Announcements appear under the Home tab of my.bham. There are two types of portal announcements. Campus Announcements are sent to all users of the portal, both staff and students. Personal Announcements can be sent currently to all students only.

(Announcements to staff are directed to either the monthly all-staff email newsletter - contact staff-enews@contacts.bham.ac.uk - or the Staff News feed in the portal - please log a request via the IT Helpdesk for the attention of the portal team.)

Announcements are NOT emails: they can be viewed by any student or staff member logging into my.bham. Announcements are news snippets that should be of broad interest to students and/or staff or of high interest to a particular group of students or staff.

Examples of announcements are notices for events such as public seminars, conferences, training courses, concerts and sporting events. Other announcements have included various surveys and notices about road closures during refurbishment. Important status notices about changes or essential maintenance to the portal or other University services are also carried.

What needs to be included in draft text?

Portal announcements are normally 50-100 words in length (and no longer than 120 words), so please be brief and to the point. If your announcement is about an event or course, please include the title, date, time, venue, main speaker(s), If booking is required, please include the start and end date for accepting bookings, and details of costs if relevant. Include an email or website address for the reader to go for further information. Please note that any suggested headline must be no longer than 50 characters including spaces.

The portal team reserves the right to edit draft text for style and length.

Announcements are posted with an expiry date, after which they will disappear from the portal. Announcements are normally posted for a period no longer than two weeks.

What will not be posted as a portal announcement?

We will not normally advertise commercial companies or other organisations outside of the university.

We will not normally include notices about activities of individual students or staff, such as personal fundraising activities.

We will not post election-related announcements by candidates or their supporters during Guild election periods.

Announcements about specific academic courses are currently handled by departments themselves or via WebCT.

Images, logos and other attachments – as well as complicated formatting – cannot be included in any announcements.

Can student society events / notices be included?

Yes, we may post portal announcements on behalf of societies recognised by the Guild of Students.

Please note, though, we get many requests to advertise student events and cannot include them all. If you have regular student society events that you wish to promote, please group together several events (eg 2 / 3 monthly events or 4 / 5 weekly events) in one announcement request.

Where should announcement requests be sent?

To request an announcement, please open a new eHelpdesk call, including your draft text. Please specify ‘MyBham’ in the subject area. Please try to make your request at least a week before it is required in order to ensure that it can it can posted in time.

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