Administration Overview
To access the configuration pages:
- Select the Cog menu
> Manage apps. - Expand the entry for the Announcer app.
- Click Get Started.
Announcer for Jira, and Confluence involves global and announcement level configurations, both of which are explained in the succeeding sections. The Announcer is now integrated with Atlassian Statuspage, and thus, appropriate connection details must be provided. These are also explained in the relevant sections.
Announcer Configuration
Click ANNOUNCER FOR JIRA/CONFLUENCE/BITBUCKET > Announcements from the sidebar to view the Announcer Configuration page that displays all active/inactive announcements and allows you to create, edit, or delete an announcement. The Statuspage.io generated announcements, if any, can be identified as having the Statuspage icon (
) in the title.
You can also view all the invalid announcements in the Inactive Notifications section, highlighted with a warning icon. Click the (
) icon to learn more about the notification and enable it for further use or delete if it is no longer required.
| Info |
|---|
An example invalid notification can be one in which the targeted project role is deleted. |
From this page, you can click:
- Preview (
) to preview an existing notification. - Reset (
) to reset the all counts for an existing active notification. - Edit (
) to edit an existing notification in the Announcement editor window. - Delete (
) to delete an existing notification. - Report (
) to see an acceptance report for an existing notification. - Add another notification to add a new announcement.
Announcement editor
This window enables you to set various announcement details.
In Jira:
Enter the following details:
Name | Description | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Status | Indicates whether the announcement is active (enabled) or inactive (disabled). | ||
| Title | The title of the notification that is presented to the end user in the title bar of the browser window. | ||
| Description | An internal description of the announcement that is not displayed to the end user. | ||
| Announcement Type | Select one of the following announcement types:
| ||
| Announcement Icon | Select one of the following to display the respective icon next to the announcement title:
| ||
| Accept Button Text | Enter the text for the accept button. If this field is left blank, the default text Dismiss is used. | ||
| Enable the button after 5 seconds | Select this checkbox and the Dismiss button is activated after 5 seconds, ensuring the user has the opportunity to read the announcement before dismissing it. | ||
| Should the accept button be shown | This applies to Banner and Flag announcement types only and indicates whether the Accept button should appear or not. | ||
| Content | |||
| Use the dropdown to select the desired format (HTML, Markdown, Plain Text) and then enter the body of the announcement. | |||
| Filtering Options | |||
| Show for anonymous users | Select to display the announcement to anonymous users. | ||
| Show announcement upon every login | Select to display the announcement to the user upon every login.
| ||
Show announcement for new users only (Confluence and Jira only) | Select to display the announcement to newly added Jira or Confluence users.
| ||
Filter for specific space(s) (Confluence only) | If you want to target a specific space, select this checkbox and then select the space to be used. To select multiple spaces, hold down Shift and then click each space. | ||
Filter for specific space category(s) (Confluence only) | If you want to target a specific space category, select this checkbox and then select the space category to be used. To select multiple space categories, hold down Shift and then click each space category. | ||
Filter for specific project category(s) (Jira only) | If you want to target a specific project category, select this checkbox and then select the project category to be used. To select multiple project categories, hold down Shift and then click each space category. | ||
Filter for specific project(s) (Jira and Bitbucket only) | If you want to target a specific project, select this checkbox and then select the project to be used. To select multiple projects, hold down Shift and then click each project.
| ||
Filter for specific Project Role (Jira only) | If you want to target a specific project role, select this checkbox and then select the project role that should be used. To select multiple roles, hold down Shift and then click each role. Only the project roles for the selected project are displayed. This option is displayed only after selecting a project in the Filter for specific project(s) option. | ||
| Filter for specific group(s) | If you want to target a specific group, select this checkbox and then select the group that should be used. To select multiple groups, hold down Shift and then click each group. | ||
| Scheduling Options | |||
| Enable date and time restrictions on announcement | Select to set a specific date and time range between which you want to display the announcement. Once this checkbox is selected, additional controls From and To are displayed where you can select the start date and end date with respective timings.
| ||
| Enable custom recurrence | Use this toggle to repeat displaying an announcement at regular intervals. To do so, select one of the following options:
| ||
Click:
- Cancel to discard your changes.
