News
The news app allows editors to publish news articles for the rest of the organisation.
Reading news
For a regular user, the news app behaves the same as the news section. A news magazine is presented that gives access to multiple news sections and articles.
If you belong to a user group that has more permissions than only reading news, then a sidebar will be visible on the left hand side of the screen (On a non mobile device).
The persmissions of the news app are set by the system administrator in the Administrator app.
Creating a news article
To write a news article, click on the + symbol in the sidebar. In menu that appears, click on ‘Create news article’.
In the dialogue that appears, write the title of your article and select the target news section of the article. Click ‘Create’.
Page compounds
You are now presented with the edit screen of the article. The edit form is divided up into a number of compounds.
- Hero image and summary
- Image gallery
- Body text
Hero image and summary
You can upload a hero image to go with the article as it’s main image. This image is also used on the news overview pages. The summary field is intended for short description of the article which will be displayed on the news overview pages and in the search results.
Because is designed as a highly visual experience, news items should be given high quality hero images. The system will automatically scale.
Image gallery
You can add an image gallery to your news article. For instance a report of your company outing, a report of a congress or a group picture of your team.
You can upload images directly into the carousel, or select images, or an entire album, from Image bank app. You can make combinations for image that you upload from your device and images that come from Image bank.
Copies of the image are kept inside News app. So you don’t have to worry that an image would disappear from the news article, even it was deleted from Image bank.
- Upload an image by clicking on ‘Upload from device’.
- Select an image or a gallery from Image bank app by clicking on ‘Select from image bank’.
After uploading or selecting an image you’ll get the choice to choose what you want the gallery to look like through a number of options.
- View as…: Decides whether the gallery will be manifsted as an image grid or as an image carousel. Carousel are nice and dynamic and suitable for small amounts of images. If you have more than 4 to 8 images or so in your gallery, then an image grid might be the better option as it’s easier for readers to see what’s in the gallery at a glance and therefor also easier to find and view an image at a later time.
- Height: Select ‘Fixed’ for a fixed height. Fixed height is usually the best choice if the images in your gallery are a mix of different aspect ratios. For instance when some image have a portrait format and other images have a landscape format. If you select ‘Adaptive’, then the height of the carousel adjust automatically to the height of each individual image. This is the best options if all of your images already have the same aspect ratio.
- Position: With the position option you can choose whether you want the gallery to apear above or underneath the body text.
Below the aforemtioned option you’ll see a preview of the images you have uploaded or selected.
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You may give every image its own caption. Captions are optional and will appear underneath the images.
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You can change the order of the images by clicking on the crimson red bar and then drag up or down.
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Delete an image from the gallery by clicking on the trash can icon on the crimson red bar.
Body text
The body text of the article goes where it says “Write your body text here…”. The body text can be formatted with all regular formatting options, including paragraphs, tables, lists and images.
Publication
Don’t forget to submit your article when it is ready for publication by clicking on ‘Submit’. Depending on the permissions you have you will only be able to submit the article for review, or also actually publish the article in the news magazine by yourself.
Metadata
Something to note is the small expander icon in the top right, that will toggle the visibility of the metadata fields on and off.
Various metadata fields control where, when and how news items are displayed to users in the news magazine and on the dashboard.
- You can control the hero image visibility for the news article page itself, and for the display of this news item on the news overview pages in the magazine.
- You can control whether the news item should be visible on the main page of the news magazine. If this is deselected, the news item will only show in the section listing of the magazine and in the news tile.
- You can set an item as “must read” in which case the item remains visible on the dashboard for those users that have not yet read it, until they read the item.
- News items may be given an expiration date if you don’t want them to remain visible forever
Using working copies
It might happen that you would like to make changes to an article after it was published. Since in Quaive any changes to content are saved as you type, it would be bothersome if a reader might see half finished sentences in the news magazine. This is where working copies come into play.
A working copy is, as the word says, a copy of the news article. You can safely make changes to the working while the original, published, article will remain untouched until you decide to make the working copy the new published version.
In order to work on an already published news article, you can do the following.
- Click on ‘Edit’. You will be promped with a message that asks you if you want to check out a working copy of the news article. Click on ‘Check out’.
- You are now presented with a working copy of the news article. You can see that you’re working in a working copy by the presence of the ‘Check in’ button on the toolbar.
- After you’ve made the changes you wanted to make to the article, you can click on ‘Check in’. The published version of the article will be overwritten by the working copy and the working copy will be deleted.
You can make new working copies as often as you want. In order to prevent accidental overwriting of content by multiple users, only one working copy can exist at a time. However, everyone with edit permissions can work on and check in the same working copy.
Should you want to remove a working copy and never check it in again, then you can click on ‘Cancel checkout’, which may be found under the more menu.
Creating a news section
Click on the icon in the sidebar. If you have permissions to create news sections, then the menu that appears should show the option ‘Create news section’. When you click on that option a dialogue appears.
Title
Use the title field to give the section a title. The title may appear in the news magazine.
Description
Use the description field for a description of the news section. The description may appear in the news magazine if you tick the tickbox right below the text field.
Navigation
Decide if and where you want the section to appear in the news magazine.
Article teasers
Decide if you want to show article teasers and images for this section.
Section page layout and background colour
Choose a layout and an optional background colour for the news section.
Maintenance
Decide who may maintain this section. Users who can maintain this section can change all the fields of this form at a later time. By default, section maintenance is set to only the section creator.
Contribution
Decide whether certain user groups may contribute to this news section by offering their own articles for review.
Visiblity
Decide which user groups may see this news section in the news magazine.
Changing the layout of the news magazine
The layout of the news magazine can be customised to a large extent.
This feature is only accessible to users who have received full access to the news app. Full access may be assigned to specific user groups in the Administrator app by the system administrator.
Permission levels
Basic | Manage | Full | |
---|---|---|---|
View news articles | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
Create/edit/delete news sections | ✅ | ✅ | |
Edit/delete any news section | ✅ |