Announcements
Send one message to everyone in your mentoring program, in the app and in Slack. A MentorStack help center guide for program admins.
Most MentorStack notifications are triggered by something happening: a match is accepted, a meeting is coming up, a goal is completed. An announcement is the one message you write yourself.
Use it for the things that apply to the whole program. A launch date. A deadline for setting goals. A change to the schedule. A reminder before a cohort kicks off.
Announcements are available on every plan.
Sending one
- Go to Announcements in the left navigation.
- Write a title and a message. The title is what people see in their notification list, so make it specific: "Goal deadline moved to Friday" beats "Program update".
- Check the line under New announcement. It tells you who the message is about to reach, and whether it will also be posted in Slack.
- Select Send to everyone.
The message goes out immediately.
Who gets it
Everyone active in your organization. That means mentors, mentees and other admins, plus you.
People who have been deactivated or removed do not receive it.
There is no way to send to only one cohort, only mentors, or only mentees. If you need to reach part of your program, a survey lets you choose an audience.
Where it arrives
| Where | Who sees it |
|---|---|
| The notification bell in MentorStack | Everyone |
| Browser or phone push notification | Anyone who has turned push on |
| Slack or Teams direct message | Anyone whose account is linked, on Starter and above |
| A Slack channel | Everyone in that channel, if you set one up |
Members can turn announcements off under Settings → Notifications, using the Announcements switch. That switch controls their push notification and their chat message. It does not hide the message from the notification bell, so nobody misses it entirely.
Posting to a Slack channel
If your organization is connected to Slack, you can have every announcement posted to one channel as well.
Note
Connecting Slack requires the Starter plan or above. See Slack & Teams Integration.
To set it up:
- Go to Settings → Notifications.
- Under Announcement channel, select Choose.
- Pick a channel from the list and it saves straight away.
A few things worth knowing:
- Nobody gets the message twice. When a channel is set, MentorStack posts once to the channel and skips the individual Slack direct messages. People still get the notification bell entry and their push notification.
- Only public channels are listed. MentorStack can post to a public channel without being invited to it first. A private channel would need to be handled differently and is not supported.
- You can turn it off. Select Change, then No channel. Announcements go back to arriving as direct messages.
- If the post fails, the announcement still went out. Perhaps the channel was archived or the bot was removed. Everyone still received the announcement through the app; only the channel copy is missing.
What you can see afterwards
The Announcements page keeps a history of everything your organization has sent, newest first. Each entry shows the message, who sent it, and how many people received it.
That recipient count is a snapshot from the moment you sent it. If three people join next week, an older announcement still shows the number it actually reached. That is on purpose: it is a record of what happened.
Things announcements cannot do yet
- No scheduling. Sending is immediate. There is no "send Monday at 9am".
- No editing or recall. Once sent, the notifications are already delivered. Send a follow-up instead.
- No email. Announcements reach the app, push notifications and chat. They do not go to anyone's inbox.
- No targeting. It is the whole organization or nothing.