal immediately.
Tips
- Times are in your own time zone, as your device shows it.
- A time that has already passed sends straight away.
- You can't save a draft with notifications on. Scheduling needs the post to be published, and it stays hidden until the send time.
- Read it once more the day before. A scheduled broadcast goes out exactly as the post reads at that moment.
What your audience sees
Nothing until the scheduled time. Then the email (or text) arrives and the post appears in Community Notes on your portal, just like an immediate send.