Email Announcements

Overview

Announcement emails tell your audience that a new blog post is live: the post's title, summary, key highlights and a link, sent to every active user on the platform plus anyone who signed up for updates. The list is built fresh at send time, so it always reflects the current accounts and the current opt-outs.

Who receives an announcement

The audience is assembled when the campaign is created, from four sources, with duplicates removed and every address lowercased:

Source	Included when
User accounts	Always — every person with an active Nice HMS account and an email address on it
Organization addresses	Only if Include organization emails is on
Reseller addresses	Only if Include reseller emails is on
Public signups	Always — visitors who subscribed from the website

Anyone who has unsubscribed is then removed, whatever source they came from. An unsubscribe wins over a user account, an organization address and a public signup alike.

The list is a snapshot. Recipients are fixed when the campaign is created. People who register afterwards are not added to a campaign already queued, and people who unsubscribe after that point are skipped when their turn comes.

Subscribing from the website

The subscribe form appears in three places: the site footer on every page, the bottom of the blog index, and the end of each blog post. It asks for an email address only.

Enter the email address.
Click Subscribe.
The reply is the same whether the address was already on the list or not, so the form cannot be used to discover who is subscribed.

The form is limited to five attempts per visitor per ten minutes; beyond that it answers Too many attempts. Try again later.

Unsubscribing

Every announcement carries an unsubscribe link, and mail clients offer it as a one-click unsubscribe button. Clicking it is all that is needed — there is no confirmation step and no login.

The address is excluded from every future campaign.
The link only works for the address it was issued to, so a forwarded email cannot unsubscribe someone else.
Each unsubscribe is reported to the administrator, naming the campaign it came from.

Unsubscribing does not deactivate the person's Nice HMS account — it only removes them from announcements.

Sending an announcement

Only the reseller owner can announce a post. There is no screen for it yet — a campaign is created through the reseller campaign API and then sent in batches. The steps below describe what that does, in order.

Before you send

The post must be approved. An unpublished post is refused, because the email links to the public page for that post and it would open for no one.
The post must belong to the same reseller that creates the campaign.
The installation must have its unsubscribe signing configured. If it is not, the send stops before the first email rather than shipping a link that cannot be trusted.

Create the campaign

Field	Notes
Post	Required — the approved post to announce
Subject	Defaults to the post title; 255 characters
Preview text	Defaults to the post description; 255 characters
Audience role	Optional — restrict user accounts to one role
Include organization emails	Add organization addresses
Include reseller emails	Add reseller addresses
Test emails	Send only to these addresses; the audience is not built at all

The response returns the campaign reference, how many recipients were queued, and the first few addresses as a sample. Creating a campaign with Test emails filled in queues only those addresses and reports the campaign as a test — the way to check formatting and links before announcing to everyone.

An empty audience is refused: there is nothing to send.

Send in batches

Sending happens in batches of 50, and up to 200 per call:

Each send processes the next batch and reports back what it did: sent, failed, skipped as unsubscribed, and how many are still left.
Send again while recipients remain. A send that is interrupted simply continues — nobody who has already received the email gets it twice.
When nothing remains the campaign is marked done. A campaign that is already done or cancelled accepts no further sends.

Between emails each batch pauses briefly, enough to stay inside the mail provider's rate limits.

If the post has been unpublished or deleted after the campaign was created, sending stops: emails must never link to a page the public cannot open.

Check progress

The campaign status reports, for a single campaign, how many are still pending, the failed addresses with the reason each one failed, and the addresses skipped as unsubscribed. Asked without a campaign reference, it lists the most recent campaigns, so an interrupted run can be found again.

Common issues

Symptom	Cause
The post is refused as not publishable	It is still a draft — approve it first
The audience is reported as empty	No active users matched, or every source was excluded
The first batch fails before sending anything	Unsubscribe signing is not configured on the installation
Sending refuses because the post can no longer be opened	The post was unapproved after the campaign was created
Sending reports the campaign as done or cancelled	It already finished or was cancelled
A recipient never got the email	The campaign's failures list that address and the reason it failed

FAQ

Q: Does editing the post change emails that already went out? A: No. Subject, summary, highlights and links are read when each batch runs, and emails already sent keep what they were sent with. Edit the post before you start sending.

Q: Can I stop a send halfway? A: Yes — stop sending further batches. The campaign keeps its progress, the remaining recipients stay pending, and sending resumes from there when you start again.

Q: Do people need an account to receive announcements? A: No. Public signups from the website receive them too, and someone with an active account is included even if they never signed up for updates.

Q: How do I test before announcing to everyone? A: Create the campaign with Test emails set to your own address. Only those addresses are queued and the campaign is reported as a test.

Q: Does unsubscribing delete the account? A: No. Only the announcement subscription is removed; the Nice HMS account is untouched.