Announcements

One message, written once, delivered to a group of this season's judges. It lands in each judge's inbox on FilmScorecard and follows as an email, and it is read only on their side — a judge who wants to answer writes to you in Messages instead.

It is a working screen: you write announcements here, keep them as drafts until you are ready, post them, and afterwards read who has opened each one. Announcements belong to one season — the audiences are all facts about that season's roster, and nothing here reaches a filmmaker, a submitter or the public.

Two things to know before you write anything, because neither can be undone:

• A posted announcement can never be edited and never be deleted, by anybody, ever. Duplicate is how you write the next version.
• Recipients are settled at the moment you post. A judge who joins the roster afterwards receives nothing.

Finding the screen

Announcements is the sixth row in the season block of the left navigation, under your festival's name, between Review Queue and Awards. It never carries a badge: every other badge in that navigation counts work waiting on a person, and an announcement is something that has already been said.

Its address is:

/org/<organization>/<festival>/<season>/announcements

Your search, the status filter and the sort live in the address, so a narrowed view survives a reload and can be sent to a colleague. So does an open compose dialog. The rows you have ticked are the one thing that is not kept — changing any filter clears them.

Who can work here

This screen needs the Manage judges and assignments permission on this season, the same one that gates the Judge requests and Invites sent tabs. Organization owners and admins, festival admins and coordinators have it by default; programmers and viewers do not, and a per-person override on Festival access moves it either way.

• Without it, the screen does not exist for you. The address answers an ordinary "page not found" — the same answer a stranger gets — rather than a greyed-out screen. The navigation row is still drawn, so pressing it is how most people will discover they do not hold the permission.
• Judges never reach any of it, including the export address.
• Ticking the permission for a Viewer does not make a viewer who can write. A viewer with the box ticked can open the screen and read it, and every write is refused with "You do not have permission to post announcements in this season." A viewer is a read-only role by definition, and the permission box does not change that. If somebody should write announcements, give them a role that writes.

What an announcement is, and is not

Reading the list

One row per announcement, drafts and sent together.

Times on this screen are in universal time (UTC), not your local time zone, and read Aug 17, 09:12.

An archived row is drawn quieter than the rest. It is still Sent — archiving is your own housekeeping and says nothing about delivery.

Searching, filtering and sorting

• The search box matches the subject and the ANN- number. Typing ANN-1046, ann 1046 or just 1046 all find the same row. It waits a moment after you stop typing; Escape clears it.
• Status is a tick-box menu of three — Draft, Sent, Archived — and it starts on Draft and Sent, so an archived announcement is out of the default view. The button shows only what is ticked — Draft and Sent at rest, the one status you picked, or All statuses when all three are ticked (hover it for the word "Status"). Clearing every box puts you back on the default pair rather than emptying the table.
• Clear filters appears as soon as anything is narrowing the list, and puts the status filter back to Draft and Sent.
• Every column heading is a sort button. Click once to sort by it, click again to reverse. Recipients and Updated open with the useful end first — biggest, newest; the rest open ascending. Status sorts Draft before Sent. The list arrives sorted by Updated, newest first, and ties never shuffle between reloads.

The line at the foot of the card sums up what you are looking at — "12 announcements, drafts and sent, by updated descending" — and reads "No announcements match, drafts and sent" when your narrowing found nothing.

A season with nothing in it says "No announcements yet" with one line about what an announcement is for, and no button — there is nothing to clear. A list emptied by your own narrowing says "No announcement matches these filters", or "Nothing matches what you typed", with a Clear filters button.

The row menu

The two menus do not overlap, and the missing items are missing rather than greyed:

Delete never appears on a sent announcement — there is no way to un-send one — and Archive never appears on a draft, which has nothing to archive.

Writing one

New announcement, at the right of the toolbar, opens the compose dialog over the list. So does Edit on a draft, and the address gains ?compose= either way — so an open dialog is a link, and opening it creates nothing. Close it without saving and there is nothing left behind.

The dialog says, under its title:

Recipients see this in their inbox and by email. It is read only on their side, so a judge who needs to answer writes to you in Messages.

Three things to fill in:

1. Audience — one of six, each with a line under it saying exactly who it reaches.
2. Subject — required, up to 200 characters. Judges see it as the email subject too.
3. Message — required, up to 20,000 characters. Plain text; blank lines become paragraphs and nothing else is interpreted.

Under them, a line counting the audience:

24 judges match this audience right now. Recipients are counted at the moment you post. Judges added to the roster afterwards do not receive it.

The count follows whichever audience you have selected, and on Specific judges it counts your ticks as you make them.

Read it as a guide, not a promise. It is worked out when the dialog opens, so a judge who is paused — or added to the roster — between then and pressing Post is not covered by it. The number that is real is the one the list shows after you post, because the audience is worked out again at that moment.

Three buttons: Cancel, Save draft, and Post announcement. Post is greyed until the subject and the message are filled in, and — on Specific judges — until at least one judge is ticked. Save draft still needs a subject and a message; saving an empty one is refused.

Picking specific judges

Choosing Specific judges opens a list of the season's judges, name over email address. It has its own search across names and addresses, a Select all tick box that takes whatever the search is showing, a running "n selected" count and a Clear link. The list holds only judges who could actually receive the announcement — see the two rules under the audiences — so nobody you tick can be silently dropped when you post.

The picked judges are kept with the draft. If one of them leaves the roster while the draft sits, they simply drop off the list; if that empties it, the post is refused rather than sent to nobody.

