Announcements

Easily broadcast your message across multiple Slack channels with ClearFeed

Announcements are broadcast messages that you can send across multiple Slack channels at once. The following are common use cases for sending announcements:

• Sending release notes to multiple customer channels at once.

• Downtime notices for all or a particular subset of customers.

• General updates to your customers or employees.

Prerequisites:

1. Create a dedicated Slack channel where your draft announcements will be prepared. eg. #clearfeed-announcements

2. Add ClearFeed bot to this channel.

   • Use the command /invite @clearfeed to add the bot to the channel

   • Do not mark that channel as "Request Channel" or "Triage Channel"

Sending Announcements

Preparing the Announcement in Slack

1. Navigate to the channel where you will be drafting your announcements.

2. Prepare and send the message you want to broadcast

   • Attach any necessary files directly to this Slack message. These files will be sent as additional attachments within the thread from the ClearFeed Bot.

   • If any URLs are mentioned in an announcement message, we disable the previews that appear on Slack so that the channel doesn't get polluted with preview links.

3. Click on the three-dot menu (Slack More Actions menu) by hovering over the message.

4. Select ClearFeed Actions from the dropdown.

   • If it's not visible, click More message shortcuts and pick ClearFeed Actions.

5. Click on Create an Announcement.

6. Provide a title. This is only visible in ClearFeed, not in Slack.

7. Click on Save as Draft, followed by the Click here link.

8. You'll be taken to the ClearFeed web app where you can finalize and send your announcement.

Preparing the announcement from Slack

Sending from ClearFeed Web

1. Go to https://web.clearfeed.app/announcements -> Draft -> Click on the Edit button against your announcement.

2. Select Recipients: You can choose individual channels + entire Collections to send the Announcements across.

3. Optionally, test the announcement on a Slack channel to preview how it looks.

4. Choose the Sender:

   1. Channel Owner: The announcement appears as sent by the channel owner.

      • You can review the channel owners in the collection settings for each channel

      • In case the channel owner is deactivated on Slack, we fall back to sending as ClearFeed

   2. ClearFeed: Announcement is sent by the ClearFeed bot

      • You can't modify the bot's name or icon if you whitelable ClearFeed bot

   3. Specific User: Announcement appears as sent under a chosen user's name.

5. Send Now or Schedule the announcement to be sent later.

Sending the announcement

Editing Announcements

• Go to the source Slack channel to edit the parent threads for the announcement

• Go back to the webapp and click on the "Re-Sync" button for that announcement

• The edited message in the source channel will be reflected in the sent messages

• Note that we can't change the attachments sent during the announcement

Managing Announcements

You can view saved drafts and view sent announcements from the ClearFeed App.

• Navigate to Announcements on the ClearFeed web app

• Here, you'll find the following tabs:

  • All: Provides a list of all announcements irrespective of their state.

  • Draft: Lists all drafted announcements that are yet to be sent or scheduled.

  • Scheduled: Displays announcements scheduled for future broadcasts.

  • Sent: Lists all successfully broadcasted announcements.

• Post sending an announcement they can be edited by clicking on the "Re-Sync" button

• You can also Delete an announcement completely.

Announcements dashboard on ClearFeed

FAQs

This section highlights the frequently asked questions about Announcements. If you have any further questions, feel free to reach out at [e-mail] or via Slack.

1. Can we edit an announcement after it has been sent?

Currently - we do not allow for announcements to be edited after sending them across. You can save an announcement in Draft mode and make edits until the message is finalized and announced.