The Public Announcement system provides:
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The ability to display a banner message to users. These can be limited to particular servers and given different severity levels. Use cases include allowing administrators to alert users to upcoming system downtime, weather warnings and informational messages.
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Popup messages on login. These can be used to show larger amounts of information in a modal dialog, and users can dismiss each message either temporarily (in which case it will be shown 24 hours later), or permanently.
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Timezone checks, which alert the user if the timezone set in their Sakai preferences doesn't match the timezone of their local machine. This warning is displayed as a banner alert and links the user to the page where they can set their timezone.
You can control the Public Announcement system with the following properties:
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pasystem.enabled (default: true) -- Whether or not to show popups and banners to users.
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pasystem.auto.ddl (default: false) -- Whether to automatically create/upgrade the PA System's database tables on startup. This is required for the first time you start the PA System, but there's no harm in leaving it enabled.
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pasystem.banner.temporary-timeout-ms (default: 86400000) -- The number of milliseconds to hide a medium priority banner once it has been dismissed.
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pasystem.popup.temporary-timeout-ms (default: 86400000) -- The "later" in "Remind me later" when a popup is dismissed.
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pasystem.timezone-check (default: true) -- Whether to warn users via banner if their computer's timezone doesn't match their Sakai profile timezone.