News articles

Assemble allows organisations to publish news for their users, keeping them informed of important events, updates and anything to do with their volunteering. It's an excellent way to increase engagement and proves very popular with volunteers as well as giving volunteering teams an easy way to communicate freely without needing to consider GDPR rules which apply when emailing direct.

Adding/editing news articles

You can add articles from within News itself or in News Articles in Settings.

To add a news article select the "Add article" and fill in the required information:

Article excerpt

The excerpt text is the introduction to the news article and is shown in the preview of the article. It should be limited to a couple of sentences and not be longer than a paragraph. The excerpt text is also displayed as the first paragraph of the article.

Article body

Enter the main contents of the article. There's no character limit within news articles but you should bear in mind that users may be reading the news on a mobile device.

It is not possible to insert HTML into articles. However, you can use markdown for advanced formatting.

You can use the markdown tables generator if you need to add a table to your news article.

Article image (optional)

An image for your article makes your home page in Assemble and on the app more attractive and engaging. Only articles with an image can be the featured article.

To upload an image, press the "Upload image" button and then select the image you want to upload. Please make sure that images you upload are in landscape format. Once you've selected the image, you will see the "Image caption" box appear. In order to ensure that your system is Visual Impairment friendly, please make sure you enter a descriptive caption.

Additional images can also be added within the article itself.

Article tags (optional)

Tags allow you to classify your articles, making it easier for users to find articles of particular interest to them in their own news feed. They cannot set their preferences for the home page, making sure you can always push the required information to your users there.

If your organisation is utilising tags for news articles, click on the tags field where you'll be able to select the appropriate tag(s) for the article.

Expiry date (optional)

If you would like your article to be automatically removed from Assemble, you can set an expiry date by clicking on the field and selecting a date in the future. This will take the article offline on the day you have selected. However, you can still view the article in the "Expired" section of the news management.

It's generally a good idea to leave this field empty as it means that volunteers can read news articles whenever they start engaging with Assemble. However, if the information would be confusing eg time-limited guidance, you should consider setting an expiry date.

Delete article (optional)

Pressing this button will instantly remove the news article from your live news. You can restore any news article by clicking on the "Restore article" link which will appear instead of the "Delete article" button.

Publish date and time (optional)

You can add news articles in advance of the publication date and time, allowing you to add an embargoed press release or add multiple articles to be published at various dates and times over the following weeks.

If you don't set a date and time, the article will be published immediately.

Homepage and featured articles

Homepage

The homepage in Assemble will show the four most recently published stories. The featured article will be the most recent one that has an image and is not restricted by team or role. However, you can override this automatic setting.

Featured

Ticking the Featured box next to the relevant story will set it to be the featured one, overriding Assemble's automatic setting of the most recently published valid article.

When you no longer want this to be your featured article, you may select another in its place or allow Assemble to control this by publication date again. Simply untick the Featured box so no article is ticked and Assemble will automatically display the most recently published article with a picture and no team/role restrictions.