Web Services and Standards

Office of Marketing and Strategic Communications
Western Michigan University
Kalamazoo MI 49008-5433 USA
(269) 387-8400

Working With a Bulletin

A bulletin is a tool that we use to communicate with WMU faculty, staff and retirees. We distribute these bulletins through the WMU Today online portal, to which people from across campus can publish their own bulletin items. WMU Today submissions are only accepted through WMU CMS. They are not accepted through email.

What would make a good bulletin?

Bulletins are intended to be brief. The types of bulletins appropriate for WMU Today include, but are not limited to:

  • Faculty/staff accolades
  • Notifications regarding road closures and campus construction
  • Messages about WMU information technology changes, outages or offerings
  • On-campus lectures
  • WMU workshops
  • Retirement receptions
  • Job and volunteer opportunities for employees
  • Applications for Faculty Fellow positions
  • Administrative Professional Association lunch-and-learn sessions and other WMU-sponsored campus events

Bulletins submitted and posted on WMU Today are intended for faculty, staff members and retirees; they should not include announcements intended to reach student audiences. They should also not include messages from outside vendors or businesses, or messages about events not hosted or sponsored by WMU.

How to create a bulletin

Please note: This posting has been updated to reflect changes implemented as part of the Drupal 10 migration. There is no longer a page type for Bulletins. Please follow the instructions below to submit your bulletin for consideration for WMU Today.

Bulletins can be created by WMU CMS authors and published by WMU CMS publishers. Once published, a bulletin should be displayed in the WMU Today online portal for a maximum of two weeks.

  1. Click on Add content in the administration menu and click on Page.
  2. Choose your Site and click Add to Group.
  3. Enter the Title of your bulletin.
  4. Enter the URL slug for your bulletin, including the year or unique identifier for regularly occurring or annual events. For example, "bronco-bash-2024" or "gold-gathering-spring24" would be acceptable URL slugs.
  5. Enter a 1-2 sentence summary of your bulletin into the Summary field.
  6. Navigate to Region 2, and select Add Component. Choose the Text component.
  7. Enter the Text of the bulletin into the text component. WMU Today accepts bulletins with no more than 800 characters.
  8. Optionally, you can add Link text and provide a URL to accompany your bulletin to direct readers to a webpage for more information, to sign up, etc. Within the text component, enter your Link text on its own line. Then select the chain link icon in the top bar of the text component, paste the Link URL in the field that appears and click the green checkmark.
  9. In the Tags field, type Bulletin and select the pre-populated option.
  10. Click the Save button at the bottom of the page. Once you save, the bulletin will need to proceed through the moderation process before it becomes published. Publishers who are creating a bulletin or reviewing a bulletin submitted by an author will need to complete steps 11 and 12 after saving the draft of the bulletin.
  11. (Publishers only) To enter a Sunrise and Sunset date and time, open up the Scheduling options dropdown menu, which will only appear in the editing interface once a draft of the page has been saved. Select the date and time you would like the bulletin to publish. Then advance that date no more than 14 days later, and set the Unpublish on date. Note: You will need to select AM or PM.
  12. (Publishers only) Set the Publish state to Published and the Unpublish state to Archived.

Bulletins including any component or content other than the permitted title, 800-character maximum of text and single link will not be considered for WMU Today.

What happens after a bulletin is published?

All published bulletins will appear in the WMU Today online portal. From this repository, the Office of Marketing and Strategic Communications will also select items to feature in the weekly WMU Today email sent to faculty, staff and retirees.

About WMU Today

WMU Today is a compilation of concise campus bulletins published to an online portal and also emailed to faculty, staff and retirees each week.

Submissions for WMU Today will no longer be accepted by email. With this workflow change, employees will submit bulletins using WMU CMS. Anyone with an author role in WMU CMS can create a bulletin, and those with a publisher role can then publish the bulletin so that it appears immediately in the WMU Today online portal.

Each Tuesday, a selection of bulletins from WMU Today online will be sent as an email digest to faculty, staff and retirees. This weekly email will include a link to the WMU Today online portal featuring all bulletins.