AX1503

Managing announcements in Axiom forms

Use the Announcement component in an Axiom form to add, edit, and delete announcements.

As a best practice to provide full announcement management capabilities, create an Axiom form that is only intended for use by announcement administrators. Include an Announcement component on the form and configure it as follows:

  • Enable Show All Announcements so that announcement administrators can view and edit future and expired announcements. Otherwise, Axiom does not display future and expired announcements in the component and they cannot be accessed.

  • Size the component to a tall height so that announcement administrators can view many announcements without scrolling.

NOTE: The ability to manage announcements is available only to administrators and to users with the Administer Announcements security permission. Users without these permissions only see announcements within the component; they do not see any of the editing controls.

IMPORTANT: Product-delivered landing pages use a different Announcements component than the one detailed here for use in Axiom forms. For more information on managing announcements in product-delivered landing pages, see the separate documentation for the product.

Adding announcements

You can add announcements using any Announcement component in an Axiom form. All announcements that are created using a component are saved to the same central repository and are available to all Announcement components in the system. It does not matter whether the current Announcement component is filtered to only display certain categories; you can still use the component to create a new announcement for any category.

To add an announcement:

  1. Click the plus icon in the top right corner of the Announcements component.

  2. In the Add Announcement dialog, complete the following announcement properties:

    Item Description

    Category

    The category for the announcement. All announcements must have a category. Categories can display different announcements to different audiences by configuring Announcement components to only show announcements for certain categories.

    By default, the first category in the list is selected. To use a different category, select it from the list. To create or edit a category, click Manage Categories.

    If your organization does not use different categories, all announcements are assigned to the default General category.

    Start Date

    The date that you want the announcement to be available to users. By default, this is today's date.

    If you do not want Axiom to display the announcement until some point in the future, select a future date. Axiom does not display the announcement in any Announcement components until that date (unless Show All Announcements is enabled for the component).

    Expire Date

    Optional. The date that you want Axiom to stop displaying the announcement to users.

    You can specify a date so that the announcement is automatically hidden after the expiration date is reached or leave it blank so that the announcement continues to be displayed until it is deleted by an announcement administrator.

    The expiration date must be after the start date and cannot be today's date.

    Title

    The title of the announcement. The title text is what appears to users in the announcement component.

    The title text may be the entirety of the announcement. For example, you could define a title such as "Reminder: All budgets due today!" with no additional message text.

    If the title text is too long for Axiom to display in the Announcement component , an ellipses appears at the end of the visible text. Users can click the view link to view the full announcement text.

    High Importance

    Optional. Select this check box to display the announcement with high importance. In the Announcement component, a red exclamation point appears next to the announcement.

    Message

    Optional. The message text of the announcement.

    Use the text box to define the message text. The text can be multiple lines and can use bold, italic, and underlined text.

    Message text is not displayed within the Announcements component. If message text is defined, the announcement has a view link. Users can click this link to view the full announcement text (title and message).
  3. Review all announcement settings, and then click Save.

If the start date is today, the saved announcement is immediately available to all Announcement components and is visible in any components that are configured to display the announcement's assigned category. If a user currently views a form with an Announcement component, the new announcement is not displayed until the form is updated by using a Button component or any other component that is configured to auto-submit.

Editing announcements

You can edit any announcement that is currently displayed in an Announcement component in an Axiom form. We recommend you use an Announcement component that is configured with Show All Announcements enabled so that you have access to all available announcements.

If the Announcement component that you use for editing does not have Show All Announcements enabled, you cannot edit the following announcements because they are not displayed in the component:

  • Announcements with start dates in the future
  • Announcements that reached their expiration dates
  • Announcements that were filtered from being displayed by using the Limit Categories To option.

To edit an announcement:

  1. Hover your cursor over the row of the announcement to edit so that the editing icons are displayed on the right side of the row. Click the pencil icon to edit the announcement.
  2. In the Edit Announcement dialog, edit the applicable announcement settings. Note the following:
    • Changing the announcement category may prevent the announcement from being displayed in certain components, and to start being displayed in other components, depending on which categories those components are configured to show.
    • Changing the start date to the future prevents the announcement from being displayed in any components (except components with Show All Announcements enabled).
    • It is not possible to change the expiration date to today to hide the announcement immediately. You must delete the announcementto immediately stop it from being displayed.
  3. Review all announcement settings, and then click Save.

Changes to announcements take effect immediately. If a user views a form with an Announcement component, the changes are not displayed until the form is updated by using a Button component or any other component configured to auto-submit.

Deleting announcements

You can delete any announcement that is currently displayed in an Announcement component in an Axiom form. We recommend you use an Announcement component that is configured with Show All Announcements enabled, so that you have access to all available announcements.

If the Announcement component that you use for deletion does not have Show All Announcements enabled, you cannot delete the following announcements because they are not displayed in the component:

  • Announcements with start dates in the future
  • Announcements that have reached their expiration dates
  • Announcements that have been filtered from being displayed using the Limit Categories To option.

If you delete an announcement, it is not recoverable. Verify that you no longer need the announcement before you delete it.

NOTE: When an announcement expires, it is not immediately deleted from the Axiom database. Expiration means that the announcement is no longer displayed in the component (except for components with Show All Announcements enabled). To remove the announcement from the database, you must delete it.

To delete an announcement:

  • Hover your cursor over the row of the announcement to delete so that the editing icons are displayed on the right side of the row. Click the trash can icon to delete the announcement.

The announcement is deleted immediately. If a user views a form with an Announcement component, the announcement is not removed until the form is updated by using a Button component or any other component that is configured to auto-submit.

The System.SystemDataPurge Scheduler job automatically deletes all expired announcements past a configured time period. By default, this time period is 30 days.

Managing announcement categories

All announcements must belong to a category. If you do not use multiple categories, all announcements are assigned to the default category of General. To use other categories, you must create them.

You can create, edit, and delete categories from the Add Announcement or Edit Announcement dialogs. Click the Manage Categories link above the Category drop-down list.

In the Manage Categories dialog, all existing categories are displayed in a grid at the top of the dialog. Within this dialog, you can do the following:

  • To add a new category, click Add a New Category. Define a Name and Display Text for the category, and then click Save. The new category is added to the grid. The category name must be unique.

  • To edit a category, click the category name in the grid, so that the name and text appear below. Edit the text as needed, and then click Save. You cannot change category name.

  • To delete a category, hover your cursor over the category row until the editing icons are displayed in the right side of the row. Click the trash can icon to delete the category.

    You cannot delete a category if active announcements are assigned to that category—you must first delete these announcements or assign them to another category.

The name of the category identifies the category, whereas the text is displayed to users. You could define a category name of Cap, and the text as Capital. You can later edit the text as needed without changing the underlying ID of the category.

NOTE: When configuring an Announcement component to filter by category, the list of categories is loaded when the file is opened. If you add or remove a category, you must close and reopen the file in order to see the changes.