The six audiences

Two rules hold across all six, and neither is negotiable:

• Only active judges. Somebody paused, invited but not yet accepted, declined, removed or revoked is never a recipient — including a judge you paused an hour after saving the draft.
• Only judges with a FilmScorecard account. A judge who has never signed in has no inbox to deliver to, so they are left out and are not counted.

Scorecards a colleague filled in from the Submissions list belong to nobody on the roster, so they never make a judge count as started.

Two of these audiences can legitimately match nobody — a season where everyone has filed everything has no unfiled scorecards. Posting to an audience that matches nobody is refused; see below.

Posting

Post announcement does everything in one step:

1. It works out who matches the audience at that moment.
2. It puts a copy in each of their inboxes, unread.
3. It stamps the recipient count on the announcement, for good.
4. It records you as the sender — not whoever typed the draft — and puts the announcement's first paragraph in each judge's list as its preview line.
5. It queues the courtesy email.

Judges see your name and the word Coordinator on the announcement, whichever staff role you actually hold.

If the audience matches nobody, nothing is posted. You get the refusal inside the dialog:

No judge matches this audience right now, so there is nobody to send it to. Pick a different audience.

What you typed is kept — the announcement is saved as a draft so nothing is lost, and the dialog stays open on that draft. Pick a different audience and press Post announcement again; you are working on the same draft, and no duplicate is left behind on the list.

Nothing on this screen sends the email itself. If the emails could not be queued you are told exactly that — "The announcement was posted and judges can see it in their inbox, but the emails could not be queued. Tell them another way if it is urgent." — and the announcement is genuinely posted: every recipient already has it in their inbox.

What the judge gets

• In FilmScorecard, an unread row in their inbox, on the Alerts tab, with your subject, a one-line preview and the date you posted. Opening it marks it read and shows the whole message, your name, the post date, and a count of how many judges it went to — never who they were. They can archive it; they cannot reply, and the footer points them at Messages. The whole judge's-eye view is Your inbox.
• By email, a plain-text copy: the festival and season, your subject, your message, your name, and one line saying the announcement is read only and that answers go through Messages. Replies go to your organization's support address.
• The email cannot be switched off. Announcements are not among the notifications a judge can turn off in their account settings.

Drafts

A draft belongs to the season, not to whoever wrote it. Anyone with the permission can open, edit, post or delete any draft on the season. There is no lock and no warning: if two of you edit the same draft, the last save wins.

A draft is created only when you press Save draft or Post announcement. It gets its own ANN- number the moment it is created, keeps it forever, and shows an em dash in Recipients until it is posted.

Delete is drafts only, and it is permanent. The confirmation says what it means:

The draft is removed for everyone working on this season. Nothing was sent, so nobody is told.

Duplicate

Duplicate works on drafts and sent announcements alike, and it is the only way to write the next version of something already sent. It makes a new draft — same audience, subject and message, its own ANN- number, you as its creator — and opens it for editing straight away.

A new draft is created with the same audience, subject and message. Nothing reaches a judge until you post the draft.

The draft is real from the moment you confirm, so leaving the dialog leaves it on the list.

Archive

Archive is housekeeping for your own list. It moves a sent announcement out of the default Draft-and-Sent view; tick Archived in the Status filter to find it again, and Move out of archive on its row menu to bring it back.

Archiving touches nothing on a judge's side. Their copy stays exactly where it was, read or unread. A judge's own archive is a separate thing they control themselves.

Archiving several at once

Tick the box at the left of a row — on a desktop the row number turns into a checkbox when you hover or focus it; on a phone the checkbox is always there — and a bar floats up from the bottom of the screen with the count, Clear selection and Archive. The tick box in the heading row selects every row in front of you.

Drafts in the selection are skipped, and the message says both numbers: "3 archived, 1 draft skipped." When every row you ticked is already archived, the button reads Move out of archive instead and puts them all back.

If something is refused

Refusals from the compose dialog appear in an amber strip at the top of it, headed "This announcement cannot be posted yet", and the dialog stays open with your typing intact. Refusals from a row menu appear as a message at the foot of the screen.

On a phone

The rows stay rows. The list scrolls sideways under a frozen heading row, with the tick box and the Announcement column pinned to the left so you always know which announcement you are reading across. The scroll region can be focused and moved with the keyboard.

What this screen does not do

Named plainly so you do not go looking:

• No editing or deleting anything that has been posted. Duplicate is the whole of the answer.
• No scheduling. An announcement goes out when you press Post.
• No formatting, links, attachments or images.
• No resend, no bounce report, no per-judge delivery state. If a judge's mailbox rejects the email you are not told; they still have the announcement in their inbox, which is the delivery.
• No nudging the people who have not read it.
• No replies. Judges answer through Messages, which reaches you as an email.
• No CSV of this list. The only export is the recipient list of one announcement — see Who has read an announcement.
• Nothing here reaches a submitter or the public. Announcements go to judges on this season's roster and nobody else.

Related guides

• Who has read an announcement — the read receipts behind every sent row: the three counts, the table, the CSV and the judge's-eye preview.
• Judges — the roster every audience is drawn from, and where pausing or removing a judge changes who can receive one.
• Festival access — the Manage judges and assignments permission this screen is gated on.
• Your inbox — what a judge sees when your announcement arrives.
• Review Queue — the screen above this one in the navigation.