Feature Demo
Academy Session
- Overview of Employee News functionality along with November enhancements of this feature
- Live walk-through of Employee News front-end and Authoring Experience ( Demo start 33:35 onwards)
Feature Overview
The purpose-built Employee News capability, launched with August 2023 release, provides a seamless, end-to-end experience with a dedicated News Center page, widgets for various Employee Center pages, effortless news authoring using the Rich Content Editor, and targeted publishing.
With Employee News, an Employee Center Pro functionality, content authors can easily author news using an intuitive drag-and-drop rich content editor and utilize the automated publishing flow for easy publishing of volume-driven news use cases.
Below are the key components of the captivating front-end Employee News experience:
- News Center – News Center is a dedicated page to highlight news articles available for the user. It includes a carousel-styled featured news section on top, followed by the news feed widget at the bottom, and the video or events widget on the right. Admins can configure the news center page layout as per their organizational needs through the page designer. Articles can be individually targeted for each of these widgets (as described in the new authoring experience section below)
Upon upgrade, the News Center page is automatically included in the Mega Menu on Employee Center Pro. At least one news article must be published on the News Center for it to appear on the Mega Menu.
- Featured News Widget – Positioned at the top of the News Center page, the Featured News widget showcases critical updates prominently. A new tile layout is now available, offering a bold, engaging design to draw attention to key news. Admins can enable this layout via widget settings, with content prioritized by order fields and publish dates. The widget supports accessibility, overflow control, and improved contrast, ensuring both style and usability. Mouseover animations add an interactive, intuitive touch to enhance the user experience.
- News Feed Widget on Employee Center Pro Homepage and Topic Pages – A new News Feed widget is now available on the Employee Center homepage, topic pages, and the News Center page (below the featured news widget), enabling direct display of news articles. It offers two layout options: the classic list view and a modern, visually engaging tiled-grid view. Employees can toggle between layouts for a more tailored experience, while portal admins can configure a default layout to align with organizational branding and user preferences.
The taxonomy topic pages include a new Related News widget that displays news items tagged to that topic, offering a targeted news experience.
Portal admins can configure both these widgets, using instance options, to display the desired number of articles, and define whether to display the subtitle or thumbnail image.
- News Article detail view page – Each news item, displayed in any of the news feed widgets, leads directly to the detailed news article page view. This page includes the main body of the article, which can be a combination of text, images, videos, etc. and easily created using the Rich Content Editor (as explained in the new authoring section below). It also includes an 'Other News' widget to engage users with important news articles.
Below are key components of the seamless Employee News authoring and publishing flow, launched in August 2023:
- "News Article” content type in Content Library- Content authors can effortlessly create and publish news articles using the new content type called ‘News Article’ in the existing Content Library. Since news is part of Content Library, all the authoring and publishing capabilities available with Content Library, such as governance, translations, and scheduling, are also applicable to News.
Note: Currently News Articles can only be published on the portal and cannot be published as part of a Campaign.
- News authoring experience using Rich Content Editor – For authoring News Articles, content authors need to define the 1) article heading, 2) sub-heading (optional), 3) thumbnail image (optional), and 4) article body. Similar to Topic Microsites, Rich Content Editor is used to design the body of news articles, providing a familiar and seamless authoring experience for content authors.
- One-click News Publishing experience – Once the News Article is ready, content authors can publish it with one click on their desired, multiple ‘Content Destinations’ with one click using ‘Content Templates’. Content Template is essentially a pre-defined publishing plan that includes Audience, Content Destinations i.e. the page and widget instance where the article must be published, and duration for which the article is published.
Once content authors pick a Content Template for the new article, the publishing plans are automatically generated as defined by the Content Template. The content authors can choose to add to the pre-defined plan or edit it before publishing the article.
The addition of Content Templates has significantly reduced the number of clicks/steps content authors need to go through to publish News articles in multiple locations simultaneously. No more tedious repetition - it's quick, easy, and efficient!
There are two Content Templates - Featured News and News Default - available out-of-the-box with August 2023 release. Content authors should create additional Content Templates as per their requirements. Refer to Content Templates in product documentation to learn more about it.
- Categories for Employee News – News articles can now be organized by categories set by content authors, allowing employees to filter and browse articles by topic. Each category has a dedicated page displaying all related content. Authors can tag articles with multiple categories and assign content templates at the category level to streamline publishing and maintain consistency.
- Social Engagement with News – Employees can now engage with news through reactions and comments, enhancing interaction and allowing content managers to gauge effectiveness. Admins have full control over enabling or disabling engagement features (reactions, comments, view counts) at various levels, customize reaction options, and moderate flagged content. Users can edit or delete their responses, and flagged articles or comments can be reviewed and removed to maintain a professional environment. Refer to Content Engagement product documentation for further details.
- Ability to ‘favorite’ news articles - Employees can favorite News articles and access them directly from the My Favorites widget and the My Favorites page. This leverages our current favorites capability allowing employees to favorite an article and access it across channels.
- Reusable News article templates: Content authors can save and reuse news articles as pre-defined templates, easily editing them with new text, images, and other elements. This feature drives efficiency in the content creation process and ensures consistent, professional-looking news updates. Only authorized role of content admin or content template owner can manage and edit these templates, ensuring controlled content delivery. Additionally, templates can be linked to specific content destinations, reactions, audiences, and categories.
