Announcements

Use Announcements to post company news and notices inside SolaHR: an office closure, a new policy to read, a stock count, a payroll date change. Each announcement has a type (Information, Warning, Success or Urgent), an audience (everyone, one department or one employee), a publish date and an optional expiry date. SolaHR counts how many employees have opened each one.

Who uses it:

• HR staff, owners and SolaHR Administrators write, pin and delete announcements.
• Members with SolaHR access read the announcements aimed at them on the same page.

Announcements are for short notices. For a file people must read and confirm, publish a Policy. For a formal notice to one employee that needs a response, use Warnings.

Where to find it

The sidebar entry has a slot for an unread counter. In the current version the counter does not show a number, so open the page to check for new notices (see Tips and common problems).

Who can do what

"Aimed at them" works like this. SolaHR links your Solavel account to an employee record when your account email matches the employee's work email or personal email.

Announcements are not shown in My Portal or the mobile Employee portal. An employee without SolaHR access does not see them, so pair important notices with another channel or a Policy.

Screen tour

Header

• Title Announcements, subtitle "Publish and manage company announcements".
• New Announcement (top-right, with a + icon). Shown only if you can manage records.

Summary tiles

Four tiles sit under the header:

The tiles ignore the search box and the type filter. They always show the whole picture.

Search and filter

Changing the search or the filter returns you to page 1.

The list

The list is sorted with pinned announcements first, then by newest publish date. It shows 15 per page.

There is no bulk selection, export or print on this page.

Under the list, the pager shows "Showing 1–15 of 23" with Previous and Next.

Empty and error states

Create an announcement

1. Open Documents & Communication → Announcements and click New Announcement (top-right).

2. Fill in the dialog:

   Field	Required	Default	Rules and notes
   Title	Yes	—	Up to 255 characters.
   Type	Yes	Information	Information, Warning, Success or Urgent. Urgent announcements are counted in the Urgent tile.
   Audience	Yes	Everyone	Everyone, Department or Employee.
   Department	When Audience is Department	—	Appears only for Department. Lists active departments, A–Z.
   Employee	When Audience is Employee	—	Appears only for Employee. Lists active employees by name, A–Z.
   Publish Date	Yes	Today	A future date schedules the announcement.
   Expiry Date	No	Empty	Must be after the Publish Date (the same day is refused). Leave empty for no end.
   Content	Yes	—	Plain text. Line breaks are kept on the detail page. No formatting or attachments.
   Pinned	—	Off	See the note below.
   Active	—	On	See the note below.

3. Click Save (bottom of the dialog).

4. You see Updated successfully, the dialog closes and the list refreshes.

Pinned and Active in the current version. Every announcement saved from this dialog is stored as Pinned and Active, whatever the two boxes show. After saving, check the row: if you did not want it pinned, click Toggle pin once. There is no button to switch an announcement off; set an Expiry Date when you create it, or delete it when it is no longer needed.

Picking a department or employee

When you switch Audience to Department or Employee, the list shows a name straight away, but nothing is selected yet. Open the list and click the department or employee you want. If you click Save without doing that, you see "The department id field is required when target is department." (or the employee version).

If only one department or employee is listed, clicking it may not register. Choose another audience and back, or use Everyone with a clear title such as Warehouse team: stock count.

Validation messages

Problems are listed in a red box at the top of the dialog, and the dialog stays open so you can fix them:

When an announcement is live

An announcement shows to members only when all of these are true:

1. It is switched on (Status Active).
2. Its Publish Date is today or earlier.
3. Its Expiry Date is empty or later than today.
4. The viewer is in the Audience.

Treat the expiry date as the first day it is no longer listed. An announcement with Expiry Date 4 Dec drops off members' lists and out of the Active tile on 4 Dec. A member who still has the link can open it until the end of that day.

People who manage records always see every announcement, whatever its dates.

Statuses and lifecycle

SolaHR stores only an on/off switch and the two dates. The lifecycle below is how they combine.

Announcements cannot be edited after saving. To correct the text, dates or audience, create a new announcement and delete the old one.

