You can publish new articles for your users in Assemble, keeping them informed of important events, updates, and anything to do with their volunteering.
It's an excellent way to increase engagement and proves very popular with volunteers as well as giving volunteering teams an easy way to communicate freely without needing to consider GDPR rules which apply when emailing users directly.
Add or edit news articles
You can add articles from within News itself or in News Articles in Settings.
Click Add article and fill in the required information, detailed below.
Article excerpt
The excerpt text is the introduction to the news article and displays in the preview of the article. It should be limited to a couple of sentences and not be longer than a paragraph. The excerpt text is also displayed as the first paragraph of the article.
Article body
Enter the main contents of the article. There's no character limit within news articles but remember that users may be reading the news on a mobile device.
📌 Note: You can't insert HTML into articles. However, you can use markdown for advanced formatting and the markdown tables generator if you need to add a table to your news article.
Article image (optional)
An image for your article makes your home page in Assemble and on the app more attractive and engaging.
📌 Note: Only articles with an image can be the featured article.
To upload an image, click Upload image and select the required image.
Make sure that the images you upload are in landscape mode.
Once you've selected the image, enter a caption in the Image caption field. To ensure your system is visual impairment-friendly, make sure you use a descriptive caption.
You can also add additional images from within the article itself.
Article tags (optional)
Tags allow you to classify your articles, making it easier for users to find articles of particular interest to them in their own news feed. Users can't set their preferences for the home page, so you can always push the required information to your users there.
If your organisation is using tags for news articles, click on the tags field and select the appropriate tags for the article.
Expiry date (optional)
If you would like your article to automatically disappear from Assemble, set an expiry date by clicking on the field and selecting a date in the future. This will take the article offline on the day you have selected.
📌 Note: You can still view the article in the Expired section of the news management area.
It's generally a good idea to leave this field empty as it means that volunteers can read news articles whenever they start engaging with Assemble.
However, if the information would be confusing, such as time-limited guidance, you should consider setting an expiry date.
Delete article (optional)
To instantly remove the news article from your live news, click Delete article.
Click Restore article to restore any deleted article.
Publish date and time (optional)
You can add news articles in advance of the publication date and time, allowing you to add an embargoed press release or add multiple articles to be published at various dates and times over the following weeks.
If you don't set a date and time, the article will be published immediately.
Homepage and featured articles
Homepage
The homepage in Assemble shows the four most recently published stories.
The featured article will be the most recent one that has an image and isn't restricted by team or role. However, you can override this automatic setting.
Featured
To set an article as the featured article, select the Featured checkbox next to the relevant story. This overrides the automatic system setting of using the most recently published valid article.
When you no longer want this to be your featured article, you can select another or allow Assemble to control this by publication date again.
Unselect the Featured box so no article is ticked and Assemble will automatically display the most recently published article with a picture and no team or role restrictions.
Required permissions
News: News - Manage articles