Newsletters

The News and People Profile System has a Newsletter tool that allows you to create Email Newsletters that contain News Articles and Events from the system. Once you create a newsletter issue in the profile system, you will be provided HTML that you can use in Yale Message to send out the newsletter.

The following instructions provide information on creating a Newsletter issue in the Profile System and obtaining the code necessary to send it out.

To start creating a Newsletter issue:

1. Visit https://profile.yale.edu

2. Log in with your NetID and password.

3. Click Newsletter in the top navigation.

Table of Contents

My Newsletters

When you click Newsletters in the top navigation of the profile system, you will be taken to the My Newsletters page (shown below):

Open

The My Newsletters page shows the existing Newsletters you have access to (highlighted in blue above), as well as links to other functions of the Newsletter tool in the Profile System.

• Most people only have access to one or two Newsletters and likely won’t be editing them, just creating Issues.

  • If you want to edit the function of a Newsletter or see a list of its issues, you can click the pencil/edit icon to the right of the newsletter.

• You can create an entirely new Newsletter template by clicking Create New (highlighted in red above), but it is rare to be creating a new Newsletter. Generally you will want to Add a Newsletter Issue.

• You will see links to the Newsletter Issues and Newsletter Permissions Management pages (highlighted in green above) in the left navigation.

  • The Newsletter Issues page is a list of the Issues already created and published for the Newsletters you have access to.

    • For information about this page, visit the https://ysmweb.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/HELP/pages/1882882252 instructions.

  • The Newsletter Permissions Management page allows you to determine who has access to certain Newsletters (another function most users will not encounter).

The most commonly used and important part of the My Newsletters page is Adding a New Newsletter Issue, which you can start by clicking the Add Newsletter Issue button (highlighted in yellow above).

Adding a New Newsletter Issue

Once you click Add Newsletter Issue on the My Newsletters page, you will be taken to the Newsletter Issue Editor page (shown below):

Newsletter Options

Open

The first step in creating a new newsletter issue is selecting which Newsletter the Issue is for and when it will be sent out.

1. Use the Newsletter drop down menu (highlighted in yellow above) to choose which newsletter template (if you have access to multiple) you want the issue to be a part of. This choice effects much of the look and content of the Issue:

   • The different newsletters have different visual designs and will use some combination of static content, news, and events. Not all newsletters use all of these elements.

   • The News and Events you can include in the newsletter is determined by the News Organizations and Event Calendars selected for the template.

2. Newsletter Issue Date: Click this field (highlighted in blue above) to use the calendar tool to choose the date the issue will be sent out.

For this example, we will choose the YSM Events newsletter.

Once you select a Newsletter, the rest of the information for the Issue will populate.

Static Content

The Static Content section of the issue (shown below) allows you to enter information specific to the Issue.

• Use the Heading field to add a header to the Issue.

• Use the Body field to add body text to the Issue.

• Drag and drop an image or click the Image field to add an image to the top of some Newsletter templates.

Announcements

You can add Announcements (News Articles) to a Newsletter Issue in this section. The Newsletter template determines the news feed this section pulls from.

You can add News articles to the Announcements section in two ways:

• Click Add News... (highlighted above in yellow) to add articles manually from a list.

• Click Add items in date range (highlighted above in blue) to add all articles in a date range.

If you click Add News... , a window will pop up showing a list of articles, like the one below:

The list draws from the Organization News Feed that is chosen for the Newsletter template.

• You can filter the results with the Search bar or using a date range.

• Clicking the arrow icons to the left of articles (highlighted in blue above) shows more information about the article.

  • If you click Edit News (highlighted in red above), you will be taken to the editing workflow for the News Article.

    • For more information about adding and editing News Articles, visit the section of instructions.

  • Clicking Preview News (highlighted in green above) shows you a preview of what the News Article looks like on a website.

• To add an article to the Newsletter Issue, click the + icon to the right of the article (highlighted in yellow above).

Once you add articles, the + icon will turn into a trashcan icon (highlighted in red below), which you can click to remove the article from the Issue.

When you are done adding articles, click the X icon in the top-right corner of the window (highlighted in blue above) to return to the Newsletter Issue Editor.

If you click Add items in date range , enter the range of dates for which you want to add all the events.

• Click Submit to add all the news in the date range to the Issue.

Once you have finished adding articles, the Announcements section will look like this:

You can do several things with the list of articles from this section:

• Sort the articles alphabetically by clicking Title or by date by clicking Byline Date.

• Sort the articles manually by clicking and dragging the menu icons (highlighted in yellow above).

• See more details about the articles by clicking the arrow icons to the left of the article (highlighted in blue above).

• Remove individual articles from the list with the trashcan icons to the right of the article(highlighted in red above).

• Remove all the articles in the list by clicking Remove All.

Featured Events

The next section in this template is Featured Events. In this section, you can add events to the Newsletter Issue that you want to stand out from the other events you will add next in the Upcoming Events section.

The interface is the same as the Announcements section, with some important distinctions.

• The list of events populates from the Event Calendar that is chosen in the overall Newsletter template.

  • For more information on adding and editing Events in a Calendar, see the section of instructions.

• Once you have added Featured Events, the section looks like this:

The interface for the Featured Events is the same as adding a News Article, except for one major difference: the ability to Override the image and description of the event.

• You can do this by clicking the pencil/edit icons to the right of the event (highlighted in yellow above), which will bring up the window shown below:

• You can add text to override the existing Event description in the Newsletter Event Description Override field.

• You can also add and image to the event or override the existing image for the event by clicking the Newsletter Event Thumbnail Override field or dragging an image into the field.

When you have completed the field(s) you want to fill out, click Update (highlighted in yellow above) to add the override information to the Event.

Upcoming Events

The final section in this template (YSM Events) is Upcoming Events. In this section, you can add more events to the Newsletter Issue.

The interface is the same as the Announcements section, with some important distinctions.

• The list of events populates from the Event Calendar that is chosen in the overall Newsletter template.

  • For more information on adding and editing Events in a Calendar, see the section of instructions.

When you are finished entering all the News and Events you want to include in your Newsletter Issue, click Save at the bottom left of the page.

Previewing the Issue

One you have clicked Save on your Issue, the next step is to Preview the Newsletter Issue. After saving, the bottom of the will change to look like this:

Click Preview (highlighted in yellow above) to be taken to a page that shows a preview of the issue (shown below):

You can see that the Body text entered into the Static Content section shows up on this template (YSM Events).

The Announcements section comes next (highlighted in blue above), populated by the News Articles we added in that section.

Next up is the Featured Events section (shown above) populated with the events chosen in the section and their associated information.

• The Override Image (highlighted in yellow above) and and Override Description (highlighted in blue above) are displayed with the event.

Finally, there is the Upcoming Events section (shown above), which is displayed in a list format. It does not feature each event as much or show as much information.

• This section is better for long lists of events.

Publishing and Copying the HTML

Once you’ve previewed your Newsletter Issue and are satisfied with the content, you can Publish it.

• Because the issue will be sent out via Yale Message, publishing the issue doesn’t display it anywhere.

Click Publish (highlighted in yellow above) at the bottom of the page to lock the issue for editing.

• This will ensure that the issue is not edited in between finishing it and sending it out.

Once you publish, the options at the bottom of the page change again:

From here, you have some new options:

1. You can Unpublish the issue if you want to edit something.

2. You can click Copy HTML to copy the HTML for the Newsletter issue to your clipboard.

Once you have the HTML copied, you can enter it into Yale Message, so that it can be sent out.