Post an Announcement When You Have Something Special to Say
Office 365 Message Center MC179865 announces that Teams will support the new announcement post type worldwide by the end of June 2019 (roadmap feature 51326). There’s no indication in the notification if this feature is limited to commercial customers.
Graphic Highlights
Essentially, an announcement post is a post highlighted with a graphic heading. When you start a new conversation, select announcement from the drop-down list to the top left and then compose a heading. You can then upload a graphic file (JPEG or PNG) or opt for the heading to have a solid background color. If you choose a graphic, the ideal proportions for the oblong shape of the heading are 914 x 120 pixels. If you upload a file of a different size, you have some latitude to select an appropriate area, which is what I’ve done in Figure 1. You can also zoom in and select a specific area of the graphic to use for the heading.
Figure 1: Composing an announcement post in Teams
When you post the announcement, readers see a small announcement icon to indicate the post type (Figure 2) I wonder how many will overlook this because they focus on the graphic?
Figure 2: Look, I’m an announcement!
Anyone in a team can post an announcement. If people get into the habit of posting announcements rather than regular conversations because they like the way that the graphics make their posts prominent the usefulness of announcement posts will decrease. You don’t really want to see a message stream full of posts with headings containing furry cat pictures.
New Post Types to Come?
By itself, the announcement post type isn’t terribly interesting. The idea is that announcements will give organizations the chance to highlight important messages to users. The new type will add some color to conversations, but that’s about it. What is interesting is that Teams is laying the foundation for users to be able to select from multiple post types when they start a conversation. Over time, we might well see new post types appear, possibly created by ISVs who integrate their products with Teams.
Teams is covered in Chapter 13 of the Office 365 for IT Pros eBook. We’ll give this feature a couple of lines in the chapter…
I do not see where I can use this. Is this a feature that is only available in higher versions of Teams? I have the desktop app, and I also use the web app version, but I do not see anything like this anywhere. I have the latest version as of 10 minutes ago.
Unfortunately this feature doesn’t work as it should for the two reasons below:
1. Whenever you attach a background image to the header (branding announcements), the image disappears. No one sees it other than yourself. I’ve tried with PNG and JPG, same behaviour. I have used the suggested dimensions.
2. You can’t pin an announcement, which makes the actual announcement worthless as it’s going to be lost when the conversations happen in the channel (or people join the channel), which means you have to constantly re-post the announcement…
I think something’s up with your client. I just tried this again by creating an announcement with a background image. The image can be seen by other members in the team. The feature works fine.
As to pinning posts, that feature has been announced and should be in clients oon.
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I do not see where I can use this. Is this a feature that is only available in higher versions of Teams? I have the desktop app, and I also use the web app version, but I do not see anything like this anywhere. I have the latest version as of 10 minutes ago.
It’s available in the commercial version of Teams. It might not be in the Government version yet.
Unfortunately this feature doesn’t work as it should for the two reasons below:
1. Whenever you attach a background image to the header (branding announcements), the image disappears. No one sees it other than yourself. I’ve tried with PNG and JPG, same behaviour. I have used the suggested dimensions.
2. You can’t pin an announcement, which makes the actual announcement worthless as it’s going to be lost when the conversations happen in the channel (or people join the channel), which means you have to constantly re-post the announcement…
I think something’s up with your client. I just tried this again by creating an announcement with a background image. The image can be seen by other members in the team. The feature works fine.
As to pinning posts, that feature has been announced and should be in clients oon.