In last weeks Blog: Internal Communication: The Email Epidemic – Cure and collaborate better, I explored some of the various internal communication options out there and explained the benefits of, and how to start up, a school SharePoint site so that a ‘one stop shop’ for information could be created. The site would have communication benefits for staff such as those in the list below, but also has the potential for the creation of an internal coms solution i.e. the Ultimate School Staff News Template!
Homepage benefits
- Multiple links to tools and resources that staff members use frequently, such as curriculum guides, policies, forms, etc. These can help staff members access what they need for their teaching and administrative tasks.
- Highlighted documents that staff members need to read or review, such as shared lesson plan templates, HR and professional development resources, policy updates, etc.
- Events and announcements that are relevant for staff members, such as staff meetings, training sessions, deadlines, celebrations, etc. This can help staff members keep track of their schedules and participate in school activities.
Conveniently you can easily share the URLs of all SharePoint sites with staff via email; QR code. All SharePoint pages have web-parts that you can add, delete and tailor to suit your communication needs.
The News and Announcements section and the Events Calendar are two web-parts that I find are really useful for SharePoint home pages. Luckily these are standard on newly created homepages, so no work needed to add them. You can easily add an internal News Post, and create your own template to customise and standardise your newsletter/bulletin headings and add some key links or call to action buttons for each post. This is something that I would strongly recommend.
Creating your Ultimate School Staff News Template
Implementation Pain indicator level
Levels one and two are what I hope to aim for with regularity, no pain some gain definitely my preferred option! Level 3 may be unavoidable at times but don’t let that put you off, the benefits will definitely outweigh any difficulties or time input required. I promise I will avoid any level 5 tips – simply because I probably don’t fully understand the processes involved and I value my desk and Surface Pro too much 😕
This week it’s Level 3!
Don’t be put off – it’s worth the effort.
Creating a staff school newsletter or bulletin is a great way to communicate with your colleagues, share important updates, celebrate achievements, and foster a sense of community. You can make it more engaging by creating a template that you can use every time you post. The template can include an embedded events calendar, call to action buttons, quick links and teacher profiles. This way, you only need to update the daily message. You can save time and effort, and promote consistency, readability, and engagement with this approach. Don’t worry, this is not as complicated as it seems, and the best part is you only need to make a template once!
Example Newsletter/Bulletin
Steps to creating your own News Template
Follow the steps below to start the journey towards creating your Newsletter.
- Open 365, click on the SharePoint app then go to your School site Homepage.
- If you have a staff Team site you can easily construct a homepage from it. When you create a new team in Teams, it automatically creates a corresponding SharePoint site that is linked to the team. The SharePoint site will have the same sharing rights as the Team, so you may not want to change this to ‘read only’ as this will affect your staff Team’s ability to collaborate too. Might be better to construct a new SharePoint staff page and keep editing rights to owners only (Phew!)
- OK, back to the Template: On the SharePoint home page click on News and then News post.
If you use the blank template, you can design and curate your newsletter more easily. You probably should not use the email option because it has less features, for example, there are fewer webparts to choose from. Also with the email template you cannot change or remove your newsletter posts after you send them, but you can change or remove your posts on SharePoint Online if you have use the blank template for your newsletter.
You can now edit the title, banner image, and any content that you want staff to see in the news post, but don’t want to add daily. You can then place different web parts, such as text, images, videos, documents, links, etc., to make your news post more engaging and informative. It would be a good idea at this stage to add your school logo, links to important documents, staff request forms and the events calendar so that they will be part of your template.
Changing the banner of the News Template
Hover over the top left corner, click on the picture icon and upload or choose an image from the web.
Adding Images to the News Template via Webparts
Now hover over the gap between two web parts until a + sign appears, but be patient, it can be a bit tricky! You can click on the + and open a mini window with lots of options for adding web parts. If you want to add a logo or a school image at the start of your newsletter, click on Image and upload. I wouldn’t add any content to the text box included in the original template, as this will be the area for the school’s daily message.
Adding the events calendar via Webparts
You can place the events webpart just above the logo and the area for main message. Use the same process as inserting an image. It will update here automatically when you add an event, and you can easily see it at first glance of the newsletter. See how it looks on our own school newsletter below. I’ll have more detail on the events calendar next week.
Adding Call to action buttons via Webparts
Use the Call to Action button to access forms that you or your staff need to fill in, such as a Planned Absence Form. You can add these forms to any newsletter without using a template. Just insert the web part where you want them to appear – for example, after the principal’s message. You can also use Quick Links to share documents that might be useful for your staff. The process is the same as before for adding the web part, but there is an extra simple step for adding a link to the call to action button.
The Process
The images below help show what is involved.
- To improve the look and feel of the newsletter, you can edit a section of the page. You can also adjust the shade of the section background and font here.
- Next add the Call to Action web part.
- Edit the links in the web part. It’s easy to change the background image of webpart, edit the labels and create a link for the button. I used a call to action to help staff access my web blog!
Really Really important bit!
When you are done editing, click on Save as Template. This will save your news post as a draft that you can reuse later as a template.
Default Template for your Ultimate School Staff News Template
Go back to your Homepage and Click on News and then News post. Then select Saved on this site, your template will be below. Hit the three dots and then choose set default selection. If you want to edit anything in your template then select go to template. You can now go ahead and create your first post.
Publishing and Sharing Ultimate School Staff News Posts
To create a post, click on “Create post” and add the main part of the message from your contributor. When you are done, click on “Post news”. You can then share your newsletter via three options: “Share page”, “Copy link to page” or “Send to email”. The option “Copy link to page” gives you more freedom over who can access your newsletter or bulletin.
You can change the setting to “People in C2k” (N Ireland schools only) but anyone (including pupils) with a C2k username will be able to access your newsletter – not recommended for a staff news post.
You can also share editing access with your newsletter team by selecting “People you choose”. Your newsletter will also automatically populate the SharePoint homepage after being posted.
Summary
So there you have it, a Newsletter/Bulletin template that you have customised with your own information and can now use as frequently as you need.
Recap
- Open Office 365
- Click on SharePoint
- Go to the your recently created School Homepage
- Go to News click Add and select News post
- Click Choose a Blank Template
- Edit template. Add whatever fixed content you want to your news post template by using the + button to insert web parts, such as text, images, videos, forms. Also edit the layout and appearance of your news post by using the Edit button on the top right corner.
- Save your template and make it the default template for your homepage.
- Use your new template to create news posts.
- Click on the Post news button on the top right corner to publish it.
- Share your news post with others!
Next week…
In the next blog, I will show you how to set up your events calendar (maybe some updates on embedding a shared staff Outlook calendar!) and how to promote it’s use. I will also explain how to access the analytics of the newsletter and school site so you can measure staff engagement. Finally, I will give you some more advice and tips on how to reach a wider audience so that all of your great work gets seen and is beneficial to staff.
See you soon!
One response to “6. The Ultimate School Staff News Template: How to Use SharePoint to Impress!”
[…] blog: 5. Internal Communication: The Email Epidemic – Cure and Collaborate Better and 6. The Ultimate School Newsletter Template: How to Use SharePoint to Impress! In there you will find reasons for using SharePoint as a home page and some details on how to set […]