At times, your brand might want to show an important announcement to some or all of your end-users simultaneously. A server might be down, for example, or a must-have game might be newly released.
  • Such announcements are both urgent and temporary.
  • They differ from every other kind of content or message that a Helpshift-powered support experience might show to your end-users.
You can display a brief announcement in a colored bar. A published announcement is visible on:
  • the Help Center landing page for each affected app
  • each Help Center section page for each affected app
  • each Help Center article or FAQ for each affected app
  • the web support portal Contact Us form for each affected app
NOTE
Your Helpshift contract might or might not include this capability. If you’re not sure either way, please contact your customer success manager at success@helpshift.com.

Additional prerequisites are as follows.
  • Your Helpshift instance must use Help Center 2.0.
  • Any mobile app that should display Help Center announcements must first integrate SDK X.
Step 1.  Log in to your Helpshift instance as its administrator.
Step 2.  On the Helpshift toolbar, click Settings (Settings button icon).

Step 3.  In the navigation pane, scroll to the SUPPORT SETTINGS area. Then, click Help Center Announcements.

The Help Center Announcements page opens.

Step 4.  On the Help Center Announcements page, click + NEW ANNOUNCEMENT.

The + NEW ANNOUNCEMENT button

The New Announcement dialog box opens.

New Announcement dialog box

Step 5.  In the New Announcement dialog box, do the following.

a.  Enter a meaningful name for your announcement in the Name field.

Only you and your fellow administrators can see the name.

A meaningful name is one that distinguishes this particular announcement from all others, and you are free to apply any naming pattern that makes sense to you.

For example, you might use an orderly series of word parts and/or your own set of standardized abbreviations to summarize your announcement.

Example naming patterns
Only you know what naming scheme might work best for you.

b.  From the Apps list, choose each product whose end-users should see this announcement.

Alternatively, you can also do either of the following.
  • Enter and submit a search string for any product name (or names).
Search for the announcement target
  • Choose the first option, All Apps, to show the announcement to all of your active end-users.
Browse for the target

c.  In the Announcement text field, you can do either of the following.
  • to show the announcement in one language universally, enter free text

    OR

  • to show the translated announcement to end-users in their preferred language (supposing that you already translated the announcement), choose the appropriate text template
d.  (Optional) To add a clickable link to your announcement, enter its URL and its display text according to the UI element coaching text in the Add Link area.

Any supplied link renders immediately after the announcement body, separated from it by a single space.

e.  (Optional) To schedule your announcement to stop on a particular date, at a particular time, do the following.
  • Check the Expiration date and time checkbox.
A new UI element is exposed, which shows a date and time that are exactly 1 hour in your future.

Date and time, 1 hour from now
  • To begin editing the displayed expiration date and/or time, click them.
A date-and-time picker opens.

date-and-time picker
  • To set different values, use UI controls in the date-and-time picker, as needed.
Its span of selectable dates and times is limited to the next 45 days.
  • To save the updated date and/or time, click Apply.
The date-and-time picker closes.

NOTE

An expired announcement still exists. It is simply no longer shown to your end-users.

You can duplicate an expired announcement manually or delete it manually from its listing on the Help Center Announcements page.

Step 6.  Do one or both of the following.
  • To save your announcement for future use, without yet showing it on any end-user screen, click SAVE DRAFT.
  • To save the announcement and display it on end-user screens immediately, click PUBLISH.
A published announcement is visible on:

          o   the Help Center landing page for each affected app
          o   each Help Center section page for each affected app
          o   each Help Center article or FAQ for each affected app
          o   the web support portal Contact Us form for each affected app