Launch a Link in an Announcement

Announcements are the custom pop-ups designed to announce any new feature, version release or to provide information to the End Users. An Announcement can be built with Custom buttons that can launch a Workflow, Video or a Document. Announcements enable the admin to make announcements to the user when they go to the specific page. The Announcement can be for specified period and (or) when certain UI conditions are matched.

Announcements are commonly used to:

• Announce any Change Management.
• Inform Users of upcoming features 
• Inform Users about the Maintenance and downtime of the application
• Promote new Software practices, events or services.
• Remind expiration of licenses of the application
• Announce any new achievements applicable to employees or company.

This instructions set explains the procedure of creating Launchers and includes 3 steps:

• Accessing Announcements option in the Editor,
• Creating an Announcement,
• Publishing a Frame with an Announcement.

To access the Announcement option in the Apty Studio:

1.  Login to the Apty Studio and select the hosting application you plan to work with. The Studio menu opens. 2.  Click on the Validations icon. 3.  The system will prompt you to create a Frame, unless it was created earlier. If the required Frame for this page was created earlier, select it from the list. To learn how to create a Frame, refer to this article.

To create an Announcement:

1.   On the Announcements page click Create New Announcement or the +       (Plus) button at the top right corner of the screen.
2.  Enter Title and Content in the respective fields. NOTE:  As you are customizing the content and functionality of an Announcement, you can preview it live in the browser area to have an exact idea of how it is going to look to the end users.

Select a URL icon from the LAUNCHER OPTIONS. You need to add the Link in the Knowledge Store to be able to see it in the drop-down. If it has not been added, click Add new Content and add a name to be displayed and URL to the web page where it is stored. It will automatically get added to the Knowledge Center. To learn more about Knowledge Center click here.
4. Show Dismiss Button: Check this box to let the end user to dismiss the Announcement as shown on the screen. Dismissed Announcements are tracked in a widget in the Announcements of Analytics. The text label may be changed in the CANCEL BUTTON LABEL field. 5. Announcement is Mandatory:  The acceptance of Announcement by the user becomes mandatory and is going to be used as a part of data tracked for Announcements Analytics. The text label may be changed in the CHECKBOX LABEL field.
6.  Define the Announcement Position: Apty offers 12 predefined positions to locate the Announcement on the  canvas of a browser application. Click the position to preview the Announcement position in the live mode.
7.  Select the conditions that trigger an Announcement to be displayed. The available options are available in the Conditions drop-down list: Element Presence, Label Comparison, Spotlight Comparison, Custom Script. Each of the options is described below.

 

7.1  ELEMENT PRESENCE

When Element presence is selected, the Announcement display is determined by the presence or absence of a selected Element. To define the element of the hosting application which should determine the display of the Announcement, select Element Presence from the Conditions drop-down list. The control is now passed to the browser window to click on the element of the hosting application to define its significance. NOTE: The element selected can be changed by Re-selecting element. Multiple conditions of Element Presence type can be added.

7.2  LABEL COMPARISON

Label Comparison is an alternative to the Element Presence but on top of checking the presence of an element it also compares the value in the element. If the value provided while creating an Announcement matches / not matches with the value selected by the end user, the Announcement appears. To set up Label Comparison, click Select Label. The control is now passed to the browser window to define the element, the input for which is going to be tested. Access comparison criteria from the drop-down list: Equal, NotEqual, Regex, Contains, EmptyValue, NotEmptyValue. Define the relation between the Label and value based on the defined comparison criterion. NOTE: Multiple Label Comparisons can be done at a time.

7.3  SPOTLIGHT COMPARISON

Spotlight comparison follows the same logic as Label Comparison and can be applied to any editable fields with values as opposed to Labels.

7.4  CUSTOM SCRIPT

The appearance of Announcement can be controlled based on the script that can be customized as required.  Custom script comes into play for advanced condition control.
8.  Announcement can be made active for a certain period of time. To activate an Announcement for a specified time frame, check the Display between dates box, select the Timezone if different from local and define From Date and To Date in the respective fields. NOTE: This display option may be combined with other Conditions specified above. 9.  Click Save to start using a new Announcement. It is now available as a part of a Frame in the Admin Console, but to make it active, the Frame should be published.