How Do I Manage Broadcast Notifications? – Social27

Using the Social27 Events Builder, you can create and send broadcast notifications to keep your attendees informed throughout the event. These notifications will appear as a small pop-up window in the bottom left corner of the user’s screen. (Notifications will remain on-screen for 15 seconds or until a user clicks on it to dismiss it.)

This article explains how to view and create broadcast notifications, as well as their current limitations.

Viewing Notifications

To view all broadcast notifications for your event, log in to the Events Builder, select your event, and navigate to Notifications > Broadcast Notifications.

On this screen, you can quickly view information about all of your event’s broadcast notifications, including:

Date
Message (hovering over the message text will reveal a popup that includes the full notification content)
Delivery type (scheduled or live)
Redirection (if the user is directed to a new page after clicking the notification)
Status (In Queue or Sent)

If a notification hasn’t yet been sent to your event attendees, you can click the pencil icon to edit it or the ellipses icon to delete it.

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Creating Notifications

To create a broadcast notification, click Add Notification. The Create Notification window will appear.

What is Your Notification?

First, provide the Title and Message of the notification. Note that the preview below the Message field will update as you create your notification.

When creating your message, you can take the following actions:

Adjust text formatting (font size/bold/italicize/underline)
Add clickable hyperlinks (Links can load in the user’s current window or open in a new tab.)
Adjust the message HTML (For tips on basic HTML formatting, check out this link.)

You can also set a delivery option for your message which will insert a red icon in the top right corner of the notification window and determine where on the screen the notification appears:

Important

Appears in the bottom left corner of an attendee's screen

Urgent

Appears in the top left corner of an attendee's screen

If you would like your users to be redirected to a different page when they click on a notification, use the Redirect dropdown. If you select one of the event pages in the list, that page will load in the current window. If you use the External Link option, the user will be directed to a new tab in their internet browser.

Tip: If you would like to direct users to a page in the event that doesn’t appear in the dropdown list, select External Link and paste the event page URL in the External Link field. (This event page will still open in a new tab.)

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Who do you want to send your notification to?

After creating your message, you can set who it will be sent to:

Everyone
Specific users
Users currently watching a specific session

Specific Users

If you are targeting a group of users, you can either narrow the target group by user roles or permissions OR specific targets. Use the Roles and Permissions dropdowns to send the notification to specific roles or permissions. (For an explanation of Social27’s roles and permissions, check out this article.)

To send the notification to specific targets, choose the Target Specific users and/or sponsors option, then click Add Another Target. You can select from two target types and include multiple targets:

People: Specific users
Sponsors: All users who have been added as booth representatives for a particular sponsor

Sessions

If you are targeting the notification to users who are actively viewing a session (either live or on-demand), select the Users currently watching a specific sessions option and choose the session (or sessions) from the dropdown.

Tip: Only attendees who are currently viewing the session will see this notification. Users who have added the session to their agenda or calendar but are not actively viewing it will NOT see the notification.

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When do you want to send your notification?

After you’ve created your notification content, use the Sending Method dropdown menu to set when you would like to send the notification: immediately (live) or at some future date/time (scheduled).

Send Now

If you select Send now, the notification will be sent after you review the notification content on the confirmation screen and click Send Now.

Send at a future date/time

If you chose to Send at a future date/time as your Sending Method, pay special attention to the Time Zone you set. Your notification will be sent according to the time zone you set in this dropdown and will ignore the time zone of the event (as set in General Settings), the time zone of a user’s device, or the time zone a user selects to display when they login to the event.

Unlike a Send Now notification, future notifications can be edited or deleted from the main Notifications page until they are sent.

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Notification Icon

To update the notification icon that appears in the top left corner of the notification, navigate to General Settings > Setup and update the third image on the left in the Basic Settings section.

Note: All broadcast notifications sent during your event will contain this icon. If you update this icon, all future broadcast notifications will contain the new icon.

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Stored Notifications

If a notification is sent while a user is logged out of the event, the next time they log in, they will see a red circle on the Notifications icon in the top navigation bar. Clicking this will reveal the Notifications sidebar where they can read the full notification text.

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Notification Limitations

Social27’s notification system is a web-based notification system rather than an application-based system. This means that the notifications are tied to a user’s web browser rather than to the application itself, and Social27 notifications will only appear to attendees if they are logged in to the event and it is the current tab in their view.

Notifications will not appear to users if:

They are not logged in to the event
They are logged in to the event but are currently watching a session in full-screen mode
They are logged in to the event but are on a different tab in their internet browser and don’t open the event tab before the notification duration ends (15 seconds)

Further Reading: