Managing What's Happening

This guide covers writing, publishing, and retiring What’s Happening announcements, and maintaining the company calendar.

Administrator access required

You need What’s Happening Admin or full Admin access. If you don’t see the admin controls, contact your administrator. For the employee’s view of the same feature, see What’s Happening.

Accessing the Admin Panel

1. Open What’s Happening — from the Apps button in the header, or from its card on your Home screen.
2. Click Manage announcements in the page header. There is no Admin tab — the action lives in the platform header bar, and only administrators see it.

The admin view shows all announcements — both published and drafts — with controls for creating, editing, reordering, and archiving posts.

The Admin Panel’s Six Sections

The panel is split into two groups: content states, each with a live count, and configuration.

Section	What it holds
Published	Live announcements, visible to everyone. Their order here is the rotation order of the dashboard carousel — position 1 leads.
Ready	Finished and approved, but not yet visible. A staging state between draft and published: the writing is done and someone has signed off, and you publish when the timing is right.
Drafts	Still being written. Not visible to anyone but administrators.
Archived	Retired from the feed but kept, so nothing is lost by taking a post down.
Company calendar	Where you maintain the pay schedule, holidays, and company events that appear on the Company Calendar page and its widget.
Dashboard carousel	How fast the Home screen carousel advances. See below.

Ready is the section most people miss

An announcement sitting in Ready is complete and invisible. If a colleague says they finished a post and nobody can see it, look here before assuming something failed.

An old bookmark still works

A saved link ending ?tab=settings now resolves to Dashboard carousel, which is where the rotation speed moved.

Dashboard Carousel

The carousel is the What’s Happening widget on the Home screen. It shows one published announcement at a time, and position 1 in the Published list leads.

The only setting is Time on each announcement — a slider from 2 to 30 seconds, saved for the whole organization. Click Save to apply it.

The carousel shows at most 10 announcements

If you have more than ten published, the widget rotates through the newest ten only. It is not hiding this — the footer states the real published total — but if you publish an eleventh and cannot find it in the rotation, this is why. The full list is always on the What’s Happening page.

Readers can pause the rotation

Anyone can stop the carousel from the widget, and their choice sticks on their own device. So a colleague may be looking at a stationary announcement while yours is rotating.

Why the Feed and the Carousel Disagree

These are two different orderings, on purpose:

• The carousel follows the order you curated in the Published list.
• The What’s Happening page is strictly chronological, newest first, and ignores your ordering.

So reordering the Published list changes the carousel and leaves the feed alone. Both are behaving correctly when they disagree.

Creating an Announcement

1. From the Admin panel, click Create or the + button.
2. Fill in the announcement fields (see below).
3. Click Publish to make it visible or save as a draft.

Announcement Fields

Field	Description	Required
Title	The headline displayed at the top of the announcement. Keep it concise and informative.	Yes
Content	The body of the announcement. Supports rich text formatting (see below).	Yes
Images	Attach one or more photos or graphics. Images appear in the announcement alongside the content.	No
Expiration Date	Optional date when the announcement will automatically be removed from the employee feed. Useful for time-sensitive posts.	No
Visibility	Who can see the post. Draft is private to administrators — the dropdown spells it out as “Draft — nobody else sees it”. Published puts it in the employee feed. There are two further states an announcement can hold, Ready and Archived, and the admin list counts each of them separately.	Yes
Category	Shows as a chip on the announcement and lets readers filter the feed by it. Defaults to No category. The list of categories is managed separately, under Categories in the left rail.	No
Mark as urgent	Leads the dashboard carousel and adds an Urgent badge. Publishing an urgent announcement also alerts everyone in the company — see the warning below.	No

Marking a post urgent notifies the entire company

The form says so in small print: an urgent announcement “Leads the dashboard carousel and carries an Urgent badge. When it is published, everyone in the company gets an in-app alert.” That alert goes out on publish, not on save, so a draft is safe to experiment with — but publishing is not something to undo by editing afterwards. Reserve it for things that genuinely cannot wait for someone to open the feed.

Rich Text Formatting

The content editor supports full rich text formatting so you can create professional-looking announcements:

• Bold and italic text
• Bulleted and numbered lists
• Hyperlinks to external resources
• Embedded images within the content body
• Headings and text hierarchy

Attaching Images

Add visual content to make announcements more engaging:

1. Click the image upload area or drag and drop files.
2. Select one or more images from your device.
3. Images are automatically uploaded and processed.
4. Reorder or remove images before publishing.

Images are stored securely in the cloud and automatically optimized for display across all devices.

Managing Existing Announcements

Editing an Announcement

1. From the Admin panel, find the announcement you want to edit.
2. Click on the post or the Edit button.
3. Modify any fields — title, content, images, expiration, or visibility.
4. Click Save to apply changes.

Changes to published announcements are visible to employees immediately after saving.

Controlling Visibility

Each announcement has a visibility status that determines whether employees can see it:

Status	Behavior
Published	Visible to all employees in the What’s Happening feed
Draft	Only visible in the Admin panel — employees cannot see it

You can toggle visibility at any time. This is useful for preparing announcements in advance or temporarily hiding a post while you update it.

Reordering Announcements

Control the display order of announcements in the employee feed:

1. From the Admin panel, use the drag handles on each announcement.
2. Drag announcements up or down to change their order.
3. The new order is saved automatically.

Tip: Pin important announcements to the top of the feed so employees see them first, regardless of when they were published.

Archiving Announcements

Archive announcements to remove them from the employee feed while keeping them for reference:

1. From the Admin panel, find the announcement.
2. Click Archive (or toggle visibility to Draft).
3. The announcement is hidden from employees but remains in the admin list.

Archived posts can be republished later if needed.

Deleting Announcements

To permanently remove an announcement:

1. From the Admin panel, find the announcement.
2. Click Delete.
3. Confirm the deletion.

Deletion is permanent

There is no undo and no recycle bin. If there is any chance you will want the content later, archive it instead — archived posts are hidden from employees but stay in the admin list and can be republished.

Managing the Calendar

The company calendar is managed from the Admin panel and displays important dates visible to all employees.

Updating Calendar Events

1. Navigate to What’s Happening Admin.
2. Click the Calendar section.
3. Add, edit, or remove calendar entries.
4. Changes are immediately visible to all employees.

Common Calendar Entry Types

Type	Examples
Pay Schedule	Pay period end dates, paydays
Company Holidays	Office closures, observed holidays, floating holidays
Events	All-hands meetings, training sessions, team events

Tip: Upload the full-year calendar at the beginning of each year so employees can plan ahead.

How Expiration Works

When you set an expiration date on an announcement:

• The post remains visible in the employee feed until the expiration date
• On the expiration date, the post is automatically removed from the feed
• The post is still accessible in the Admin panel for reference
• You can remove or change the expiration date at any time

Use expiration dates for time-sensitive content like enrollment deadlines, event reminders, or temporary policy announcements.

Content Tips for Effective Announcements

• Lead with the key information — Put the most important details (dates, deadlines, actions required) at the top
• Use descriptive titles — “Open Enrollment Starts Feb 15” is better than “Important Update”
• Include images — Posts with photos or graphics get significantly more engagement
• Keep it scannable — Use bullet points, bold key information, and short paragraphs
• Set expiration dates — Prevent outdated posts from cluttering the feed
• Use links — Link to detailed documents, sign-up forms, or external resources instead of including everything in the post

Troubleshooting

I finished an announcement and nobody can see it

Solutions:

• Check the Ready section. An announcement sitting in Ready is complete and deliberately invisible — it still has to be published.
• Check Drafts, which only administrators can see.
• Check the Expiration Date. An expired announcement is archived automatically and drops out of the employee feed.

A published announcement is missing from the Home widget

Solutions:

• The carousel shows at most 10 announcements. If you have more than ten published, the eleventh will not appear in the rotation — the full list is always on the What’s Happening page.
• Reorder the Published list to move it into the top ten; position 1 leads.

The feed and the carousel are in different orders

Solutions:

• Both are correct. The carousel follows the order you curated in Published; the What’s Happening page is strictly chronological, newest first, and ignores that order.
• Reordering the Published list changes the carousel only. There is no way to reorder the page itself.

A colleague says the carousel is not rotating

Solutions:

• Anyone can pause the rotation from the widget, and that choice sticks on their own device. Nothing is wrong with the announcement.
• If it is rotating too fast or too slow for everyone, change Time on each announcement in Dashboard carousel — a slider from 2 to 30 seconds, saved for the whole organization.

Related Articles

• What’s Happening — Employee guide to reading announcements and using the calendar
• Branding and Administration — Configure your organization’s portal