Announcements

Publish news, maintenance notices, and alerts straight into your clients' portal, on the schedule you choose.

What it does

When something goes wrong, or something is about to change, your clients find out by opening a ticket. That buries your team in duplicate enquiries at exactly the moment it can least afford them, and the clients who did not write in are left uninformed. Announcements gives you a place to say it once, in your own client portal, where everyone sees it.

You write an announcement in the admin area, choose how prominent it should be, and it appears in your clients' account area straight away: in a dashboard widget, on a dedicated announcements page, and optionally as a dismissible alert on every page of the portal. You can schedule it to appear and disappear on its own, keep it to signed-in clients only, pin it above everything else, and have Blesta email every active client the moment it goes live.

Key features

• Full Announcement Manager: Write, edit, and delete announcements from a single staff screen, and filter the list by title, visibility, login requirement, pinned, or flash to find any of them instantly.
• Content or Redirect Link: Each announcement either opens a full page you write yourself, or sends the reader straight to a link, so you can point at a status page, a blog post, or anything else you already publish.
• Scheduled Publishing and Expiry: Give an announcement an optional publish time and expiry time and it stays hidden until the window opens, then disappears on its own when it closes.
• Pin, Hide, and Restrict: Pin urgent notices to the top, keep a draft hidden while you write it, and restrict an announcement to signed-in clients when it is not for the public.
• Flash Alerts Across the Portal: Flag an announcement as a flash and it becomes a dismissible alert with a Read More button, shown at the top of every page in the client portal or just above the client dashboard widgets, whichever you prefer.
• Automatic Publish Email: Taking an announcement live emails every active client using an editable Blesta email template, so nobody has to log in to hear the news.
• Staff and Client Widgets: Clients see your latest announcements the moment they log in, and a matching staff widget keeps your own team aware of what has been published.
• Per-Staff-Group Permissions: Viewing, creating, editing, deleting, and searching announcements are separate permissions, so only the roles you choose can publish to your clients.

Installing Announcements

Before you start

• Version 3.x requires Blesta 6.0 or later. On a Blesta 5 install, use version 2.x instead.
• If you are on the leased (subscription) licence, the Blesta Club Subscription Manager must be installed and your subscription active. The owned and owned-source licences have no such requirement.

1. Upload the files

Upload the extension folder into your Blesta installation so it lands under your Blesta directory at:

plugins/announcements/

For example, on a typical install: /var/www/html/blesta/plugins/announcements/

2. Install it in Blesta

1. Log in to your Blesta admin area with a staff account that has the Plugins permission, including Install Plugin and Manage Plugin (found under the Settings group in Manage Staff Groups).
2. Go to Settings > Company > Plugins and click the Available tab.
3. Find Announcements in the list and click Install.

3. Configure it

There are no API keys, no external accounts, and no cron tasks to set up. Three things are worth doing before you write your first announcement:

1. Grant the staff permissions. Blesta registers a plugin's permissions switched off, and a plugin is not allowed to grant its own, so at first only you may see it. Go to Settings > System > Staff > Staff Groups, edit each staff group that should have access, tick the Announcements permissions (View, Create, Edit, Delete, Search, and the widget), and save. Skip this and staff in those groups will not see the Announcements navigation entry at all.
2. Choose where flash alerts appear. Back on Settings > Company > Plugins, on the Installed tab, click Manage next to Announcements. One setting lives there, Flash All Pages, which decides whether flash alerts appear at the top of every page in the client portal or only above the client dashboard widgets. Click Save changes.
3. Review the publish email. Installing registers an Announcement Published email template, sent to every active client when you take an announcement live. Edit its wording under Settings > Company > Emails before you publish for the first time.

You're ready to go - see the usage guide for a walkthrough of day-to-day use.

Updating Announcements

Upgrading works just like installing: upload the new files over the old ones, then run the upgrade from the same page you installed it on.

1. Back up your current extension files first - good practice before any upgrade.
2. Upload the new version over the existing folder, replacing the old files.
3. Log in to your Blesta admin area and go to Settings > Company > Plugins, on the Installed tab.
4. Find Announcements and click Upgrade to run the upgrade.

Your existing announcements and your plugin settings carry over unchanged.

Permissions after upgrading

Blesta registers this plugin's staff permissions unticked - a plugin is not allowed to grant its own. So after an upgrade that adds a permission, every staff group has the new permission present but switched off, and staff in those groups lose the Announcements navigation entry until you grant it.

To fix it, go to Settings > System > Staff > Staff Groups, edit each staff group that should have access, tick the Announcements permissions, and save.

Version-specific notes

• 3.0.0: Requires Blesta 6.0 or later - upgrade Blesta first, then the plugin. Blesta 5 installs should stay on 2.x. Nothing changes in your data or settings; the staff screens simply take on the Blesta 6 admin theme, the Announcements entry moves under Tools in the staff navigation, the Edit and Delete links on the announcements list become buttons, and the date fields on the announcement form use your browser's own date picker.
• 2.0.0: Removes the Advanced Editor setting. The rich-text editor and the HTML content or redirect link choice used to be behind that switch and are now always on, so if you had it turned off you will simply see the fuller announcement form from now on. Nothing you have written changes.
• 2.0.0: Adds optional Publish At and Expire At times to every announcement. Existing announcements get neither, so they keep behaving exactly as before - publish immediately when visible, never expire. This version also registers a new Announcement Published email template (edit it under Settings > Company > Emails), and adds a new Search Announcements staff permission you will need to grant as described above. Taking an announcement live from this version onwards emails your active clients, so review that template before you next publish.
• 1.1.0: Introduced staff permissions for the first time. Grant them per staff group after upgrading, or staff will not see the plugin.

Using Announcements

For your staff

The announcements list

Announcements adds an Announcements entry under Tools in your staff navigation. It opens the list of everything you have written, newest first, with a column each for Title, Visible, Require Login, Pinned, Flash, Created At, Publish At and Expire At, and an Edit (pencil) and a Delete (bin) button on every row. The Yes/No columns are colour coded so you can read the state of an announcement at a glance, and every column sorts. An announcement with no schedule reads Immediately under Publish At and Never under Expire At.

This list is the staff view of everything, so hidden drafts, announcements still waiting for their publish time, and ones that have already expired all stay visible here even though your clients cannot see them.

Two buttons sit at the top right of the box: a funnel that opens the filters, and a plus that starts a new announcement. The filters let you narrow by Title and by Visible, Require Login, Pinned or Flash (each Any / Yes / No), and the list updates without reloading the page.

Writing an announcement

Click the plus button to open Create Announcement. The form is in three parts.

Summary holds the two fields your clients see first:

• Title is the heading shown everywhere the announcement appears.
• Summary is the short version, shown in the lists, in both widgets and in flash alerts. It has a small markdown editor with a Markdown/WYSIWYG toggle, so you can add emphasis, links and lists without writing HTML.

Data decides what happens when a reader clicks Read More:

• HTML Content opens a full announcement page inside the client portal. Write it in the Content rich-text editor below, which gives you styles, fonts, colours, bold, italic, links and lists.
• Redirect To Link sends the reader straight to an address you supply instead. Choosing it swaps the Content editor for a single Link field. Only one of the two is ever on screen.

Visibility controls who sees it and when:

• Visible is the master switch. Leave it unticked while you are still drafting.
• Require Login keeps the announcement to signed-in clients. Anyone who is not logged in will not see it in the list, and opening its address directly sends them to the login page.
• Pinned floats it above everything else in the client list and widget, with a pin icon.
• Flash Announcement also shows it as a dismissible alert (see below).
• Created At, Publish At and Expire At are each a date field plus a time dropdown in 15 minute steps. Click a date field to open your browser's date picker.

