Adding banners for learners
A banner is a wide promoted message across the top of a learner-facing page. It is the loudest thing you can put in front of people without emailing them, which makes it useful for one message at a time and poor for several.
Where it is
Section titled “Where it is”Choose Admin, then Engagement and Banners.
Banners appear only while Banners is switched on under Gamification settings on the Engagement screen beside it.
Creating one
Section titled “Creating one”- Choose New banner.
- Write the message and add whatever image or colour it needs.
- Set its placement.
- Save the banner, then Save changes on the screen.
That last step catches people out. The list and the screen save separately, so a banner that looks created but never appears is often one where the screen was left without saving.
Placement decides where it shows
Section titled “Placement decides where it shows”Every banner declares where it appears, and there are four choices:
| Placement | Where it shows |
|---|---|
| Learn | The learner home page |
| Library | The course library |
| Both | Both of those |
| None | Nowhere — built but not shown |
New banners start at Learn.
None is the useful one. It lets you prepare a banner ahead of a launch, or take one down without losing it, which is better than deleting and rebuilding. Treat it as a draft state rather than as a mistake.
Ordering
Section titled “Ordering”Banners have a sort order, so where more than one is live you decide which is seen first rather than leaving it to whichever was created last.
Live banners are worth counting. Two is a promotion; four is wallpaper, and people stop reading all of them.
Banner, announcement, or neither
Section titled “Banner, announcement, or neither”These three surfaces look similar and are not.
| Use | For |
|---|---|
| Banner | One prominent message, on Learn or the Library |
| Announcement | Short, dated updates in the right-hand rail — several at once is fine |
| Hub content | Information that stays, written to be read rather than noticed |
If the message has a deadline, it is an announcement, because announcements expire on their own and banners do not.
What happens when you save
Section titled “What happens when you save”A banner appears the next time somebody loads the page it is placed on. Like everything else on the home page it reaches people who visit, which makes it unsuitable for anything that must be seen by a date.