Note that as of March 31, 2024 this feature is no longer supported by Simpplr. Simpplr cannot help resolve any issues you may experience while using the feature, and we strongly recommend upgrading to our Employee Newsletter feature if you have not already.
This article provides instruction on how to create newsletters. For best practices regarding newsletters for your org, click here.
Note:
As of the Hotaka release, Simpplr offers Employee Newsletter. Click here for instructions on setting up the Employee Newsletter. The legacy newsletter feature has been retired, and will no longer be offered for customers on the Ida release or later. If you have the legacy newsletter already installed, it will not be removed from your instance. You can continue using it.
If you see Newsletter in the User menu (avatar picture), it means your App manager has given you permissions to create newsletters for your site members.
Clicking on Newsletter will take you to the Newsletter page (where you can view all current and previous newsletters). To add a newsletter, click Add newsletter.
Select the site you want to create a newsletter for, then click Next.
Newsletter creation flow
- Select who you want to receive the newsletter. Site managers will be able to send newsletters to members and/or followers for their site. If an App manager assigns Newsletter permissions to a user as opposed to a site, that user will be able to send the newsletter to everyone in your org or any public site.
- Give your newsletter a name, subject line, and decide which email address it should come from. App managers will need to set these up in Salesforce.
- Add a cover image to your newsletter. These can be selected from your intranet files or uploaded from your computer. The recommended image size is 568px x 319px.
- Write an introduction for your newsletter. You have a range of rich editing options to pick from.
Add newsletter content
Add content to the newsletter by searching for the title of the content (page, event or album), or selecting from the latest content. Once you have added multiple pieces of content, you can drag and drop to move them around. For each piece of content, you add you can decide between a Showcase layout or Standard layout.
By clicking the + icon that appears when hovering between pieces of content you can choose to add a heading, text or a divider. These can be used to customize the overall design of the newsletter.
Now you have the option to save a draft of your newsletter. Clicking Next will take you to a preview of the newsletter. You can also send out a test newsletter. We recommend you do this, as it will appear differently when received as an email.
Once you're happy with the layout and content of the newsletter, click Send now to send the newsletter right away. If you want to schedule the newsletter to be sent in the future, select a date and time to send out the newsletter. Please note that you have to select a date in the future (not today) before you can specify a time.
Comments
I have a couple of questions about the newsletter feature:
- Are we able to design a custom template for the newsletter. The current newsletter format is very limiting
- Can the text box in the + function have some editor capacity? We are unable to add links or even ensure that the paragraph spacing translates correctly when delivered in people's inbox.
Thanks for letting me know.
Question: Newsletters currently only let you add published pages/content when creating the newsletter. If I have a page in draft mode that is scheduled to go live the same time or right before the newsletter is going to publish, is there a way I can include those draft pages as I prepare the newsletter? These are pages that we only want everyone to see first in the newsletter (i.e., trivia challenges). Is there a way to do this without having to go into the page and click publish and add it to the newsletter right before it's published? It's been inconvenient and makes the auto-schedule function a bit useless. Thanks in advance! P.S. I've also submitted a feature request for this issue.
Hi Jeanine. Great question! It is currently not possible to add drafted content to a newsletter. The content must have already been published to be added. But this is definitely a great enhancement request, and I've also shared it with the Product team.
Question:
Is it possible to include the legacy newsletter on the homepage dashboard or any dashboard as a tile?
thank you!
Hi Dora! Unfortunately this is not an option. As a workaround, while it wouldn't be exactly the same, you could always add a Custom content tile to the home dashboard that consists of the same content your newsletter contains.
When I select 'Add content to newsletter', it only pulls up posts related to News. We post news on different Communities/Sites (for example, Diversity & Inclusion), but we're unable to select a news item from these pages. Are we restricted to just sharing news from our general page? All employees have access to each of our Communities/Sites.
Hi Smiranda. This doesn't sound like intended functionality, and could be a bug. Would you mind opening a ticket with our Support team and attach some screenshots to better explain what you're seeing?
Was curious -- why is this feature labeled (Legacy) . . . are there plans to discontinue?
Hi Wendy! Great question. This is marked as our legacy product because we now have the Simpplr Employee Newsletter feature. This is a paid add-on with much more capability than the legacy feature. As of right now, the feature is not available to any new customers, only existing customers who were already using it. The Engineering team is no longer making any updates or improvements to it, and has shifted focus to the Employee Newsletter product. We will discontinue the feature entirely on July 31, 2024.
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