What is the difference between a general and an equipment related announcement?

There are two types of announcements you can send to your users on Calira:

1. General Announcements
2. Equipment Related Announcements

General announcements function similarly to sending an email to your users, without you having to leave Calira to gather user's contact details.

To send a general announcement, select General Announcement from the announcements page, tick the users from the list that you would like to send the message to, and then add your message subject and content. When you press send, the announcement will be emailed to your selected users, and they will also see an announcement notification at the top of the screen when they next login to Calira. 

Equipment related announcements let you display a message directly on the lab calendar associated to a particular equipment. This can be used if you need to block the equipment's access for an extended period of time, alert users of some important information to do with the equipment, or any other reason you would like to have a message on the equipment calendar.

To send an equipment related announcement, select this from the announcements page. You must choose a date range to show the message on the calendar, and then select which equipment in your lab the message should be shown on. You can then decide whether the equipment should or should not be available to book whilst the announcement is being displayed, and whether any existing bookings during the time period you selected should be deleted or not when the announcement is active. Next, select which users should see the announcement. You will only see users who have access to the selected equipment in this list. Lastly, input your message subject and details, and press send. This announcement will be displayed on the calendar next to the selected equipment in a red box.