announce.unt.edu

In recent years, the volume of e-mailed announcements has become a concern. In September, the decision was made to divert those announcements to a weekly digest arriving in GroupWise users’ mailboxes every Tuesday while a better announcement system was designed. You have probably seen that digest in your Groupwise Inbox. That weekly digest has been the stop-gap measure between the Everyone e-mails and our new system, Announce.unt.edu.

Use Announce.unt.edu. Using e-mail to promote events and make announcements isn’t as effective as it once might have been. We know you want to communicate effectively about your event or issue and Announce.unt.edu provides that ability because people who are interested in the type of things you are promoting can make the choice to receive those items. People who aren’t interested won’t see them and won’t be bothered by receiving e-mail they feel doesn’t apply to them.

We realize this means you will have to change the way you communicate your messages or promote your events, but we think that in time you will find this approach to be more efficient and effective than Everyone GroupWise e-mails.

Glad you asked! Announce.unt.edu is the new system to communicate announcements without using individual e-mails. Using their UNT EUID, faculty and staff can post announcements or events into one or more of 12 categories.

InHouse will begin providing links to announce.unt.edu postings each week, and will continue to write stories about many of the items. Be sure to keep an eye out for your weekly inhouse newsletter.

Postings will be viewable online at Announce.unt.edu, and the announcements are automatically populated to inhouse.unt.edu and are included in the weekly InHouse e-newsletters.

Feeds of announce.unt.edu categories can be also be viewed using any RSS enabled web page or RSS software - examples include iGoogle,my.yahoo.com and iTunes. Many people use those services for Email and web browsing daily, so RSS provides us a convenient way to get your information to them.

The goal is to allow people to choose to see the information you provide about events and announcements in the way that is most convenient for them. Outlook will soon be the most convenient way to read Announce.unt.edu for campus users, and we'll show you how to use our feeds in the near future. Also, work is being done to integrate Announce.unt.edu with the
UNT Event Calendar

When the university completes its migration to Microsoft Outlook for e-mail service, people will be able to subscribe to the categories feeds they want to know about and your announcements and events will arrive in their Inboxes like regular e-mail.

An announcement contains important information for the UNT community that is not tied to a specific event and may or may not be date sensitive. Examples of announcements are:

• Cast your ballots in the upcoming Staff Council election
• Used books needed for sale benefiting the UNT Libraries
• State Employee Charitable Campaign kicks off next week

You'll want to write your announcement carefully to make sure it catches the attention of your reader. One strategy might be to make the title of your post a call to action, like 'Buy tickets now for the Emerald Ball.'

An event is an posting about a specific activity that includes time/date/place information. Examples of events are:

• Retirement party for Sally Goodworker at 3 p.m. Oct. 23 in the Gateway Center Ballroom
• Lecture on water quality is at noon Jan. 19 in the EESAT Building, Room 222
• Symphony performs Beethoven’s Ninth at 6 p.m. Dec. 20 in the Murchison Performing Arts Center
• Mean Green volleyball tournament starts at 10 a.m. Jan. 3 in the Coliseum

Because the university still needs to communicate critical information to campus quickly, some areas have the ability to send Administrative Announcements via e-mail. Those areas are:

• Computing and Information Technology Center
• Facilities
• Human Resources
• UNT Police Department
• University Relations, Communications and Marketing (URCM)
• The President (served by URCM)
• The Provost (served by URCM)

Examples of subject content for Administrative Announcements are:

• Announcements from the offices of the president or provost
• Traffic and parking notices
• Utility and HVAC outages
• Building closings (planned and unplanned)
• Project planning, such as for facilities or computing, etc.
• Benefits information, such as open enrollment dates and reminders
• Annual holiday and leave information
• Certain important payroll reminders
• Mandatory compliance and other training
• Human Resources policy changes
• Forum, Sack Lunch and Service Award notices

Sometimes highly important information regarding health and safety issues as in the case of Administrative Announcements needs to quickly reach UNT community members. Some areas have the ability to send Official Notices via e-mail. Those areas are:

• UNT Police Department
• The President (served by URCM)
• URCM

Examples of subject content for Official Notices are:

• University closures due to weather or emergencies
• Dangerous situations, such as chemical spills
• Emergency announcements
• Mandated announcements, such as crime statistics
• Announcements from the Office of the President

Your posts will appear on Announce.unt.edu within one working day of your submission. That gives us the chance to review it and make sure it's categorized correctly.

Your event also might need to be covered as an InHouse story, so moderating your posts lets us contact you for more details, if you post to Announce.unt.edu early enough.

We hope that you'll post to Announce.unt.edu early and often, so that your event or information has time to reach your audience.