Created At is the date the announcement is stamped with. Leave it blank to use now, or set an earlier date when you are importing older news.

Click Create Announcement to save. You are returned to the list with "Announcement successfully created".

Scheduling an announcement

Publish At and Expire At are both optional, and blank means "no limit":

• Leave both blank and the announcement is live as soon as Visible is ticked.
• Set Publish At and it stays hidden from clients until that moment arrives, then appears on its own.
• Set Expire At and it disappears from the client area on its own when that moment passes.
• Set both to define a window, which is useful for a maintenance notice or a limited-time offer.

Nothing needs to run on a schedule for this to work, and you do not need to come back and tidy up afterwards.

Editing and deleting

The Edit button on any row reopens the same form with everything filled in, including the stored date and time. Delete asks "Are you sure you want to delete this announcement?"; confirming removes it permanently and confirms with "Announcement successfully deleted".

Finding an announcement

Announcements is added to the search selector in the admin header. Pick Announcements, type part of a title, and you get a results page listing the matches with the same columns and the same Edit and Delete buttons. The search covers everything, including hidden and scheduled announcements.

The staff dashboard widget

The plugin ships a widget for your admin home page. It is not placed automatically: go to the admin Home, open Manage Widgets, and drag Announcements from the available list into the active column. Once placed, it shows your three most recent announcements with their date and summary and an Edit button on each, with paging to reach older ones. One that is still waiting for its publish time is marked Scheduled for, and one that is past its expiry is marked Expired, so you can tell at a glance what your clients can see.

Emailing clients when you publish

Taking an announcement live emails every active client, using the Announcement Published template. You can edit its subject and body under Settings > Company > Emails, where the {announcement} and {client} tags are available to you.

Two things are worth knowing. The email is sent at the moment you save an announcement into a live state, so an announcement that is scheduled to publish later does not email anyone when its publish time arrives. And an announcement that was already live before you edited it does not email again, so correcting a typo is safe.

Deciding who can publish

Announcements registers its own staff permissions. Under Settings > System > Staff > Staff Groups, editing a group gives you an Announcements section with View Announcements, Create Announcement, Edit Announcement, Delete Announcement and Search Announcements, plus an Announcements Widget section with View Announcements Widget. Blesta registers new permissions switched off, so tick the ones each group should have.

Settings

Settings > Company > Plugins, then Manage next to Announcements, holds one option: Flash All Pages. It decides where flash alerts appear, and is covered below.

For your clients

The dashboard widget

Signed-in clients see an Announcements widget on their dashboard with your three most recent announcements, pinned ones first and marked with a pin icon. Each shows the title, the date, the summary and a Read More button, and a View More Announcements button in the footer opens the full list.

The announcements page

Announcements in the client portal navigation opens the full list, ten per page, pinned first and then newest first. It is available to signed-out visitors too, who see everything except the announcements you marked Require Login.

Reading one

Read More opens the announcement on its own Read Announcement page, with the title, the date, your content and a Go Back button. If you chose Redirect To Link instead, Read More takes the reader straight to that address rather than opening a page.

Flash alerts

An announcement marked as a flash also appears as a dismissible blue alert showing its title, its summary and a Read More button. The Flash All Pages setting decides where:

• On puts it at the top of every page in the client portal, so it is seen no matter where the client goes.
• Off shows it only above the widgets on the client dashboard.

Dismissing an alert hides it for that page view only; it comes back on the next page the client opens, so an urgent notice cannot be permanently clicked away.

Good to know

• Dates are shown using your company's timezone and date format, so what your staff and clients see always matches the rest of Blesta.
• The client widget and the flash alerts each show at most three announcements; the client announcements page shows ten per page.
• The staff list, the staff widget and the staff search deliberately ignore the publish window, so you can always find a scheduled or expired announcement.
• Announcements are per company. On a multi-company install each company has its own announcements and its own settings.