News stories are the articles that appear in the News widget on the homepage and on the News page. This page goes through the news edit screen box by box. Go to News in the left-hand menu and select Add news, or open an existing story from the list. The News module must be on under Options, Modules.
Contributors can write stories but not publish them. Authors can publish and edit their own. Editors and administrators can publish, edit and delete any story. Only administrators can manage news types. Your intranet may have changed these roles: see Roles and capabilities.
Title, content and excerpt
Type a headline as the title and write the story in the editor. The Excerpt box under the editor holds a one or two sentence summary, shown on news cards, in the News widget when Show excerpt is on, and in search results. If you leave it empty the first few words of the story are used. See Generate an excerpt for the Agento Intelligence shortcut. If a box is missing, open Screen Options at the top right and tick it.
Format
In the right-hand column. Standard is a normal story and is the default.
- Status: marks the story as need to know. It is listed in the (Govintra) Need to know widget, and once a person has opened it the widget hides it or ticks it for 30 days in that browser. A Status story also appears in the News widget and on the News page like any other story. Use the expiry box, below, to turn it back into a regular story later.
- Link: the story is a signpost to another web address. An External link box appears with an External link URL; when anyone opens the story they are sent straight to that address, so the story’s own content is never shown. Cards mark the story as an external link.
- Video and Audio: a Media embed box appears for a YouTube, Vimeo or similar address. The player replaces the featured image at the top of the story and in the large slot of the News widget. See Feature a video in a news story.
- Image and Gallery are listed but behave as Standard.
News types, tags and featured image
- News types: tick one or more. Types can have sub-types. They appear as a label on cards, as filter pills across the top of the News page, as pills in the story’s sidebar, and the News widget can be limited to chosen types. See News types.
- Tags: shared with every other kind of content, so a tag links a story to the tasks and pages on the same subject. See Tags.
- Featured image: the picture on cards, in widgets and at the top of the story. A story without one shows no picture on cards. See Set a featured image. A caption set on the image in the media library appears under it on the story.
News expiry
In the right-hand column. Switch Auto-expiry on to show the rest of the box, then set the Expiry date and Expiry time (24-hour, such as 17:30; leave it blank and the story expires at the start of that day). The Expiry action decides what happens then:
- Revert to draft: the default. The story comes off the intranet and is kept as a draft.
- Change to regular news: removes the Status format so the story leaves the Need to know widget but stays published. This is the usual choice for a need-to-know notice.
- Move to trash: the story goes to the Bin.
- Change news type: the story stays published and moves to the type chosen in Change to news type, replacing its current types. Use it to move a story into an archive type.
Expiry is checked every five minutes. Afterwards the expiry fields are cleared, so republishing a drafted story does not expire it again unless you set a new date.
Boxes below the editor
These appear in roughly this order and can be dragged into any order.
Document attachments
Select Add document to attach a file from the media library, with an optional Display title; the file name is used if you leave it blank. Attached documents are listed for download at the foot of the story.
Related content
Pick pages, tasks, guides, news, blog posts, events, projects, vacancies or training to list under Related in the story’s sidebar. Filter by type or search on the left, and select items to move them to the right. The list also includes any item that has picked this story as related, unless Hide reciprocal related links is on under Options, General. Below the story, a More news section suggests up to three other stories that share a news type or tag.
Sidebar content
Free-format text, images or links for the top of the story’s sidebar, above the Related list and any widgets. Leave it empty and nothing is shown.
Associated teams
Pick the team or teams the story is about. It is used by the Aggregator page template to build news listings for a team, including its sub-teams. It has no other effect.
Keywords
Extra words for search that are not already in the title or content: synonyms, acronyms, old names. Put a word in [square brackets] to add it to the A to Z as well. It is fine to leave this blank. See Find out the difference between tags and keywords.
Discussion
Tick or untick Allow comments. New stories start open when Settings, Discussion allows comments on new content. See Allow comments on a news story or blog post.
Author
Change who the story is shown as written by. The author is not shown on the story page. It is used in the dashboard list, in the Comments report and by the About this page widget if you add one to the News Sidebar.
Publish, schedule and update
Use the Publish box to save a draft, preview, publish now or set a future date to schedule the story. Stories appear newest first, so editing the published date moves a story up or down the lists. See Save, preview, schedule and publish pages and posts.
What staff see on a news story page
A news story page is laid out in a fixed order, so it helps to know which box feeds which part of it. Two formats behave differently before anything is shown. A Link story never displays a page: the reader is sent straight to the external address. A Status story sets a 30-day cookie in the reader’s browser when it is opened, so the (Govintra) Need to know widget stops showing it, or ticks it off, for that person on that device.
Every other story shows, from the top down:
- The breadcrumb trail: Home, the News page, then the headline. A draft, pending, scheduled or binned story carries its preview badge here when previewed.
- The headline and the published date. The author’s name is not shown on the story.
- The video or audio player, for a Video or Audio story with a Media embed. Otherwise the featured image at the large size, with the caption from its Media Library entry underneath if one is set.
- The content, the Documents list, then the like button when likes are switched on for news.
- The sidebar, in this order: Sidebar content, the Related list, any widgets in the News Sidebar area, then pills for the story’s news types and tags. A news type pill opens the News page filtered to that type; a tag pill opens the tag’s archive limited to news.
- Comments, when they are open on the story.
- A More news row of up to three cards: the newest other stories that share a news type or tag with this one, leaving out anything already picked as related content.
Where a published story appears
- The (Govintra) News widget, newest first, unless the widget is limited to other news types or the story is excluded in the widget.
- The News page, with paging and the news type pills. The page is chosen as News page under Options, Modules, News tab.
- Search results, with a News filter button.
- Tag pages, the Comms hub and Aggregator templates, and the Most recent widget.
- The story’s own page, described above.