If you manage a myUMBC group, you've probably noticed some things look a little different lately. We've been working on a big round of improvements to the editor and groups experience, and I wanted to walk you through what changed and why.
There's a lot here, so I'll try to keep it organized.
A Much Better Editor
The most visible change is the editor itself. We replaced the old one with a modern rich-text editor that, hopefully, just gets out of your way.
Paste from Word or Google Docs and it just works. Formatting comes in cleanly without a wall of mystery HTML. This one has been a long time coming.
Images are easier to work with. You can paste, drag-and-drop, or upload images directly into the body of your post. No more hunting for a separate upload button. When you insert an image you'll be prompted for alt text (more on that in a minute).
Paste a YouTube URL and it becomes a player. Drop a YouTube link into the editor and it automatically embeds as a video player. In the notification email that goes out to your group, recipients will see a clickable thumbnail linking to the video instead of a broken embed.
Attachments and tags got some attention too. The interface for attaching files is cleaner, and the tag editor now works like a chip input: type a tag, press Enter to add it, click the x to remove it.
One small but important change: the "Silent" option on the post form has been renamed to "Send Notifications." It's on by default, which is the right behavior for most posts. If you don't want to send a notification, just uncheck it. We made this change because "silent" wasn't exactly self-explanatory.
Preview Before You Publish (and Scheduling!)
Instead of going straight from editing to publishing, there's now a Preview step in between.
On the edit form, you'll choose whether to publish immediately or schedule your post for later. Group admins can schedule up to 30 days in advance. Once you've made that choice, you click Preview before anything goes out.
From the preview screen you can:
- See exactly what your post will look like to readers before it goes live
- Send yourself a test email to see what the notification looks like in your inbox
- Copy a shareable preview link to send to other group admins if you want a second set of eyes before it goes live
Then you confirm the publish or the scheduled time from there.
If your group does a lot of time-sensitive announcements, scheduling should make your life a lot easier.
Alt Text is Now Required
We're making a serious push on accessibility, and one concrete change is that alt text is now required on all images before you can publish. If you've got images without alt text, the Publish button will stay disabled until you fix them.
When you insert an image you'll be prompted right then. If the image is purely decorative, you can check "decorative" and move on. Otherwise a short description goes a long way for people using screen readers.
You may notice other accessibility-related changes around myUMBC as we continue this work. We do our best to make sure nothing breaks along the way, but if something feels off please don't hesitate to reach out to me or the team.
Archive Your Content
Groups can now archive posts and events rather than choosing between leaving old content in the feed or deleting it forever.
Each post and event now has an Archive button. Archiving moves that item out of the main listing into a separate archived view. On your Posts tab, there's a button on the right side that says "View Archived Posts" to toggle between active and archived content.
This is especially useful for groups targeting students with announcements. Old posts that aren't relevant to new visitors can be tucked away without losing them permanently.
If you want to do a bulk cleanup, say archive everything before a certain date, submit a ticket and our team will take care of it.
A Few More Things
Events: In-Person, Virtual, or Hybrid. When creating an event you now explicitly choose the format, and the form shows or hides relevant fields based on what you pick. No more filling in a location for a fully virtual event.
Subscription tag filtering. If your group subscribes to another group's content, you can now limit that subscription to specific tags so only the content you care about comes through.
Group inactivity process. After eight months of inactivity, your group will start receiving emails letting you know. You'll have the option to extend the group for four more months, or choose to archive or delete it. Archiving sets the group to read-only so people can still see past content but no new posts can be made. Deleting removes the group itself but keeps individual posts intact since we hold onto public content for the historical record.
My Events page. Go to the Events section in the left nav and choose My Events to see upcoming events you're signed up for, plus upcoming events from the groups you belong to.
Personal posts are now called Messages. For groups that use them, you'll see the updated label.
Questions?
If something isn't working right or you have questions about any of this, reach out to our team and we'll be happy to help.