View an announcement

1. Click View on the row.
2. The page shows:
   • the title, with a breadcrumb back to Announcements, and the type badge (top-right),
   • four tiles: Publish Date, Audience, Read count and Status,
   • Announcement Details: the full content with line breaks, then the author's name, the department or employee it is aimed at, and the expiry date when there is one.
3. Use the Announcements breadcrumb to go back.

Read count

When a person whose account is linked to an employee record opens the detail page, SolaHR records that employee as having read it, once. Opening it again does not add to the count. Read count is the number of different employees who have opened it.

• Managers who are also employees count as readers when they open it.
• People whose account is not linked to an employee are not counted.
• The list of names is not shown on screen. To see who opened it, search the Audit Log for the announcement title.

Members who open a link to an announcement that is not live or not aimed at them see Access denied.

Pin or unpin

1. On the list, click Toggle pin on the row.
2. There is no confirmation. You see Updated successfully and the row moves: pinned rows go to the top, unpinned rows drop back into publish-date order. Pinned appears or disappears under the title.

Pinning does not change who sees it or when. It only changes the order.

Delete an announcement

1. Click Delete on the row.
2. The confirmation dialog Delete this record? opens with the message "Delete this announcement?".
3. Click Delete to confirm, or Cancel to stop. Nothing is removed until you confirm.
4. You see Updated successfully and the row disappears.

Deleting is permanent. The read count goes with it. The Audit Log keeps the record that you deleted it.

Confirmations and outcome notices

Worked example 1: a quick office notice

Al Noor Trading LLC closes its Dubai office early on Thursday.

1. Mariam (HR) opens Documents & Communication → Announcements and clicks New Announcement.
2. She enters Title Office closes at 1 pm on Thursday, Type Information, Audience Everyone, Publish Date today (8 Oct 2026), Expiry Date 10 Oct 2026, Content The Dubai office closes at 1 pm on Thursday 9 October for building maintenance. Warehouse shifts are unchanged.
3. She clicks Save and sees Updated successfully.
4. The row shows Pinned under the title. Because she does not want it pinned, she clicks Toggle pin.
5. The tiles now read Total 12, Active 4, Pinned 1, Urgent 0.
6. On 10 October the notice drops off staff lists and the Active tile falls back to 3. The row stays on Mariam's list with Status Active.

Worked example 2: a holiday notice plus a department instruction

Al Noor Trading LLC prepares for UAE National Day and a year-end stock count at the Dubai Main warehouse. The Warehouse department has 14 employees.

1. Company notice. Mariam creates:

   Field	Value
   Title	National Day holiday: 2–3 December
   Type	Information
   Audience	Everyone
   Publish Date	25 Nov 2026
   Expiry Date	4 Dec 2026
   Content	The office is closed on 2 and 3 December. Please read the updated Leave Policy and acknowledge it in My Portal.

   She saves and leaves it pinned so it stays at the top. Until 25 November it is Scheduled: managers see it, members do not, and the Active tile does not count it.

2. Department instruction. She clicks New Announcement again, sets Audience to Department, opens the Department list and clicks Warehouse. Type Urgent, Publish Date 25 Nov 2026, Expiry Date 2 Dec 2026, Content Year-end stock count at Dubai Main on 1 December. All hands at 7:00. Bring your badge. She saves, then clicks Toggle pin so the company notice stays first.

3. What staff see on 26 November.

   Person	Department	Sees
   Omar Haddad	Warehouse	Both announcements. The National Day notice is first (pinned).
   Sara Khan	Finance	Only the National Day notice.
   A Department Manager with a scoped preset	—	No Announcements menu item at all.

4. Tracking. Omar and 11 colleagues open the stock count notice. Its detail page shows Read count 12. Mariam searches the Audit Log for Year-end stock count to see which accounts opened it, and asks the warehouse supervisor to brief the other two in person.

5. After the dates. On 2 December the stock count notice expires; on 4 December the holiday notice expires. Mariam's tiles show Active 0 for both, Urgent 0. She deletes the stock count notice (Delete this record? → Delete) and keeps the holiday notice for reference.

How it connects

Tips and common problems

Related

• Policies
• Warnings
• Documents
• Audit Log
• Employees
• Departments and job titles
• Team access
• SolaHR overview
• Application roles