2021 was a big year. Both Bananatag and Valo joined Staffbase to bring together a suite of industry-leading internal communications tools. We also added plenty of great new features, including Campaigns, an Editorial Calendar, and in-depth employee surveys.
And we’ve got more big plans for 2022.
We’re gearing up to launch a whole new Experience Studio and further integrate Staffbase Email (formerly Bananatag) and Valo into one platform so you can plan your company’s communications easily and efficiently.
But before that launch, we’re kicking off the year with our first release.
For Release 4.10, we focused on three main areas:
- Editorial Calendar Improvements
- New Navigation Options
- Campaign improvements
Editorial Calendar Improvements
In the fall of 2021 we introduced the Editorial Calendar, which allows you to quickly view planned content across multiple spaces and channels.
With 4.10, we’re improving the Editorial Calendar with two highly requested features: the ability to block time slots and add a publishing freeze.
Block Time Slots
Good news: editors with systemwide admin access can now add blockers to the Editorial Calendar!
The new blocker feature shows editors the timing of planned posts, so they can avoid over-communication to employees and improve the visibility of their announcements.
If you’re an editor, you can use blockers to let space admins and news editors know that you’re working on a time-sensitive announcement (like a message from the CEO or new corporate policy) and are planning to publish it on a specific date.
You can also use blockers to let others know about public holidays—and make sure they don’t post an important announcement while your team is away. If you’re part of a global team, blockers are really convenient to keep track of holidays across different offices and cultures (such as American Thanksgiving in November and Canadian Thanksgiving in October).
Add a Publishing Freeze
Systemwide editors can also add a blocker with a publishing freeze to the Editorial Calendar, which alerts other editors about an upcoming announcement if they try to schedule a post for the same time.
This will help you reduce communication overload with your employees—and make your messages more impactful.
But we also know that sometimes there’s an urgent announcement that you need to get out ASAP (like an emergency in the office). So even if there is a publishing freeze, editors can still publish a time-sensitive post when necessary.
Reach out to your Customer Success Manager to try the Editorial Calendar beta and start adding blockers and publishing freezes today.
Watch this video to learn more about internal comms planning in Staffbase!
New Navigation Options
Breadcrumb Navigation
We’ve improved the navigation throughout the platform by adding breadcrumb navigation to our desktop experience.
This new navigation helps employees easily locate pages within your intranet. Whether they’re checking the latest CEO updates or department news or other pages, employees can trace their way to and from the content they need to read.
Breadcrumb navigation will be automatically enabled for all new Staffbase customers. For existing customers, contact your CSM to enable.
List View for News Feed Widget
With the News Feed widget, you can add news feeds to your pages.
In this release, we’ve added a list view for the widget, so that in addition to the standard layout, you can now display news feeds in a space-saving list format.
Better Campaign Management
Campaigns help you strategically plan your comms, organize content by topics, and provides you with a clear overview of how each topic is performing. For example, several announcements about transitioning to hybrid work—such as office scheduling, desk booking, culture guide, and so on—can be organized into one topic: “Transforming the Workplace”.
This release, we improved the overall campaign management experience. If you are a space administrator, you now have access to Campaigns in the Experience Studio. Create, view, edit, and assign posts to your own campaigns. You can also view the statistical information for their campaign-related posts and the overall analytics for the entire campaign.
If you’re interested in trying the Campaigns beta, please reach out to your Customer Success Manager.
Here’s to 2022
We’re excited for what’s to come in 2022! We hope this release kicks off a successful year for you, and can’t wait to see what you’ll accomplish.
If you have any questions, feedback, or want to learn more about all the additional updates, please reach out to your Customer Success Manager and check out the full 4.10 release notes.
