Communications
1. What it is
Communications is the company-wide feed and internal-communications platform.
Employees browse a single feed of posts, announcements, and must-reads; communicators
plan, draft, and measure everything from the same app — including newsletters and
multi-channel break-through sends (email, SMS, voice call, push).
- Enablement: requires a licence. An admin enables it from the Apps Marketplace;
it is not turned on automatically. - What it is not: Communications does not manage emergency alerts — those are
owned by Safety Hub, which shares the approval-workflow primitive but has its
own severity model and escalation path.
2. Standing it up
- Go to Admin → Apps Marketplace, find Communications, and enable it.
- Decide who can post Announcements and Must-Reads. Go to Settings → General
and set Who can post Announcements & Must-Reads (default: Admins and
Leadership). This one setting governs both tiers — choosing Off removes
both from the composer for everyone, including admins. - If you need break-through sends (email + SMS + voice delivery outside the
feed), grant the Broadcasts → Create permission to the communicators who
should send them. The break-through tier appears in the composer only when the
user holds that permission. - Grant the App Admin role to communicators who should manage newsletters,
campaigns, audiences, approval workflows, and settings without being full
business admins. - Newsletters are off by default. Turn them on under Settings → Modules →
Enable Newsletters before anyone can create a publication. - Confirm by opening the app as a non-admin employee. They should see the feed with
posts ranked in two tiers (Operational above Social) and a working Compose button.
Silent pairing to know about: the break-through tier requires both the app
entitlement and the Broadcasts create permission. Without the permission, a
user who can post announcements and must-reads will not see the break-through
option — no error, it simply doesn’t appear.
3. How it fits together
Four intensity tiers. The composer is one surface with an intensity dial. This
is the central design concept:
- Post — social content. Appears in the feed ranked under operational content.
- Announcement — operational content. Ranked above social posts. Notifies the
target audience. - Must-Read — requires the reader to acknowledge. Creates an immutable audit
record per person. Has a configurable expiry (default 30 days) and can send
automated reminders to people who haven’t acknowledged. - Break-through — leaves the feed entirely and delivers via email, SMS,
automated voice call, and/or push notification. This is what was formerly the
standalone Broadcasts app.
Announcement and Must-Read share the same permission gate (the Who can post
Announcements & Must-Reads setting). Break-through is a separate permission
(Broadcasts create). This lets you grant “may announce but may not broadcast” —
a common configuration.
Three communicator faces. Beyond the employee feed, Communications provides
three admin/communicator surfaces:
- Plan — a calendar showing every scheduled comm across types, plus an Idea
Bank, campaigns, and an annual communications plan. - Compose — the unified composer, an AI Writer, a Comms Grader, and
newsletter authoring with a block-based editor. - Measure — cross-channel analytics: reach, read-through, and
acknowledgement tracking on a single ledger. Pick any must-read or break-through
and see an audit-grade roster (acknowledged vs. pending) with segment-level
breakdowns and a compliance CSV export.
Acknowledgements. Must-reads and break-throughs share a single immutable
acknowledgement ledger. Once a person acknowledges, the record cannot be edited
or deleted — it is an audit row. The Measure face reports on both types
identically, so you track one outstanding list instead of reconciling two systems.
Audiences. A shared audience primitive that targets all delivery — feed posts,
break-throughs, and newsletters. Audiences compose existing recipient groups with
set operations (union, intersection, or “everyone”). Once defined, the same
audience is reusable across every comm type.
Content hierarchy. The feed separates content into two tiers — Operational
(announcements, must-reads) and Social (posts) — with operational content
always ranked above social. Personalisation (following a topic) only changes when
a post surfaces, never whether it does.
4. Running it
Sending a break-through
- Open Compose and select the Break-through tier.
- Write the message and choose channels: email, SMS, and/or voice are individually
togglable. In-app delivery is always on. - Choose a delivery window: Immediate, On shift only (delivers only to
employees currently on shift), or Next shift start (holds until the
recipient’s shift begins). - Select an audience, then publish or schedule for a future date.
- Track delivery and acknowledgement from Measure or from the break-through’s
stats page.
Break-throughs support recurrence (daily, weekdays, weekly, monthly) and A/B
variant testing for subject lines.
Publishing a newsletter
- Go to Newsletters and create a Publication (the recurring series).
Assign an owner, an audience, and optionally a slug for a public archive page. - Create an Issue (a single edition). The block editor supports six static
block types (Text, Image, Divider, Hero banner, Callout, Button) and eight
dynamic block types that pull live data from other apps — such as recent
recognitions, new hires, open shifts, or upcoming events. - Preview, then Send or Schedule. Dynamic blocks are frozen at send time
so every recipient sees the same snapshot. - Newsletter issues can optionally generate an AI podcast (a spoken-audio version)
and cross-post to LinkedIn.
