Newsagent/Newsletters

Newsagent
Author	Chris Page
Contact	Support
Repository	github
Issue tracker	github
OS	Neutral (web based) Will not work with IE8 or older
URL	Newsagent
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Newsletters

Newsagent allows groups of individuals to work together to produce newsletters - structured collections of stories published on a more or less regular basis, and sent via email or other transports to groups of individuals.

Two types of Newsletter exist in the system:

• Manual release. These newsletters are not automatically sent by the system; instead a newsletter publisher must press a button in the Newsletter Editor to trigger publication.
• Automatic release. Newsletters configured for automatic release have a defined publication schedule. Provided the publication criteria are met, automatic release newsletters will publish the stories set for the newsletter without human intervention.

Manual release newsletters can be converted to automatic release mode by the addition of a release schedule, and vice versa.

Newsletters consist of one or more sections, and each section can contain zero or more stories. Each story in a section is a Newsagent Article. You may place multiple stories into a single article if you want, but doing so may prevent it being templated and styled correctly in the generated newsletter - one story/piece per article is generally recommended.

Newsletter sections may be configured to require a number of articles to be present in the section before the newsletter may be published. So, for example, if the "News and events" section requires a minimum of two articles, the newsletter can not be published until at least two articles are available to be published in that section. The default is to not require a minimum article count for sections.

If a section is empty when a newsletter is published, it will generally be omitted entirely - the header will not be included, and it will not be linked to from any quick-jump menu that may be defined. If this behaviour is not desirable (for example, a "No news is available for this section" message would be preferred), sections may be configured to include a templated 'empty' message instead.

Adding articles to newsletters

The Compose page is used to create articles to add to newsletters. During the compose process you select the "Newsletter" tab in the Settings box at the right of the page to switch to Newsletter mode:

• Go to the Compose page by clicking the "Compose" button in the toolbar
• Click on the Newsletter tab in the Settings box on the right side of the page to switch to Newsletter mode.
• Select the newsletter to add the story to
• Select the section of the newsletter you want to add the story to.
• If you want the story included in the next published copy of the newsletter, leave the Publish option on "In next publication", otherwise you can delay its release until a later date.
• Enter the title of the story in the Subject box
• The Summary is optional, leave it blank if you want
• Enter the text of your story in the Full text box, formatting as desired.
• Optionally set an article image to show at the side of your story.
• Click Create Article to add the story to the newsletter.

Editing newsletter articles

Newsletter articles in the article list

Newsletter articles may be edited in the same way as normal articles:

• Go to your Article List page by clicking the "Article List" button in the toolbar.
• Locate the newsletter article you want to edit in the list. Newsletter articles are displayed differently than normal articles: they have special icons in the left-most column, and instead of listing the feeds they will appear in, they show the name of the newsletter they will be published in, and which section of the newsletter they will appear in.
• Click on the "Edit this article" button for the article to bring up the Edit page, where you can edit the article as normal. Note that editing the article so that it is in a different section, or even a different newsletter, is supported.
• Alternatively you may click the "Clone this article" button to create a copy of the article. You can use this facility for situations where a given story must appear in more than one newsletter, or in several issues of a given newsletter. To make an article appear in more than one newsletter:
  • create the article as normal
  • clone the article through the Article List
  • set the clone's Newsletter and Section to the appropriate values to make it appear in the other newsletter

  To make a given story appear in more than one issue of a given newsletter:

  • create the article as normal
  • clone the article through the Article List
  • set the clone's "Publish" to "At or after"
  • set the publication date to make the clone available for the next newsletter.

A note about Images

Articles added to a Newsletter may have an Article Image set to show the image with the article in the newsletter. When the newsletter is generated, it will include all Article Images - so if there are 10 articles in a newsletter, and 8 of those have an Article Image set, the resulting newsletter will contain 8 Article Images. It is not possible to have more than one Article Image per newsletter article at this time.

The Lead Image is currently ignored, but may be enabled in future newsletter templates.

Newsletter layout and publishing

Users with appropriate permissions may be able to access the Newsletter Editor; an interface that allows the user to reorder articles in a newsletter, preview issues, and publish the newsletter. Full documentation for the Newsletter Editor can be found on the Newsletter Editor page.