We are in uncertain times, and there is an urgency to keep everyone around us well informed. Here at Acoustic, we want to make sharing COVID-19 information, news, and updates a little easier with our free COVID-19 Response center builder.
This offer includes a 2-hour consulting session to share ideas on how to centralize and manage your communications for even faster responses.
View or download the COVID-19 Response center builder agreement
Get started
To learn more and try for this free offer, contact your customer success focal. They will guide you through the process of acquiring and provisioning your account with an instance of Content, that includes the COVID-19 response center builder. Your new CMS will come pre-loaded with all the assets and authoring tools you need to quickly stand up a response center.
You'll receive an email from us when provisioning is complete. Log in to Acoustic Content to get started and preview your response center.
- Go to Developer > URL information and copy the Delivery URL.
- Add the following path /coronavirus-response/index.html to the end of your delivery URL. Now you, have the response renter URL and can check out what is included.
Note: When you log in for the first time you will be prompted to set up your account with other Acoustic products. You can skip this setup and log into the Acoustic Content by selecting No, I don't use any of these.
About the response center
We know you're busy and penciling in time with your developer is just one more thing on the plate. The response center is an application we have built just for you, with your needs in mind to make your communications easier. Now, you can focus completely on creating articles, updating branding, and adding other resources without needing to code a thing. After you make your updates to your response center, your content will be available as soon as you publish.
Included assets
Our developers wanted to have everything ready for you from day 1. The response center is already designed, coded, and built to include Home, Updates, and FAQ pages. The content types, categories, image profiles, and content items used to build this response center are all included in the sample. With everything built, you can jump into creating content immediately. You'll use our content types to create articles with updates and FAQs. Some items, like banners and company statements, are already created for you as content items and waiting for your updates.
We have added several sample articles and FAQs to the resource center. Our samples are just examples for you to tweak, use as-is, or delete to make the response center your own. To delete, go to Content > All content, select all the sample articles and FAQs we added and click Delete.
We even have a collection of images for you to use in your articles that come in a range of colors so you don't need a designer to update the images for you. Common social media icons are also available to use in our library.
You don't have to hunt for these included assets and content items. We have already organized them for you with our library feature. You'll find 4 libraries that group and organize all of these items to help you manage your assets.
- Configurable Fixed Site Components library: We added content items, style guide, and images used to build the response center.
Note: Items in this library can be edited but not deleted to keep your response center working as designed.
- Content Library: Our default library will store any assets that you upload to use for your Update articles and FAQs.
- Social Media Configuration library: Icons in various colors for social media such as Facebook and Twitter are added here.
- Icons and Clip Art library: Updates and FAQs are presented as cards on pages we provide. Each card displays an icon or clip art to draw the eyes of your customers. Just like with our social media icons, you'll find various visuals of various colors that can be easily cropped.
All the resources available in these libraries can be accessed and managed from a single view. Go to Content > Libraries to see the full list. You can also search for items from this page.
Add your images and assets
We have designed the response center so every article can have images or videos that would make the content compelling. The response section and FAQs can also include assets such as PDF files. Adding your images, assets, and videos to the response center is very easy. Especially since Content is both a Digital Asset Manager (DAM) and a Content Management System (CMS). You can upload images, videos, and other assets as soon as you log in.
- From the Content overview page, drag and drop or upload assets into your subscription.
- Check out the tags added by our AI. You can manage these tags by adding your tags and removing any auto tags that you don't want. For example, for the images you want to use for the response center, you can tag them with Response Center.
You'll find all your assets added to the default Content Library.
Invite your team
When you sign up for the free response center builder, we'll add you as the administrator during provisioning. The administrator will have more controls and can invite others to administer and author content for the response center. Go to Inviting and managing users to learn more about roles that you can assign to users.
If the team members that you want to invite do not have an Acoustic ID they can create one by Registering for an account.
Note
You will also notice that a system user was added to your subscription. The system user was added by us to enable tenant provisioning. You can always remove the system user from the subscription.
- Go to My Acoustic and click Manage from the subscription card. Then click Users.
- Select system-user from the table and click Remove user.
Map your domain
When it comes to where you want to host your response center, think about ease of implementation vs ideal user experience.