- Content Engagement dashboard - Admins can track engagement metrics on their published news articles, this includes total number of comments, reactions, and unique views. Additionally, they can review flagged news articles and comments. These metrics help content managers measure the effectiveness of internal communications and gauge employee sentiment on new policies or initiatives.
- Employee News in Now Mobile - We've streamlined mobile access to Employee News, ensuring content appears consistently across both desktop and mobile without extra effort from content authors. Featured and targeted news now displays in a dedicated mobile section, with the News Center added as a tab in Now Mobile for Employee Center Pro users. Employees can browse news by category, search with AI, view related articles, and favorite items for quick access across devices. Content authors can now publish once for both desktop and mobile, with full support for translations, governance, and audience targeting.
Employee News functionality requires Employee Center Pro license and can be activated by upgrading latest version of Employee Center Pro, and dependent plugins. This capability is backward compatible till n-2 family releases.
For other feature deep-dives, refer to other topics covered as part of Employee Center Academy series.
FAQ's
- What is Employee News functionality?
The Employee News capability, launched with August 2023 release, addresses the need to streamline internal communication and intranet usage. The new, purpose-built Employee News capability provides a seamless, end-to-end experience with a dedicated News Center page, widgets for various Employee Center pages, effortless news authoring using the Rich Content Editor, and targeted publishing. This feature offers a purposeful and integrated experience for both employees and communication managers. It minimizes digital sprawl by consolidating news within Employee Center Pro.
- What plugins will be needed to get the latest Employee News functionality?
Employee News functionality requires Employee Center Pro license and can be activated by upgrading latest Employee Center Pro, and dependent plugins. This capability is backward compatible till n-2 family releases.
- How can we publish news articles on the Employee Center Pro Homepage? Is a news feed widget available OOB?
Yes, There is a news feed widget available OOB for the Employee Center homepage to display news articles right on the landing page.
- What is News Center?
News Center is a dedicated page to highlight news articles available for the user. It includes a carousel-styled featured news section on top, followed by the news feed widget at the bottom, and the video or events widget on the right. Admins can configure the news center page layout as per their organizational needs through the page designer. Articles can be individually targeted for each of these widgets (as described in the new authoring experience section below)
Upon upgrade, the News Center page is automatically included in the Mega Menu on Employee Center Pro. At least one news article must be published on the News Center for it to appear on the Mega Menu.
- Can I publish News articles on Topic pages as well?
The taxonomy topic pages include a new Related News widget that allows content authors to display news items tagged to that topic, offering a targeted news experience.
- Is this a new content type under content library?
Content authors can effortlessly create and publish news articles using the new content type called ‘News Article’ in the existing Content Library. Since news is part of Content Library, all the authoring and publishing capabilities available with Content Library, such as governance, translations, and scheduling, are also applicable to News.
- What is the difference between news and rich content?
News and Rich Content are both new content types under ‘Articles and Pages’ format of the Content Library. Rich Content is a new content type that comes with a drag-and-drop editor that is designed to enable non-technical content authors to create their HTML content with pre-defined layouts and components including texts, images, videos, links, and action buttons. This Rich Content can be used to design Dynamic Topic Microsites which can be embedded within Topic Pages. Whereas News content type can use this rich content editor to publish news articles within the News Center.
- What are Content Destinations?
Content Destinations is a new table within Content Publishing, for capturing widget instance location information into a single list allowing a “Content Template” to be pre-built with audiences and destinations which will automate the publishing of news. Content Admin role is required to access this table.
- What are Content Templates?
Content Templates is a new table within Content Publishing, for building out publishing rules which will streamline and automate volume driven news publishing use-cases. These templates can be selected by a content manager reducing dozens and dozens of clicks for publishing news. The templates will consist of widget instance “Content Destinations”, a defined audience as well as pre-set duration for how long the article should be available. There will also be OOTB default templates allowing a content manager to publish a news article and target it to all employees and destinations on the portal within just a few clicks, all the while, still allowing authors to continue to manually target news via CP publish plans as desired. Content Admin role is required to access this table.
- How can I automate publishing process for bulk news articles?
Content authors can automate the publishing process for bulk use cases of news articles through Content Templates. Once content authors pick a Content Template through the design tab for the new article, the publishing plans are automatically generated as defined by the Content Template. The content authors can choose to add to the pre-defined plan or edit it before publishing the article. The addition of Content Templates has significantly reduced the number of clicks/steps content authors need to go through to publish News articles in multiple locations simultaneously.
- How would you measure clicks or views of news articles?
Content Authors can analyse the success of their news articles by enabling ‘Track Analytics’ for the News Headline widget on the News Article page. The occurrence/Article Views metric for all the news articles is tracked in the User Experience Analytics dashboard under the ‘Content Publishing – News Articles’ event.
- Are we able to export knowledge articles and import into News Articles?
No, as of now it is not possible to export knowledge articles and import it into News Articles.
- Will the news content be searchable via AI search?
Yes, Employee News are searchable via AI Search on Employee Center Pro. With our August 2023 release, we have added News Articles as search sources for AI Search out-of-box. On the AI Search page, the News Articles show up as ‘News’. When clicked, the News Articles directly open in the detail page view.
Hi @honamiUeo , you could check that by navigating to news article details page of any of the articles on news center. On the news article details page, you need to 'Control+Click' on the news headline and then select instance options. You would see 'Track Analytics' checkbox in instance options.
Thank you for your response. It was easy to understand with the picture.
Also, you say that AI search is possible, but am I correct in assuming that it will not be caught by normal search?
I am sorry for asking so many questions, but please confirm.
