myBCIT Announcement Guidelines and Frequently Asked Questions

Any faculty or staff member can request a BCIT Announcement by completing the myBCIT Announcements form found in the ITS Techhelp Storefront.

Group leaders can publish announcements to everyone in their group

Instructors can publish announcements to everyone in their course

All BCIT Announcements should be linked to BCIT, academic life, or the institute experience. Announcement requests may be rejected if they are considered inappropriate in any way.

BCIT Announcements can be targeted to:

• all students
• all staff
• all faculty
• any combination of the above
• a custom group (i.e. all 2nd year nursing students)

Note: To request a custom group, contact IT Services at 604-412-7444 (option 1) or techhelp@bcit.ca

Follow the BCIT writing style guide and include:

• what is interesting or important to your audience
• necessary details of any deadlines
• how to take the next steps
• contact information if required.

Length of content:

• Keep your content to less than 200 words or 5 paragraphs, or users may not read it.
• Provide links to supporting material on other web pages rather than including everything in the body of the message.

Quantity or frequency limits:

• The same announcement (to the same target audience) should not be duplicated at any one time, nor should it be published, expire and be republished more than once in any 2 week period.
• The same person can publish more than one announcement at a time as long as the subject matter or the target audience is reasonably different.

Announcement life expectancy:

• Announcements should have an average life of between two days and one week. In exceptional circumstances , announcements may be posted for longer periods of time.
• They will normally be published the same day they are requested as long as it arrives before 3.30 p.m. Monday to Friday. Announcements arriving on a Friday after 3.30 p.m. will normally be dealt with on the following Monday (subject to statutory holidays). Announcements can also be requested to be posted in the future.

In any web browser:

1. Go to the myBCIT page on the IT Service Catalogue.
2. Click on Request a myBCIT announcement and log in using your usual BCIT credentials.
3. Fill out the request form and include the following details:
   

   Input	Information
   Announcement Title	The title should be short (less than 50 characters) and use active, interesting words, like a newspaper heading. Examples: ‘Download 2016 tax receipts’ ‘Sneak a peek at spring classes’ ‘Sign up for convocation’ Titles should follow the capitalization guidelines include in BCIT’s writing style guide: capitalization. Announcement titles must be sentence case, capitalizing only the initial letter of the first word and proper nouns.
   Message	Should be less than 200 words. Include the minimum number of words that will convey the announcement, with links to supporting information (such as your department or school website). For announcements that require an action, include any relevant details in the content of the message (phone or email contact info).
   Start Date	This is when you would like your announcement or event to be published. Note: Announcement Requests received before 3:30pm Monday – Friday will be published the same day. Please allow one day for publishing announcement requests that are received after 3:30pm or on weekends and/or stat holidays.
   End Date	This is when you would like your announcement or event to be removed. The default for announcements is 7 days. Announcements should have an average life of between 2 days and 7 days.
   Audience	Your target audience can be all Students, all Faculty, or all Staff, or any combination of the three. To create a custom group for your announcement (i.e. 2nd year nursing students), contact Client Services at 604-412-7444 (option 1) or techhelp@bcit.ca.

4. Click Submit to submit the announcement request.