Managing campaigns
A campaign is a multi-touch wrapper that groups comms items (feed posts,
break-throughs, newsletter issues) under a shared goal. Set KPI targets (opens,
clicks, acknowledgements) and track actuals from the campaign’s detail page.
Reviewing approvals
When approval workflows are enabled, communicators submit content for review
before publishing. Reviewers see a pending queue under Operate → Approvals.
Workflows can gate five surface types: emergency alerts, broadcasts, newsletter
issues, feed announcements, and feed must-reads. Each workflow defines one or
more approval steps with a role requirement. Admins always bypass approval gates.
Using the Idea Bank
Ideas capture communication topics before they are scheduled. An idea can be
promoted to a campaign or a scheduled comm. The AI Planning Assistant can suggest
ideas, tracked with an AI suggested badge so you can measure how many AI ideas
actually ship.
5. Settings
Settings are under the app’s Settings pages, grouped into sections. Key
settings with real effects:
Content & Composer
| Setting | Default | What it changes |
|---|---|---|
| Enforce Content Hierarchy | On | Ranks operational content above social in the feed |
| Enable Update composer | On | Shows the Update (post) option in the composer |
| Enable Question composer | On | Shows the Question option in the composer |
| Enable Quick Poll composer | On | Shows the Quick Poll option in the composer |
| Who can post to Everyone | Admins and Leadership | Who can address the entire company |
| Who can post Announcements & Must-Reads | Admins and Leadership | Governs both tiers. Off removes both from the composer for everyone |
| Must-Read default expiry | 30 days | How long a reader has to acknowledge |
| Automated acknowledgement reminders | On | Sends reminders to people who haven’t acknowledged a must-read |
| Escalate unacknowledged Must-Reads to managers | Off | After a configurable window, notifies each pending employee’s manager |
| Allow editing posts (15 min window) | On | Whether authors can edit after posting |
| Comments enabled | On | Gates new comment writes; existing comments remain visible |
AI Features
| Setting | Default | What it changes |
|---|---|---|
| AI: Auto-topic assignment | Off | Classifies published posts and assigns topics automatically |
| AI: Auto-answer suggestions | Off | Surfaces previously verified answers on new Question posts |
| AI: Auto-route questions to experts | Off | Routes unanswered questions to subject-matter experts after 30 minutes |
| AI: Discussion summarization | Off | Generates a summary card at the bottom of long threads |
| AI: Reader translation | Off | Lets employees read a post in their own language |
| Signal extraction | Off | Classifies posts into Risk, Issue, Idea, Question, Decision, Action Item, and Sentiment signals |
Modules (Plan/Compose/Measure toggles)
| Setting | Default | What it changes |
|---|---|---|
| Enable Calendar (Plan) | On | Shows the communications calendar |
| Enable Compose Picker | On | Shows the Compose button |
| Enable Idea Bank + AI Planning Assistant | On | Shows the Ideas section |
| Enable AI Writer | On | Shows the AI Writer drafting surface |
| Enable Comms Grader | On | Shows the readability and tone grader |
| Enable Newsletters | Off | Gates the entire newsletter subsystem |
| Enable Campaigns | On | Shows the Campaigns section |
| Enable Audiences | On | Shows the Audiences section |
| Enable Approval Workflows | Off | Gates the approval workflow subsystem |
| Enable Comms Triggers | Off | Gates event-driven automated triggers |
| Enable Analytics (Measure) | On | Shows the cross-channel analytics face |
Break-through
| Setting | Default | What it changes |
|---|---|---|
| AI assists (rewrite, brief, channel copy, variants) | On | AI features in the break-through composer |
| Weekly AI-drafted check-in | Off | Auto-drafts a weekly broadcast for tenants with no recent activity |
| Audience fatigue lookback (days) | 7 | Window checked for audience-overlap fatigue warnings |
| Audience fatigue warn threshold | 3 | Number of sends before the fatigue warning appears |
Notifications & Media
| Setting | Default | What it changes |
|---|---|---|
| Notification default | Hourly | Digest frequency for feed notifications |
| Media uploads | On | Whether employees can attach files |
| GIF uploads | Off | Whether the GIF picker is available |
| Link preview cards | On | Whether pasted URLs expand into preview cards |
6. More help
- Communications FAQ — specific setup and operating questions, including
acknowledgement tracking, content moderation, expert routing, and troubleshooting. - Ask AI — the assistant answers questions about Communications from these articles.