Community Broadcasts

Overview

The Broadcast Email feature lets you send bulk email communications to users in your LMS. You can compose messages using a rich text editor and send them to all active users — or target a specific group using audience rules.

When you send a broadcast email, each recipient gets a personalized message that starts with "Hello [First Name]," followed by your content. The email includes your site's standard header and footer branding. Recipients with the mobile app installed will also receive a push notification.

In This Article

• Accessing Broadcast Email
• Composing a Broadcast Email
• Selecting Recipients
• Sending the Email
• Email Log / Reporting
• Tips for Best Results
• Warnings and Known Limitations
• Before You Send — Quick Checklist

Accessing Broadcast Email

Navigate to Communications > Community Broadcast in the Admin Tool.

To use this feature, your admin role needs the Send Community Broadcast permission enabled.

Composing a Broadcast Email

Subject Line

Enter your email subject in the Subject field. This is what recipients will see in their inbox.

• The subject is required — you can't send without one.
• Keep it concise and descriptive so recipients know what the email's about at a glance.

Email Message Body

The message editor gives you the following formatting tools:

Available Fonts

The editor restricts fonts to those that render reliably across email clients:

• Arial
• Courier / Courier New
• Georgia
• Helvetica / Helvetica Neue
• Tahoma
• Times New Roman
• Verdana

Images

You can insert images by providing a URL — but you can't upload or paste image files directly into the editor. The image needs to be hosted on a publicly accessible URL so that recipients' email clients can load it.

Selecting Recipients

By default, a broadcast email goes to all active users in your system that fall within your administrative permission scope.

Want to target a specific group? Click Define Recipients to open the audience builder. You can define rules based on user attributes — like location, group, role, or other profile fields — to narrow down who receives the email.

Here's How It Works

• No rule defined: You'll see a confirmation dialog before sending — "You are about to send a community broadcast email to all active users."
• Rule defined: The email sends immediately when you click Send (the rule already narrows your audience, so no additional confirmation is needed).

You can preview the total number of matching recipients in the Recipients panel before sending.

To remove a rule and go back to sending to all users, use the Reset Recipients option.

Sending the Email

Once your subject, message, and recipients are set:

1. Click Send Broadcast Email.

After you click Send:

• You'll see a confirmation: "Sending broadcast emails. You'll receive a confirmation email once they finish sending."
• The system processes recipients in the background. For large audiences, this may take several minutes.
• Once all emails have been delivered, you'll receive a completion email at your own email address confirming:
  • The total number of recipients
  • A list of any users whose emails failed (invalid or missing email addresses)
  • A link back to the Broadcast Email page to send another

Email Log / Reporting

A link to the Email Log report is available in the sidebar of the Broadcast Email page. This report shows you the history of sent broadcast emails — including subject, timestamp, and recipient information.

Tips for Best Results

Compose Directly in the Editor

Type or compose your message directly in the broadcast email editor rather than pasting from other sources. The editor produces clean HTML that renders well across email clients.

Use the Built-In Formatting Tools

The toolbar gives you everything you need for professional-looking emails. Use the font, size, color, and alignment tools rather than trying to replicate formatting from another application.

Keep Images Hosted on Reliable URLs

Since images are inserted by URL, make sure they're hosted on a server that will remain accessible long-term.

Preview Your Message Before Sending

Use the View HTML source button (in the Advanced toolbar options) to inspect the raw HTML if your formatting looks unexpected. This can help you spot hidden markup that may have snuck in from pasting.

Start with a Small Audience When Testing

If you're sending a broadcast for the first time or trying a new format, consider creating a recipient rule that targets just yourself or a small test group. Once you confirm it looks correct, reset the recipients and send to your full audience.

Warnings and Known Limitations

Pasting Content from External Sources (Word, Google Docs, Outlook, Web Pages)

When you copy text from Microsoft Word, Google Docs, Outlook, or a web page and paste it into the editor, the clipboard carries hidden formatting — complex CSS styles, proprietary markup, invisible characters, and non-standard HTML.

The editor attempts to clean up pasted content by converting inline styles to standard HTML tags, removing empty formatting spans, and stripping malformed font declarations. However, this cleanup isn't exhaustive. Content pasted from external sources may still contain:

• Invisible or unexpected styling that causes text to look different across email clients
• Non-email-safe fonts that fall back to a default for recipients
• Complex nested markup that some email clients (especially Outlook) render poorly
• Background colors or spacing that were invisible in the source but show up in the email

No Character or Length Limit — But Use Good Judgment

There's no enforced maximum length on the subject or message body. That said:

• Very long emails are less likely to be read.
• Some email clients truncate messages beyond a certain size (Gmail clips emails larger than ~102KB).
• Extremely long emails increase processing time for each recipient.

Large or Complex Recipient Rules May Cause Errors

If you build a very complex audience rule (selecting hundreds of individual users, or combining many nested conditions), the send request may time out and display: "There was an error sending your Broadcast Email."

If this happens:

• Simplify your audience rule — use broader filters (location, group, or role) instead of individual user selections.
• If you need to reach a specific list of people, consider whether a user group could accomplish the same goal.
• As a fallback, send without a rule (to all active users) if the audience is your entire user base.

Broadcast Emails Cannot Be Recalled

Recipients Cannot Opt Out

Unlike some notification types, broadcast emails don't have a per-user opt-out. All active users in the targeted audience will receive the email. Only deactivated (inactive) users are excluded.

Delivery Isn't Instantaneous

Emails are processed in batches and may take several minutes to fully deliver, depending on audience size. You'll receive a completion email once all messages have been sent.

For sites with SMTP rate limiting configured, delivery may be further throttled to comply with your email provider's sending limits.

The "Send" Button Requirements

The Send button stays disabled until:

• A subject line is entered (can't be blank or whitespace-only)
• The message body contains actual text content (empty paragraphs or whitespace-only content won't count)

Notifications Disabled at the Site Level

If your site's notifications are currently disabled (a system-level setting), the broadcast feature will display: "Notifications are currently disabled." Contact your system administrator if you see this message.

Before You Send — Quick Checklist