Affinity Groups

Announcements, Events and Trainings, and Outages can also be assigned to Affinity Groups. To assign a post to an Affinity Group, you must be a Coordinator of that Affinity Group. Please open a ticket if you would like to be made a Coordinator.

Announcements

Announcements are published at Announcements | ACCESS Support and are general news items, supporting title, description that can contain HTML, a featured image, and tags.

Creating Announcements

1. Use the “Add Announcement” button on the Announcements | ACCESS Support

2. Add Title in title case: i.e. Lorem Ipsum Dolor sit Amet

3. Add Body text: Use bold, italic, lists, images, and links as needed.

4. To customize excerpt that shows on the Announcements page: Use the “Edit Summary” link

5. Add an optional Featured Image that will be displayed on the announcement listing page and at the top of your announcement item. Other images can be added inline in the body text.

6. Tags help people find you content

7. Affinity Group Coordinators can add Affinity Groups to send the announcement to that group and have it appear on that Affinity Group page.

Publishing Announcements

1. Save as “Draft” at any point. Once you have created a announcement it will show up under “My Announcements” on the announcements page.

2. Change status to “Ready for Review” and an admin will be notified and they will approve and post the announcement or send you an email requesting an edit.

3. If you are an Affinity Group Leader you can change the status of your announcement to “Published” without requiring an administrator to approve it.

4. If you need to make an edit you can find all of your announcements in “My Announcements” on the announcements page. If you make a revision there is a field for “Revision log message” so that we will know what you have changed.

Events and Trainings

Events and Trainings are published at ​Events & Trainings | ACCESS Support and can be single events or recurring events. Events can have a date and time, location, contact information, and registration link in addition to a title and description.

Any authenticated person can add an Announcement or Event to the ACCESS Support website. Posts by people who are not Affinity Group Leaders will require review by an administrator.

Creating Events and Trainings

1. Use the “Add Event” button on the ​Events & Trainings page

2. Add Title in title case: i.e. Lorem Ipsum Dolor sit Amet

3. Choose Event Type: Most events will be Custom/Single Events, but there are options for recurring events on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis.

4. Select date and time for event(s).

5. Add Body text: Use bold, italic, lists, images, and links as needed.

6. Add Location and Contact information. It is possible to use html links in these fields if desired.

7. Add optional Registration link.

8. Tags help people find you content

9. Affinity Group Coordinators can add Affinity Groups to send the event to that group and have it appear on that Affinity Group page.

Event Registration

• Registration can be enabled for each event instance or for the whole series of events.

• Select whether the registration is open until the event begins or whether there is a deadline for registration.

• Allow for Unlimited seats or Specify number of seats, with the option to enable waitlist.

• ​​A registration reminder can be scheduled if desired.

• If you have appropriate permissions, you can select an ACCESS project to which registrants will be automatically added after approval.

Registration Management

• You will receive a daily email if new registrations have been received.

• Registrants receive an email when you approve their registration.

• Approvals can be done individually or select “Approve all” registrants.

• You can send custom email messages to approved registrants and/or waitlisted users.

• You can view and download a list of registrants, includes name, email, ACCESS ID, and the date or registration

• The number of registrations can be displayed on the public event listing, if desired.

Publishing Events and Trainings

1. Save as “Draft” at any point. Once you have created an event it will show up under “My Events” on the events page.

2. Saving an event creates an “Event Series” and one or more “Event Instances”. For most events, this implementation detail should not matter, but if you created a recurring series of events, it is possible to override information from the parent event and have specific occurrences of the recurring event have different information. Look for more documentation and UX improvements here.

3. Change status to “Ready for Review” and an admin will be notified and they will approve and post the event or send you an email requesting an edit.

4. If you are an Affinity Group Leader you can change the status of your event to “Published” without requiring an administrator to approve it.

5. If you need to make an edit you can find all of your events in “My Events” on the news page. If you make a revision there is a field for “Revision log message” so that we will know what you have changed.

Resource Outages and Reconfiguration

Resource specific outages and reconfiguration news are published at ​System Status News | Operations and can be planned or unplanned. Infrastructure news items have a type (full outage, partial outage, or reconfiguration), have a start date, may have an end date, and must affect one or more infrastructure elements.

More detailed information is available at the ​Infrastructure News Publishing | Operations page.

Current and planned outages associated with infrastructure that is associated with an Affinity Group will be displayed on the Affinity Group page.