Title

A news item needs to have a good title to alert readers that an announcement may be effecting them. It is important to keep the title clear and concise. There is a maximum of 100 characters for the title section. No XHTML coding is necessary in the title.

Summary

The Summary section should consist of several sentences that cite the main point of the news article. It should be an extension of the title, offering further explanation and detail. XHTML coding is necessary for the Summary field.

Body

The Body field is where the detailed description of the news article should go. It should expand the ideas of the summary and go into further detail. Any questions that the customers may have about the article should be answered in this section. No XHTML coding is necessary for the Body field. 

Source

The source is the person who is reporting the news item. News and announcement information should come from a reliable source whom we can contact about the outage for further information if necessary. No XHTML coding is necessary for the Source field.

Site Access

Site Access determines where the news will be posted. When submitting a news article, one can choose any or all of the different sites to post the news. Once submitted, the article is live at those sites. For a list of all active KB sites, go to the Settings tab and select Group Spaces on the left. See KB User's Guide - Settings Tab - Managing Group Relationships for instructions on adding and removing KB sites from your SiteAccess list.

Activation

The Activation field is used to create a date when the news item will become active. This allows news posters to enter news items ahead of time and set an activation date for them to be displayed. For scheduled events, it is best to set an activation date several days before the events occur.

Expiration

The Expiration field is used to create a date when the news item will expire. Planned outages should be set to expire when their maintenance is complete. For unplanned outages or announcements, management and team leads will decide when the outage should expire. The expiration date needs to be updated if the relevant issue lasts longer or shorter than expected.

The "Expire now" link next to "Pick expiration time" will update the expiration field with the current time (up to the second) without a pop-up screen. This saves you time when you need to immediately take a news item off of your site.

The "Inactive upon expiration" checkbox allows news item to be completely removed from a KB site after the expiration date has passed.

Inactive news items will not appear in the News and Announcements Center/Content Module or in the More News list. Inactive documents are viewable in KB Admin Tools > News Tab. An expired news item can still be edited and the Inactive upon expiration check box can be checked or uncheck after expiration and inactivation.

To inactivate a news item

• Open news item in Editor ( KB Admin Tools > News Tab )
• Check the "Inactive upon expiration" checkbox
• Click Submit
• If document is already expired then news item will immediately become inactive and will not appear in the News and Announcements Center/Content Module or in the More News list.
• Inactive documents are viewable in KB Admin Tools > News Tab

Additional Fields

InternalNote

In the Internal Notes field, you can enter information that you wish to make available only to the internal staff. You may publish the news item to both the internal and external web sites; internal notes are only accessible via the internal sites. XHTML coding is necessary for the Internal Notes field.

Type

The type of news that this item is. The choices are:

• Hardware/software product information: This type should be used when a new product becomes available for purchase and support or when we stop offering support for a product.
• Minor maintenance/outage notice: This type should be used for a planned or unplanned service upgrade or interruption impacting a limited number of users on campus.
• Procedure change/announcement: This type should be used to notify users of procedure and policy changes. Changes of this type may include new handling instructions or escalation procedures.
• Service announcement/feature change: This type should be used to notify users of a new service available on campus or a change in current service.
• Template (visible via KB Admin Tools only) The News Template feature makes it easier for news item authors to replicate frequently used news formats and styles. News items of type Template will only be visible in the Create News from ... screen. From the Create a News Item from a Template screen news item authors can create new news items from existing news templates.

Additional Options available on DoIT Help Desk KB ONLY:

• Major maintenance/outage (also goes on DoIT web): This type should be used for a planned or unplanned disruption impacting a significant portion of the campus, including network access issues or outages involving major DoIT services such as MyUW portal or WiscMail.
• Security/virus/service alert (also goes on DoIT web): This type should be used to notify users of a significant threat posed by a computer virus or worm.

Highlight

This option highlights high impact news articles so users can recognize them easily on our front page. News items are defaulted to  "No (normal news item)". News articles  involving more pressing news (outages, major network problems, etc.) should be set the to "Yes (high impact news item)".

Owner

The Owner field indicates the name of the person who has authored or provided the original content. Questions about documents and review requests are directed to the document owner.

EmailTo

Use this field to email your News to either one address, or, delimit email addresses with a comma to send to multiple addresses. **Should you update your News item, please remember to re-enter any email address(es) as they will not be stored.