The features in the feed module: "Hide feed if no content", "Visible after published to contact" and "Pinned content in a feed", brings a lot of new opportunities for you when working with your employee app.
In this article we will showcase the following three use cases with the new feed features - and guide you through the steps to build these use cases in your app:
For a thorough walkthrough of the feed module settings please read the article "How to use the feed module".
1. Create an onboarding feed on the App Homepage
With the updated features in the feed module it is now possible to build a feed that will only be visible if there are content in the feed, meaning that we can now avoid the "Nothing to read here" message in an empty feed.
Furthermore it is possible to select a certain time period for how long time the messages in a feed should be visible to the contact.
This can be useful in many situations where we have some messages targeted to a specific group of contacts - and in this part of the article we will show how it can be used for onboarding purposes.
We will create an onboarding feed on the App Homepage with messages targeted employees in onboarding. For all the employees that are NOT in onboarding the feed will be hidden.
1.1 Create a category for the feed
First, create a category for the onboarding feed. Go to admin settings, messages, create a new category and save. In this case we have created the category "Onboarding".
1.2 Create the feed
Next, create the onboarding feed. In this case we will add the onboarding feed to the App homepage, since we want the messages to be visible for the new employees as soon as they download the app and open the app homepage.
Navigate to the App homepage and add a feed module with messages:
Select the number of messages you want to display in the feed - in this case we recommend 3 or less, since we also have a news feed on the App homepage placed below the onboarding feed
Add the category that you want show in the feed - in this case we have added "Onboarding"
Choose the sorting order and show date - in this case we recommend to use the "Published to contact date" since we are working with onboarding messages that will have different publish dates for each contact in onboarding
Chose for how long time you want the messages to be visible after they have been published to the contact - in this case we want the messages to be visible in the onboarding feed for one week
Open the Advanced options and tick on the "Hide feed when no content" - this setting will make sure that the feed will not be visible to all the employee that are not in onboarding - and that it will disappear for the contacts in onboarding when the onboarding messages are no longer visible for the contact (ref. the settings in no. 4)
Settings in the onboarding feed module:
Advanced settings in the onboarding feed module:
Now your feed is ready and you can create your onboarding content. Remember to add the "Onboarding" category on the onboarding content for them to be visible in the onboarding feed.
1.3 How it looks in the app
Let's take a look in the app and see how things will look here.
Employee in onboarding: Employee NOT in onboarding:
Employees in onboarding will see the onboarding messages in the top of the homepage (left screen), while employees that are NOT in onboarding will see only the app homepage with the news feed.
Voila 🙌
2. Create navigation to segmented area of the app
With the new feature "Hide feed if no content" we can use a feed to create a navigation from eg. the app homepage to a segmented area of the app that is only supposed to be accessible for a specific group of contacts.
The message preview in the feed will act as the navigation to the segmented area - and the feed will only be visible for a contact if there is content in the feed.
This can be useful in many situations and in this article we will show how it can be used to create a navigation to local department landingpages of a global company.
We will refer to the feed as a "navigation feed" in the following description of how to build this navigation.
2. 1 Create a category for the feed
First, create a category for the navigation feed. Go to admin settings, messages, create a new category and save. In this case we have created the category "Local department".
2.2 Create the feed
Next, create the navigation feed for the local department landingpages. We want the navigation on the App homepage so we have navigated to the homepage and added a feed module with messages:
Select the number of messages you want to display in the feed - in this case we only want to show 1 message
Add the category that you want show in the feed - in this case we have added the "Local Department" category
Choose the sorting order and show date - in this case we have chosen "Alphabetical order" (but actually it can be any of them, since we only have one message and therefor no sorting) - and "None" in the show date option
Chose for how long time you want the messages to be visible after they have been published to the contact - in this case we want the messages to be visible forever, so we have chosen "Indefinitely"
Open the Advanced options
Tick on "Hide feed when no content" - this setting will make sure that the feed will only be visible for a contact if there is a local landingpage published to the contact
Tick on the "Use squared thumbnails"
Tick off the rest of the options under the advanced settings - since we are only using the feed for navigation we do not want to show categories, social statistics etc.
Now your navigation feed is ready and you can create your local department landingpages. Remember to add the "Local Department" category to the landingpages and publish them to the specific groups of contacts.
2.3 How it looks in the app
Let's take a look in the app and see how the navigation to the segmented area will look!
Employee with a local landingpage: Employee without a local landingpage:
Employees with a local landingpage will have the navigation in the top of the App homepage (left screen), while employees without a local landingpage will only see the app homepage with the news feed (right screen).
3. Pinned Top News
With the "pinned content" feature it is possible to pin messages in a feed for a specific time period.
This is very useful for things like Breaking News, Shiftplans, Important announcement, HQ news etc.
In this article we will showcase how to add "Breaking News" as pinned content to the newsfeed on the App homepage.
3.1. Create the category for the pinned content
First, create a category for the pinned content. Go to admin settings, messages, create a new category and save. In this case we have created the category "Breaking news".
3.2 Add the pinned content to the news feed
Navigate to the feed module where you want to pin content.
Add the category for the pinned content - in this case we have added "Breaking news"
Chose how many days the content need to be pinned - in this case we have selected 2 days
It is only possible to add one category for pinned content - and the pinned content will be sorted after first published date.
3.3 How does it look in the app
Let's take a look in the app and see how the pinned content will look.
The pinned messages is placed in the top of the feed - and the category illustrates that the message is pinned with the pinned icon.
When the time period for the pinned content expires the message will automatically appear in the regular part of the feed.
