Newsletter Builder

The newsletter builder helps you streamline your email communications with your community by allowing you to quickly build an email newsletter from existing content on the site.

Starting a Newsletter

There are 2 ways to begin building a newsleter:

1. Start from a blank newsletter.
2. Create a newsletter from selected news items.

Starting from Scratch

From your dashboard, scroll down to the Newsletter section and click Add.

Starting from the News list

From your dashboard, scroll down to the News section and click more.

Then:

1. Select the news items you want to include in your newsletter
2. Select action Create Newsletter
3. Click Apply to selected items

This will take you the the Create Newsletter form with the news items you selected pre-filled.

The Newsletter Builder

Whether you start from scratch or start from the news list, you will find yourself on the Create Newsletter form. Similar to Advanced Pages, a newsletter is composed of individual content blocks.

In this case the conent block types you can add are:

1. Site News: Select an existing news item on your site to include in the newsletter.
2. Site Event: Select an existing event to include in your newsletter.
3. Event List: Add a simple list of events.
4. Rich Text: Add formatted text.
5. Community Events: Add a program from the HCPSS Community News and Programs website which contains events and programs solicited from our community.
6. District News: Add a news item from the HCPSS News site.
7. Other School News: Add a news item from another school.

Content Blocks

Site News

Select Site News and then click Add Content Block

Then click Select or Create News Item.

Then, select the news item you want to insert and click Select.

If you want to preview what the news item will look like in the newsletter, click Preview.

Site Event

Select Site Event and then click Add Content Block

Then click Select or Create Event.

Then, select the event you want to insert and click Select.

If you want to preview what the event will look like in the newsletter, click Preview.

Event List

Select Event List and then click Add Content Block

Give the event list:

1. A title (required)
2. A description (optional)
3. Click Select or Create Events.

Then select the events you want to include and click Select.

You can draq the events to reorder them:

Rich Text

Select Rich Text and then click Add Content Block

This gives you a Rich Content block where you can enter any text you would like.

For more information on how to use the rich text editor see Using the Rich Text Editor.

Community Events

Select Community Event and then click Add Content Block

Then click Select Community Event

Then select the news item you want to include and click Select.

If you want to preview the community event, click preview.

District News

Select District News and then click Add Content Block

Then click Select News Item

Then select an item and click Select

If you want to preview the district news, click preview.

Other School News

Select Other School News and then click Add Content Block

Then click select.

Then select the school.

This will bring up a list of news items on that school website. Select one and click Select.

If you want to preview the news item, click preview.

Reordering Content Blocks

Reordering content blocks on the newsletter is identical to reordering content blocks on Advanced Pages so please see that section for more information.

Saving a Newsletter

Should Newsletters be Published?

Newsletters that are published are available to your website visitors. Published newsletters also show in your News list.

The Newsletter builder is mainly meant to be a way for you to quickly build newsletters that you send with SchoolMessenger. For that purpose, it is not necessary to publish them. Unpublished newsletters can still be used to create SchoolMessenger messages but will not show up to your website visitors.

Both publishing newsletter and leaving them unpublished is fine.

Once you are done adding content blocks, click Save

Copying Your Newsletter Into School Messenger

When viewing your newsletter click Copy to Clipboard

Then navigate to your draft news message in SchoolMessenger and past (with CTRL+v) in the body: