- Emergency Alerts
- Council News
- Recreation News
The widget name will appear at the top of the widget on the public-facing side of the portal.
Add a News Widget
You can add a News widget to Citizen Portal that will pull news articles from the news categories on your website. With a News widget, you can easily display any news articles in one central location in Citizen Portal.
Set-up instructions
In the administrator side of Citizen Portal:
- Select the “Widgets” tab from the top menu
- Select “Add Widget” from the “Add Widget” button near the top right of the page
- Select “News” from the page of available widgets
This will take you to the new news widget details page.
News widget details
Once you’ve added the news widget, you can customize the way the widget will appear on Citizen Portal. This includes setting up the configuration, content and notifications for the widget.
Configuration
To configure the News widget, select "Configuration" from the side menu. Then complete each of the necessary fields. Once you've completed all necessary fields, select the "Next" button at the bottom of the screen to take you to the "Content" screen. Alternatively, you can select "Content" from the side menu.
In the “Widget name” field, enter a name for the news widget. For example, you could use one of the following names:
If you would like this widget to be fixed on the user’s portal, select the “Set as fixed widget” checkbox. If you select this option, a user will not be able to remove the widget.
In the “Widget colour” field, enter the hex code for the background icon colour. You may type the hex code into this field using the format of #XXXXXX. You may also select this colour from the colour grid that appears when you click into this widget colour field.
You can select a widget icon from our library or upload your own widget icon. If you'd like to choose an icon from the library:
- Choose the "Select icon from library" option
- Then, select the "Select icon" button to view the library
- Choose the icon you'd like from the library
If you'd like to upload your own icon:
- Choose the "Upload icon" option
- Then, select the “Add icon”
- From the pop-up box, choose the widget icon file from your documents
Please note that this must be a .svg file that is less than 5KB.
Content
Once you've completed the "Configuration" set-up, you can add content to the widget. Select "Content" from the side menu and complete all necessary fields. Once you've added content, you can select the "Next" button at the bottom of the screen or select "Notifications" from the side menu.
Beneath “News categories”, you will find a list of news categories that will be auto-populated from your website. Select the checkbox next to each news category that you’d like to show in this widget.
For example, if you wanted to make a widget just showing Council news from your Council news category, you would only select the checkbox next to the “Council News” category.
From the “Dashboard items” dropdown menu, select the number of new articles that you’d like to appear on the widget within the citizen dashboard. We recommend including three news article entries.
From the “Expanded view items” dropdown menu, select the number of news articles you’d like to appear on the expanded view. The expanded view will display if someone selects a dashboard item to view more details. We suggest displaying five entries in the expanded view.
Enter any text you would like to appear above your news in the dashboard widget view. For example, if you would like to add a link so users can subscribe for updates, you could type “Subscribe for updates” and add a hyperlink to this page on your website or within Citizen Portal.
If you would like the text in expanded view to mirror the dashboard view, select the checkbox next to “Use dashboard text for expanded view”.
If you would like to add content above the events within expanded view, add text within the “Expanded View” textbox.
Notifications
If you would like Citizen Portal to notify users that have subscribed to updates, select the “Widget Notification” toggle to turn on notifications.
Saving and publishing the widget settings
To save these settings and add the news widget to Citizen Portal, select the “Save” button.
Don't have this widget?
If you don't have access to this widget or would like to buy another widget for Citizen Portal, please reach out our sales team or your project manager and they can work with you to get it added.