When you go into one of your hubs, you should see Messages on the left under Hub Navigation. Once on the Messages page, click the New Message button on the right. You will see radio buttons for Send as Announcement or Send as Discussion.
Announcements are one-way messages to the entire group. They are designed for newsletters, general announcements and short, instant notifications like, “Ball game cancelled tonight because of weather.” By default, an administrator is the only person in the group allowed to post announcements.
To access drafts and existing templates, click on the Filter by Status on the right and select Drafts or Templates.
An announcement can be received via e-mail and/or text message depending on each member's Personal Settings under Hub Settings.
To create an announcement, select your recipients by clicking the Select Recipients button. By default, a message is sent to everyone. Then enter your subject and message content.
You can add videos, images and links to the text box using these instructions.
Your videos and images will need to be stored somewhere in your MemberHub site in a photo album or folder. Some people make a newsletter images folder. In this example, we will click on the picture we want to include in our message and then click Copy Link on the upper right. A pop-up will appear with your link. Click on the icon to the right of the link to copy it to your clipboard.
Go to your message and click on Insert or on the picture symbol on the toolbar.
As an example, if you click on Insert/edit image you will see the following box.
Paste the image link into the Source field and your picture will appear in the text box.
To insert images stored in Dropbox, copy the public Dropbox link to your clipboard and change the end of the url/link from ?dl=0 to ?raw=1.
If you are familiar with including source code you can click on Tools and Source Code.
For announcements, the texting option is available and you are able to click the Copy Text from Email Message button to copy the first 160 characters in the email.
You can then Post Message, Save as Draft or Save as New Template.
Discussions are created the same way as Announcements, however texting is not an option. Recipients of discussion messages can reply to all and the messages will be saved in the hub. Discussions do not have the option to expire, but you are able to delete them as needed.
Each hub has its own email address. Sending an email to that address will automatically create a new discussion and record the thread in the hub. Look on the right side of the Messages page and you will see the discussion board email address. If you are the hub administrator, you can customize the e-mail address on the General tab of Hub Settings.
Need to send your message later? Announcements and Discussions have an option to publish at a later date by clicking the checkbox for Schedule/post message automatically, all buttons are removed except the Schedule Post button.
When the date and time for the scheduled message is completed, selecting Schedule Post will save the message and post it at your selected date/time.
You also have the option to have the announcement expire at a certain date and time in order for it not to display any more inside the hub.
