Four lines at the top of every Home page, seen by every person in the account each time they sign in. Use them for the instruction people keep asking for, the link they keep hunting, the key to your emoji, and now and then a word that makes the office feel like one.
Introduction
There is a category of thing everyone in the office needs to know and nobody reads an email about. Where the training docs are. What to do first on a new file. That checks go out late when overdue tasks sit. The Company Announcement is the one place that reaches every agent and admin without a send button, because it sits at the top of the Home page and highlights for a moment every time someone lands there.
It is small on purpose, four lines and one message at a time, and that is the discipline that makes it work. Standing instructions earn a permanent spot. Links earn their place by taking people straight to the page or the list you want them on. Recognition and a bit of fun earn theirs by being occasional. Anyone can hide it once they have read it, and it comes back for everyone the moment you change it, so every edit is a small interruption and should be worth one.
Set it up well and the question you answer ten times a week stops arriving, because the answer is the first thing on the screen.
When to Use This
- New agents ask the same three questions in their first week.
- People forget the order of work on a new file: add it, upload, check off.
- Overdue tasks pile up because nobody looks at the list unless they are pointed to it.
- Your office uses emoji to classify transactions and the meanings live in one person's head.
- You want to congratulate someone, or the whole office, where everyone will see it.
1. Post It, and Keep It to Four Lines
A master admin writes the announcement near the bottom of [Admin / Settings], in the Company Announcement section, and saves. It appears at the top of everyone's Home page, highlighted briefly on arrival, and stays until it is replaced or cleared. The field takes bold, italic, a horizontal line, links, lists, and emoji through its formatting options, and it shows four lines at most, so write for the space rather than trimming afterwards. Clear the field completely to take it down; a stray space keeps it showing.
Post a short message to the top of everyone's Home page to share news, a reminder, or a link with your whole team.
2. Link People Straight to the Page You Mean
Every page in Pipeline has its own web address, including a filtered list and a search result. Run the search or set the filter, copy the address from the browser, and put it behind the words in the announcement. "Check the overdue tasks list daily" links to the Tasks page already filtered to overdue. "Review what is closing this week each morning" links to the Transactions search for close dates this week. "Upload your docs" links to the upload page, and a how-to can link to the guide that teaches it. A long address eats the character limit, so shorten it before you paste.
Narrow the Tasks page to an exact set — search by task or transaction name, then filter by @mention, agent, due date, status, and more.
See Tasks Search
Narrow the Transactions page to exactly the deals you need — search by name, filter by any field, sort the result, and download it.
3. Make It the Office's Instruction Card
The standing use is the one that never goes stale: the order of work. Number the steps with emoji and link each one. Add the transaction. Upload your docs. Check off your tasks. New agents get their own line, "New to the office? Start with the agent training docs on the Reference page," linked to the folder you keep them in, so onboarding runs from the Home page instead of from your inbox.
Your company's Reference page is the shared library — the blank forms, disclosures, training material, and links an admin posts once so nobody on the team has to hunt for them.
4. Post the Key to Your Emoji
If transaction names carry a colored circle for each coordinator or a checkbox for a reviewed file, the announcement is where the key lives. One line per symbol, in the same order every time, and the classification your team reads on every list is explained on the page they start from. How to build the system behind the key is in Build an Emoji System Your Whole Office Can Read.
5. Use It for Recognition, Sparingly
A birthday. Congratulations to the agent who closed the difficult one. "We closed 56 homes in January." "Ten houses from a hundred for the year. Who sells the hundredth?" A holiday greeting, a line that reminds people why they do the work, a joke on a Friday. Each of these does more for participation than its size suggests, because it is the first thing on the screen and it is about them. Two rules keep it from wearing out. Keep the standing instruction on the page and rotate the human line beneath it, and remember that every save re-expands the announcement for everyone who had hidden it, so a daily change is a daily interruption. Change it when the change is worth the interruption.
