Announcements

What it does

Announcements are banners that sit at the top of your team’s dashboards. There are two kinds and they look the same on screen:

Yours. A Manager or Owner writes one for their own staff: a meeting, a roster change, water off at 2pm, a good review worth sharing.
Upstay’s. Planned maintenance, a service problem we are fixing, or something new in the product. You cannot write these; you can hide them for your hotel.

A banner is not the notification bell. The bell tells you one thing happened to one booking. An announcement is a standing message to people, and it keeps showing until it is closed or it expires.

Who can use it

Role	What they can do
Owner	Write, edit and take down announcements. Hide an Upstay banner for the whole hotel.
Manager	Write, edit and take down announcements.
Front desk, Housekeeping, Concierge	See the ones addressed to them, and close the ones that allow it.

Where to find it

Back office → Announcements. Posted announcements appear on each person’s dashboard the next time they open it, and on any dashboard already open within a few seconds.

How to post an announcement

Go to Back office → Announcements and click New announcement.
Pick a Type. The type sets the colour and the icon, so a staff notice never looks like an emergency:
- Staff notice: the everyday message.
- Roster or shift change: who is on, and when it changed.
- Urgent, act now: water off, a VIP arriving. This one cannot be closed.
- Well done: a good review, a full house, a birthday.
Write the Headline and the Message. Both are plain text. There is no formatting, by design: see Tips below.
Tick Who sees it. Tick every group that needs it. Housekeeping and Concierge are separate ticks, so remember them for anything that affects the whole team.
Choose How long it stays:
- Show again at each sign-in: they see it every morning until you take it down.
- They can close it for good: once a person closes it, it never comes back for them.
- Cannot be closed: no close button at all. Use it only for things people must not miss.
Optionally set Show from and Stop showing so it appears and disappears on its own.
Click Post it.

How to take one down

On the Announcements list, switch Showing off. The banner disappears from every dashboard and the wording is kept, so you can put it back up later. The bin icon deletes it for good.

If an Upstay announcement does not apply to you, click Hide for my hotel on the banner. It disappears for everyone at your hotel and stays hidden even if Upstay edits it. Only the Owner sees this button.

Tips & good to know

Plain text only. You cannot paste in your own design, colours or images. The type you pick sets the look. This keeps every banner readable and keeps anything harmful out of a screen that shows guest IDs and payments.
Use “Cannot be closed” sparingly. If everything is urgent, nothing is. People stop reading banners that never go away.
Housekeeping and Concierge are not “under” Manager. Ticking only the roles below a level will miss them. Tick them by name.
A banner only shows on the dashboard. Someone who has been working inside Bookings all afternoon will see it next time they go back to their dashboard.
Two banners show at once. Anything more collapses behind +N more, and Upstay’s always sit above yours.

Troubleshooting

“I posted it and my housekeeper did not see it.” Open the announcement and check Who sees it: Housekeeping is its own tick.

“The banner came back after I closed it.” Its type is Show again at each sign-in. Edit it to They can close it for good if it only needs reading once.

“There is no close button.” The type is Cannot be closed. Only a Manager or Owner can take it down from Back office → Announcements.

“I cannot see Announcements in Back office.” It is not switched on for your hotel. Ask Upstay to enable it.