📖 Note: This article explains how organisers of a competition (i.e. affiliated users within an organisation with the 'Manage Events' permission) can make competition announcements for participants to view and interact with.
What is the Announcements tab?
The Announcements tab is a page where organisers of a competition can make posts about important competition updates or logistical information. For instance, as a competition organiser, you may like to use the Announcements tab to:
Clarify competition rules and etiquette;
Announce updates to event scheduling;
Inform of ongoing technical issues;
Announce challenge hints, and;
Inform of general competition-related information relevant to participants.
📖 Note: Announcements is a feature that was introduced in March 2024, and is available to all competitions (both individual and team-based).
Navigating to a Competition's Announcements Tab
To navigate to a competition's Announcements, simply click the Announcements tab.
Viewing Announcement Messages and Likes
Once you're on the Announcements page within a competition, you'll be able to see the competition announcement messages posted by yourself and other competition organisers. For each message, you'll be able to see the name [1] of the poster, an 'Event Organiser' badge [2] next to their name, and the time and date [3] that the message was posted.
Competition participants can like announcement messages using the 'Like' button. You can see the number of likes each announcement message has below each message, which may help you to understand the reach of your announcements.
Creating New Announcement Messages
To create a new announcement message, simply type the message you want participants to receive in the message input box [1]. Each announcement message has a maximum character limit of 500 characters.
You can also paste images into the message input box if you wish. Image file types that are accepted are JPEG, JPG, PNG, and GIF. Note that only one image can be added to a message at a time.
When you are ready to post your message, click 'Send' [2].
Once you send a new announcement message, participants who have the platform open in a browser tab on their device will receive a notification.
📖 Note: To understand announcement notifications, as well as what your announcements look like to participants within your competition, read this article.
Editing Existing Announcement Messages
As an event organiser, you can edit any announcement messages that you have posted.
To edit an existing announcement message, click the pen icon underneath the message you wish to edit. Once you do this, you will be able to freely edit the existing announcement message.
The same rules for creating new messages apply to editing existing messages. Each announcement message has a maximum character limit of 500 characters, and you can add one image at a time to each message (with only JPEG, JPG, PNG, and GIF image file formats being accepted).
Once you are happy with the edits you have made, click the tick icon [1] to save your changes. Once you do this, '(edited)' will be added to the end of your message to show that your message has been edited.
If you want to discard your edits, click the cross icon [2] to cancel editing.
You cannot edit messages that other event organisers have posted in Announcements - you can only edit your own messages.
Deleting Existing Announcement Messages
As an event organiser, you can delete any announcement messages that any event organiser has posted in the competition. To do this, simply click the bin icon underneath the message you wish to delete.
Note that once you delete a message, it will become inaccessible to all users in the competition and cannot be recovered.
📖 Note:
The Announcements tab becomes immediately available to event organisers once a competition has been created (even before the competition has started).
Participants have access to view and like competition announcements for the duration of a competition.
After a competition ends, participants will lose access to announcements. Event organisers however, will still be able to view the Announcements tab, but as soon as the competition has ended, no new messages can be written, and existing messages cannot be deleted or edited.