- Preview to preview the announcement in a new tab.
- Save to save the changes made to the announcement.
| Info |
|---|
|
| Tip | ||
|---|---|---|
| ||
If a large number of Filtered Spaces or Projects announcements are created for Spaces or Projects that are not visited often, there can be some performance issues. The same performance issue can be encountered if many time-restricted announcements are utilized, which causes the token cache to be continuously flushed. If such performance issues occur, it is recommended to convert to global fixed announcements. |
Reports
For any given announcement, select the report icon () to display an Acceptance Report that shows who has accepted the announcement and who has not. Dwell time (in seconds, i.e. how long an announcement was displayed before the user dismissed it) is displayed as a summary across all users and on a per user basis.
In the Users section, you see the users list is paginated. You can also:
- Filter users - Use this to filter users based on the following criteria and click Filter to view the respective results:
- User name: Start typing a username into the first text field, or
- Select All to show all users in the report or Accepted to only show users who have accepted the announcement, or
- Select the number is users you want to see in a page from the number options available in the drop-down.
Click Reset to reset the filter criteria.
- Hover over the User Name link to view the user profile details of the respective user.
You can also use Export to CSV button on the top right corner to export the report to a CSV file.
| Info |
|---|
When the user count in this report is:
|
Announcer Global Configuration
Click ANNOUNCER FOR JIRA/CONFLUENCE/BITBUCKET > Configuration from the sidebar to view the Announcer Global Configuration page where you can configure all the global parameters of all the announcements.
The options that can be configured are:
| Option | Description | Default value | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Usage Analytics Settings | ||||||
| Help Us Improve the Product | When enabled, it allows us to collect some usage data that will help us improve the product. To learn more about what is being sent, refer to Analytics Information. This configuration can also be turned off if you do not wish to share the information. | true | ||||
| Notification Settings | ||||||
| Dialog Height | This allows you to change the default dialog height of Dialog announcements. | 500 | ||||
| Delegation Settings | ||||||
| Allow project administrators to create announcements | Allows Space Administrators and Project Administrators to create their own announcements. | false | ||||
| Bypass Full Page Announcements | Enter the following in the respective text fields:
| blank | ||||
| HTML Settings | ||||||
| Add/Remove tags and attributes for styling the announcements | Allows you to configure global HTML tags and attributes. Usage details:
Add the following to HTML Settings
| Refer to the image | ||||
| Remind Me Later Settings | ||||||
| Enable Remind Me Later | Enable this option to remind the user of the announcement after a pre-set period of time. Disabling this option displays the announcement until the user selects Dismiss. | false | ||||
| Remind Me Later Text | Allows you to add the reminder link text that informs the purpose to the user. | blank | ||||
| Mute period | Specifies the amount of time (in minutes) for which you can mute the announcement. | 240 | ||||
| Explanation text | Allows you to add the hover dialog text that helps the user understand the announcement in detail. | Refer to the image | ||||
Statuspage.io Integrations
Click ANNOUNCER FOR JIRA/CONFLUENCE/BITBUCKET > Statuspage.io integrations from the sidebar to open the Statuspage.io Integration page. The integration with Statuspage ensures that important information about critical systems and/or any incident updates is displayed across Confluence, Jira or Bitbucket. A list of all announcements, enabled or disabled, is displayed in this page. Before you establish a connection with Statuspage, you see:
| Info |
|---|
You must first establish a connection with your Statuspage instance. If not, actions associated with Add a Statuspage Integration now are ignored. |
Click the Cog (
) menu on the top-right corner, to connect to a Statuspage instance.
All the options here are mandatory. The options that can be configured are:
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
| Base URL | Enter the Statuspage URL here. This URL is used to connect to your Statuspage instance. |
| Statuspage.io API Token | Enter the Statuspage API token. To get this token:
|
| Polling Frequency | Specify the time in minutes. This value specifies how frequently the application must communicate with Statuspage to get the latest updates. |
| Statuspage Link Prefix | Enter the text to be used to link the announcement with the Statuspage incident page. After this text, a link to the specific Statuspage incident is included. Clicking this link opens the Statuspage incident page in the browser. |
Click Save to save the announcement or Cancel, if you do not wish to proceed.
After providing the connection details, click Add a Statuspage Integration now to create an announcement integrated with the configured Statuspage page.
The options that can be configured are:
| Name | Description | Is mandatory? | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Announcement Configuration | ||||
| Enable | Select to receive incident updates from the specified Statuspage instance. | No | ||
| Name | Enter a relevant name for the Statuspage announcement. Your Jira Administrator can refer to the integration with this name. | Yes | ||
| Description | Enter a descriptive text for the announcement that is not visible to users. | No | ||
| Announcement Type | Select one of the following:
| Yes | ||
| Notification Icon | Choose this if you'd like an icon displayed next to the announcement title. Available icons are:
For a Banner and Flag notification types, the border colors and icons change based on the icon selected from this list of options. | Yes | ||
| Filter for specific project(s) | (Jira and Bitbucket only) If you want to target a specific project, select this checkbox and then select the project that should be used. To select multiple projects, hold down Shift and then click each project. For Jira: Only the projects that the current user has 'Browse' or 'Administer' permission for, are shown. | No | ||
| Filter for specific groups(s) | If you want to target a specific group, select this checkbox and then select the group that should be used. To select multiple groups, hold down Shift and then click each group. | No | ||
| Statuspage.io Configuration | ||||
| Statuspage.io page | Select a page from the drop-down list. This list is populated with the pages available on your Statuspage instance. | No | ||
| Status(s) | By default, all statuses available in Statuspage are displayed here. Click X to remove unwanted statuses from the box. | Yes | ||
| Announcement EOL | Select the time till which the announcement is valid. This value is referred to as the End of Life (EOL) of the announcement. This specified time (in minutes, hours, or days) disables the announcements after the latest update from Statuspage is received. At the same time, the Acceptance Report counts for the announcement are also reset.
| Yes | ||
Click Create to create the announcement or Cancel, if you do not want to proceed. Once a Statuspage announcement is created, you see it listed in the Statuspage.io Integration page.
To create announcements for other Statuspage pages, click Configure a Statuspage announcement. You can integrate with multiple Statuspage pages, as required.
Active Statuspage.io incidents
Click ANNOUNCER FOR JIRA/CONFLUENCE/BITBUCKET > Active Statuspage.io incidents from the sidebar to open the Incidents page. All active Statuspage announcements are displayed here.
If there are no active incidents, the Incidents page shows:
After the configurations are made and the Announcer Series begins to receive incident updates, the Incidents page displays details such as, when the incident occurred, and, when the incident was last updated as shown:
Click the edit (
) icon to view the incident history details. You can turn off notifications if you do not want to receive any more updates.
Bitbucket-specific functionality
If you're using Atlassian Bitbucket, a list of a user's outstanding announcements is shown whenever a user does a Git pull/push (and there are changes to be applied).
URLs that are not affected
The Announcer app will intercept all page requests with the exception of the following paths:
| URL | Product | Description |
|---|---|---|
| /rest/* | All | REST URLs are not blocked |
| /plugins/servlet/upm | All | The Universal Plugin Manager (UPM) is not blocked |
Need to circumvent the Cookie check?
The Interstitial announcements are cookie-based and every once in a while you might want to make requests that don't get intercepted. You can use either of the following means to do this:
- Set the User-Agent in the Global Configuration (see above).
- Set the User-Agent on your request.
| Note | ||
|---|---|---|
Make sure to add in a "X-WITTIFIED-NO-CHECK" header, such as:
|
Confluence and Jira Data Center
Any enabling/disabling/new Interstitial announcements might take up to one minute to be active across all nodes.
Slack deep link support
Starting in version 2.7, announcements can be configured to open the Slack desktop client with the help of Slack deep linking.
Below are the examples showing how to configure it:
To open the Slack desktop client
Code Block <a href="slack://open">Open Slack</a>
To open the Slack desktop client for a specific team
Code Block <a href="slack://open?team={TEAM_ID}">Open Slack</a>To open the Slack desktop client for a specific team and channel
Code Block <a href="slack://channel?team={Team_ID}&id={CHANNEL_ID}">Chat with us on Marketing channel</a>Click this link to learn how to find Slack team and channel ids.