An SIMPLE in-app announcement system for Knack App

API & Customization Ask Developers
1

This recipe displays a banner update/announcement with your preferred message at top of selected knack pages.

Note: This uses only Knack built-in functionality with exception of one line of CSS (later).

Background: As I have very little contact with my globally dispersed app users, I wanted to create a simple announcement system that I could use to communicate important functional updates or system issues. Also, as I must frequently work in the live system, I wanted to be able to tell my users there was work going on i.e.  “under construction”. Furthermore, Knack want to move my app to another server, so I also need to let my users know not to update records while this is going on.

Features include:

  • Announcements can be made by end-user admin (from within app)
  • Two types of announcements
    1. Normal: i.e. update on new functionality etc
    2. Warning:  e. system issues, don’t update record etc
  • Messages display expires after x number of days
  • History of updates is kept and can be displayed for users

 

I documented it here

http://www.transformsquad.ie/knack/KnackAnnouncementsSystem.pdf 

 

Hope its of some use 

regards

Noel D

2

Love it, Bob. Nice one

3

Noel, what I do is that in my object where I have a yes/no field titled show everyday. Then, I have a date field that is the date to show the message. I have rule that runs first thing every day that changes the date field to today's date for any records that have the flag set to yes in the "show everyday" field.

Hope that helps.

4

Actually would be nice if when creating the announcement you could enter the start and end date/time for display. I have tried this but haven't been able to come up with a display rule set that works. Any/ideas gratefully accepted 

5

Hi Kelson

Thanks for the feedback. I did mention that in the document 

/* **************  Announcements  CSS  Enter your own view numbers   *********** */

#view_534 th, #view_538 th, #view_539 th, #view_540 th, #view_541 th, #view_542 th,  #view_543 th { display:none; }

But maybe I could have highlighted more. I recommend "Brads" tool as it makes it super easy to identify views etc

https://support.knack.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/360057746872-Builder-Tools-updated-

tks Noel

6

Hi Noel, 

Just wanted to point out that those view ID #'s in the CSS will change from project to project. You might want to include how people can find those viewID's, otherwise the CSS will not work for them.