News and Notifications Admin
The NATS4 News and Notifications Admin lets you send news items, such as updates, to all of your affiliates or notifications to specific affiliates. NATS also uses notifications to send you automatic notifications about any problems that may arise.
News
News items are received by all affiliates, and are displayed under the "News Items" tab. News items are displayed at the top of the Affiliate Overview page, and are labeled as "Announcements."
On the "News Items" page, you will see a "News" table displaying each news item in a particular News Section. This table provides information regarding when a News Item is set to be displayed to affiliates, as well as the subject of that News Item. For more information regarding News Sections, please see the News Sections segment of this article below.
The action icons to the right of each news item allow you to perform several tasks. You can edit an already existing news item's boxy text by clicking the "Edit News Item" icon, view how your news item will appear by clicking the "View News Item" icon, or delete news with the "Delete News Item" icon.
To create a News Item, go to the News & Notifications Admin, and click the "Add News Item" tab. You will then be taken to the "Create new News" page, where you can create news items for viewing by your affiliates. For more information on this feature, please see our NATS4 Add News wiki article.
News Sections
NATS4 allows you to sort your news into multiple different sections that you can create yourself. This can be done with the "Editing News for Section" menu on the far right side of the page. Use the "Editing News for Section" drop-down menu to select a section of news announcements to view or edit.
You can create a new section by clicking the "Add new News Section" icon next to the drop-down menu. After clicking the icon, you will be prompted to enter a name for your new News Section. You can also delete a news section by clicking the "Delete News Section" icon next to the Add News icon.
Notifications
Notifications can be sent to all affiliates, or only to specific affiliates. NATS displays the number of new notifications at the top of every page in the affiliate page under "New Messages." Clicking on the number of new messages/notifications takes affiliates to their list of received and sent notifications, as does going to the "Messages" tab of My Account.
NATS4 offers a Search Notifications feature, where you can search any notifications in your system by various criteria. The Basic Search Form allows you to search to Subject, Type (Received, Sent, or Both), Sent To/By, and Status. For a more specific search, you can click the "Advanced Form", which provides additional parameters to narrow your search with. This includes two categories:
- Notification Details - Consists of Subject, Type, Body, Sent To/By, Severe, and Status.
- Dates - Consists of Sent Date Before and Sent Date After.
Below the "Search Notifications" box is the "My Notifications" section. Here, you can see any notifications that have been added, whether automatically or manually, to your system. You can perform batch actions by selecting notifications, and using the drop-down menu at the bottom of the "My Notifications Section" -- these actions include Mark All Un-Read, Mark All Read, Delete All, and Un-Delete All. You can also use the "Auto-Check" links to select all, none, or invert your selections. The "Actions" column also allows you to perform actions on individual notifications. These include "Mark Notification as Read/Un-Read," "View Notification," and "Delete Notification." You can also view or delete sent notifications in the "Sent Notifications" section.
To send a new notification, go to the News and Notifications Admin and click on the "Send Notification" tab. You will then be taken to the "Send Notification" page, where you can send notifications for viewing by your affiliates. For more information on this feature please see our NATS4 Send Notification wiki article.
Automatic Notifications
NATS automatically sends notifications to administrators when certain errors occur in NATS. You can view your notifications in the Messages tab of your My Account screen or in the Notifications tab of the News & Notifications Admin.
Errors that can be sent as automatic notifications can include failed postbacks, failed login attempts, a Cron not running, and account settings/information being changed.
See Also
- strtotime -- PHP's documentation on the function used to parse times in the News & Notifications Admin. Note: NATS's strtotime can take a special "NEVER" argument
