Use announcements to tell staff about a change in procedure, an upcoming event or other news. Open People → Announcements. You need permission to send announcements, and the feature must be enabled for your organisation.
Create an announcement
- Select New announcement.
- Write the Title and Message. Put the main point first. If recipients need to act, say what they should do and by when.
- Choose the Audience: All staff, Staff group or Custom. You can also add named people and exclude people. Check the recipient count shown on the form.
- Choose the Channels. The announcement will be available to recipients in the app. You can also select Push notification and Email. These channels also depend on each recipient’s notification settings.
- If you need an explicit acknowledgement, select Require acknowledgement (“Mark as read”).
If SMS delivery is enabled, you can also select Text message (SMS). Check the credit estimate, available balance and missing phone numbers before confirming the send. Recipients without a phone number will not receive a text message, but can still read the announcement in the app. The same goes for someone who has not activated their account yet: the announcement waits for them in the app, and the estimate shows them on the Awaiting account activation row.
The text message has its own text. Write a short message in the Text message field: what it is about, any deadline and what the recipient should do. It is sent exactly as written, and the credit estimate is counted from that text. Leave the field empty and the text message carries the announcement’s title and body. The announcement reaches recipients in the language you write it in — also when the recipient uses Kelomo in another language.
Send, schedule or save a draft
- Send now publishes the announcement and starts delivery through the selected channels.
- Schedule sends it later. Set the Send time first. Recipients are determined at the time of sending, based on your chosen audience.
- Save draft saves your text so you can finish it later. It does not send anything to recipients.
Select Cancel schedule to return a scheduled announcement to a draft. If you edit a scheduled announcement and want to keep the schedule, save it again using Schedule. Use Delete draft to remove an unwanted draft.
You cannot edit a sent announcement. If it contains an error, select Copy to new, correct the content and send a new announcement. Make clear which earlier information you are correcting. You can archive the original, but archiving does not recall it or remove it from recipients.
Delivery, reading and acknowledgement are different
Open a sent announcement to see its recipients and their delivery, read and acknowledgement details.
- The delivery status describes the send. It does not show whether the recipient has read or understood the message. Each recipient has one combined delivery status, not a separate status for every channel.
- The read time is recorded when the recipient opens the announcement in the app.
- The acknowledgement time is recorded when the recipient selects Mark as read. Opening the announcement alone does not fulfil an acknowledgement request.
Employees can find announcements through the notification bell or under My work → Announcements. They can filter the list using Unread or Awaiting acknowledgement. Reminders for outstanding acknowledgements may be sent according to your organisation’s settings.
If a recipient does not receive a message
First check whether the person was included among the recipients. Then check the delivery status and selected channels.
- For missing email or push notifications, also check the recipient’s notification settings. They can read the announcement in the app without enabling these channels.
- For missing text messages, check the phone number and SMS credit balance. Correct the missing information or top up the balance before trying again.
Resend failed retries failed and skipped deliveries. Resend to all also includes pending deliveries. Neither option resends deliveries already marked as delivered. Resending text messages uses credits.
If the Announcements page is missing, ask an administrator to check your permissions and the feature’s status under Settings → Organisation → Features.