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0 effort -- Use the Acoustic provided domain
Publishing your response center to the default Acoustic domain requires no further actions on your side and is very marketer-friendly. However, it could mean your customers can have a hard time locating the response center.
In Content, the response center is published to a default Acoustic provided domain. After you publish your updates and articles, you can access your public, live response center by using this URL format: {https://myX.content-cms.com/[tenant-id]}/coronavirus-response/index.html
where https://myX.content-cms.com/[tenant-id] is your delivery URL. You can find your delivery URL from Developer > URL information. -
Best end-user experience with some integration effort -- Host the response center using an iFrame on your web server
Your developer can embed the response center into your existing site and include it as part of the site's navigation or embed it on any webpage on your site. Your end-users will never have to navigate away from your site.
Note: The response center navigation will appear within the iFrame.
To host the response center as part of your website, your developer must add the following code to the page HTML.<iframe width=“100%” height=“4096" frameBorder=“0” src=“https://myX.content-cms.com/[tenant-id]/coronavirus-response/index.html"/>
where https://myX.content-cms.com/[tenant-id] is your delivery URL. You can find your delivery URL from Developer > URL information.
Tip: The height can be varied depending on how many updates/FAQs will be displayed. Make the iframe tall enough to prevent scrollbars from appearing inside the frame.
If you have problems when loading the iFrame on your website, check to see if an error is caused by Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) issue. To authorize CORS sharing, add your domain to Content. Go to Admin > Settings > Security and add your domain. The domain format must be https://my.domain.com.
Update the global styling
Small style tweaks are easy and don't require updates to CSS files. We have included a style guide content item that you can update just like you would any other content item. You can update the text color, select different font styles, change the link color, and change background colors. To update the style to better align with your business branding:
- Click Content > All Content from the main navigation.
- Search for Style Guide. Open the Style Guide content item and click New draft.
- Update the hex value to change the color of text, links, and background.
- To change the font, click the Select category dropdown for font family and choose the font you would like to use.
- Publish your changes to the Style Guide content item to apply the style updates to the response center.
Customize the home page
The home page is already coded, styled, and ready to go. With API calls already added by our dev team to the home page, your content will display as soon as you publish in the designed section of the page. You'll discover how your home page is comprised of blocks of content stored as content items that you can edit and tailor to your liking. For example, the header, banner, and company statement are individual content items. Other sections, such as Top Updates and Top FAQs, are dynamically updated with the articles and FAQs created in the CMS.
Update the logo
The logo image for the response center is part of the Company Information content item provided in your subscription. This content item is already built for you and connected to the response center site. The placement of the logo has been done for you. You can replace the logo image with your own company's logo. To change the logo:
- Click Content > All content from the main navigation.
- Search for Company Information. Open the Company Information content item and click New draft.
- Hover over the image we included in the CompanyLogo element field. Click the three-dot menu and Replace image. You can drag and drop or click Upload to add an image from your system. If you preloaded your company images to the library, or want to use one of the images we provided, search for an image and select the image for your logo from the image tab.
- Click Publish.
Update the follow us and contact information
The follow us and contact information are added to the sidebar navigation on the home page. Similar to the logo these sections are part of the Contact Information content item provided in your tenant.
- Click Content > All content from the main navigation.
- Search for Company Information and open the Company Information content item and click New draft.
- Update the contact information in the Contact Number and Contact Email Address fields.
- In the Social Media Networks section, we have already added a few social icons and links. To update these links, hover over the icon image and click Edit.
- Each social media option will open as a separate content item. For example, Facebook social media will open a Facebook content item.
- Click New draft and update the link in the Social Link field in this content item to point to your company's social media.
- Click Publish. The content item is published and the latest version is referenced in the Contact Information content item.
- To add a custom social channel, click Add Content item > Create content and search for Custom Social Channel from the Select a type tab. provide details and click Create.
- The content item for the New Custom Social Channel opens. Add your icon and your link and publish it.
Update the banner
Your banner has already been created for you. You can customize the banner by updating the title, banner description, and background image.
- Click Content > All content from the main navigation.
- Search for Sample Banner. Open the Sample Banner content item and click New draft.
- Update the Banner Title and Banner Subtitle with your text.
- To replace the background image, hover over the image we included in the Background Image element field. Click the three-dot menu and click Replace image. You can drag and drop or click Upload to add an image from your system. If you preloaded your company images to the library, or want to use one of the images we provided, search for an image and select the image for your logo from the image tab.
- Click Publish.
Update the company statement
The company statement section for the response center has already been created for you. You can replace the text with your company's statement.
- Click Content > All content from the main navigation.
- Search for Company Statement. Open the Company Statement content item and click New draft.
- Update the Statement Title and Statement Body with your text.
- Click Publish.
Top updates and FAQs section
You can control which articles and FAQs are displayed on the home page. When you compose articles or FAQ items, you can mark them as Top updates or Top FAQs. All you need to do is enable the Top update and Top Item toggles respectively.
Tip: If you want to remove articles from the Top Updates and FAQ sections, disable the toggle in those articles and FAQs. You have full control of what you want to display on the homepage.
Create an article
There are many types of articles that you might want to create that are relevant to the COVID-19 crisis. You may have tips on how to be comfortable and productive as your employees' transition to virtual/home-based work. Or, you may have critical guidance and safety information to share. Either way, the content type included for articles in your Response Center is flexible enough to cover a range of subject matter.
- From Content > All content, click Create content and select COVID Update content type.
- Give your article a new name so you can easily find it from your All content list for future updates and click Create.
- Start composing your article by filling out the content form.
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Select a category for your article. Selecting and adding a category for your article in the Article categories element ensures your article shows up in the Related updates list of similar articles.
Tip: From the Details tab, you can also add tags for your article. Similar to categories, tags help with filtering and searching in the response center.
- Enable the Top Update toggle element to display the article on the Home page Top updates section.
- Add an image for your article. Drag and drop or click Upload to add an image from your system. Or, if you preloaded your company images to the library or want to use one of the images we provided, click browse assets and select the image for your banner background from the image tab.
- If Image Profiles are available they are applied to your image. Hover over the image and click Edit image. The image opens in the editor. You can edit the image or make modifications by scaling the image. Save any updates you make to the image.
- Hover over the image and click Settings. You will have options to provide alternate text, add a link to the image, and choose if you want changes made to the original image to be applied to the image in this article.
- Provide a description of your article in the Article Summary field. Your summary displays in the card view of your article. You can also upload an image in the List View Image field to add an image to the card view.
- When you are ready to publish your article, click Publish.
Note: Elements marked with an * are required. You will not be able to publish the article if they are left empty.
Create an FAQ
FAQs are an effective way to communicate important information. Having a FAQ section that is direct and clear will provide a quicker way to share information. Creating and updating FAQ's are easy and simple. To create a FAQ item for your Response Center:
- Click Content > All content from the main navigation.
- Click Create content and select FAQ Item as type.
- Give your FAQ item a new name so you can easily find it from your All content list for future updates and click Create.
- Select a category for your FAQ. Selecting and adding a category for your FAQ in the FAQ Categories element ensures your article shows up in the Related FAQs list of similar FAQs.
- Enable the Top Item toggle element to display the article on the Home page Top FAQs section.
- Start composing your FAQ by entering the Question and Response text in the respective fields on the content form.
- When you are ready to publish your FAQ, click Publish.
Note: Elements marked with an * are required. You will not be able to publish the article if they are left empty.
Target where your content displays with categories
We have created taxonomies and categories to group related articles and FAQs. The response center application uses the categories' capability and grouping to display a list of related articles in the side navigation of the articles and FAQs. Apply the available categories when you compose for your articles to display in the list. Categories are also used to filter and search for content in the response center.
Publish your response center
It only takes a few minutes to update your published content or add more articles and FAQs to your resource center. You can publish these updates as many times and as often you want. You can publish your content for the response center as you update them. When you are ready, you can access the response center using the URL format based on the domain mapping method you chose. You can also use this URL to link the response center within your existing site.
What's next
We are happy to have the opportunity to support you during these times. We also hope you got a glimpse into how easy and quick it is to manage, create, and deliver content using our DAM, CMS, and headless capabilities. If you would like to hear more about what we offer for future projects reach out to us. We are always ready to help!