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Emergency Broadcast lets your team send urgent email messages to groups of users, ideal for security incidents, service outages, scheduled maintenance, and important announcements. An AI Broadcast Writer helps you draft a clear message in seconds, and delivery history records send attempts and per-recipient results. You can also post a portal status banner, an outage or maintenance notice that appears at the top of your clients’ portal home page with a status-page style update timeline.

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Overview

The Broadcasts page has four tabs:

Compose

Write a broadcast, choose recipient groups, preview it, and send.

History

See every broadcast sent, its delivery status, and per-recipient results.

Groups

Create and manage the recipient groups broadcasts are sent to.

Portal Banner

Post outage and maintenance notices to the portal home page and keep them updated as the incident evolves.

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Prerequisites

  • Broadcasts are for MSP team members. Client (company) users don’t have access.
  • Permissions: viewing requires read access to broadcasts; sending requires write access; creating groups and deleting drafts require manage permission; saving drafts requires write or manage permission. Ask an administrator if you don’t see the Compose tools or the Create Group button.
  • A verified sending domain must be configured under Email settings. Without it, broadcasts can be drafted but will fail to send.

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Sending a broadcast

1

Open the Compose tab

Go to Broadcasts and make sure the Compose tab is selected. If you have saved drafts, they appear at the top, click one to load it.
2

Write the subject and message

Enter a Subject and write your Message in the rich-text editor (bold, lists, links, and more are supported).
3

Choose recipients

Click Select groups to open the Select Groups dialog. Search, use Select All / Deselect All, and tick the groups that should receive the message. Each group shows its member count, and a running unique recipients total is displayed. Selected groups appear as removable chips.
4

Pick a theme

Choose a Dark or Light email theme (Dark is the default). This controls how the email looks in recipients’ inboxes.
5

Preview and test (optional)

Click Preview to see the email as recipients will, and toggle between light and dark. Click Send Test to Me to send a copy to your own inbox first.
6

Send

Click Send Broadcast. A confirmation dialog tells you how many unique recipients across how many groups will receive it. Confirm to send. You’re taken to the History tab to watch progress.
Sending cannot be undone, and broadcast sending is queued immediately (there is no email-send scheduling). Always use Send Test to Me or Preview before sending to a large audience.

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Saving drafts

Click Save Draft to store the current subject, message, selected groups, and theme. Drafts are personal to you and appear at the top of the Compose tab so you can pick up where you left off.

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Using the AI Broadcast Writer

The AI Broadcast Writer drafts both the subject line and the message body for you.
1

Open the writer

Click the sparkle button on the right side of the Compose form to open the AI Broadcast Writer panel.
2

Describe the message, or pick a quick template

Type what you want to communicate, or choose a Quick template to get started:
  • Security Incident: alert users about a threat with actionable steps
  • Scheduled Maintenance: notify users about planned downtime and impact
  • Service Outage: communicate an ongoing disruption
  • General Announcement: share an IT policy change or update
3

Apply and refine

The assistant proposes subject and message changes. Review and apply the proposal to update the Compose form; applying it does not save a draft or send the broadcast. Keep chatting to refine it, for example “make it shorter” or “add more urgency.” The writer is aware of which groups you’ve selected and how many people will receive the broadcast.

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Recipient groups

Broadcasts are sent to broadcast groups, reusable lists of recipients you manage on the Groups tab. A group can include users from one or several companies, and the same person in multiple selected groups is only emailed once. Which groups you can target depends on your company scope:
  • Tenant-wide access can target groups across all companies.
  • Single or assigned-company access can only target groups for those companies.
To create a group, open the Groups tab and click Create Group (requires the manage permission).

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Tracking delivery

The History tab lists every broadcast with its Subject, Groups, Recipients, Status, Sent By, and Date. Status values: Click any broadcast to open its details, including a Recipients tab (with each person’s name, email, company, and individual Sent / Pending / Failed status) and a Message tab showing what was sent. Failed recipients display the reason, so you can follow up.

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Portal status banners

The Portal Banner tab lets you post an outage or maintenance notice directly to the portal, no email required. Banners appear at the top of the portal home page for your clients, styled by severity, and you can post updates to them as the situation changes, just like a status page.
Viewing the Portal Banner tab requires read access to broadcasts. Creating, editing, toggling, updating, or deleting banners requires write or manage access.

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Creating a banner

1

Open the Portal Banner tab

Go to Broadcasts and select the Portal Banner tab. Existing banners are listed with their severity, targeting, schedule, and update count.
2

Click New banner

Click New banner and fill in the Title (required) and Message, for example “Email delivery delays” with a short explanation of what’s happening.
3

Choose a severity

Pick Info, Warning, or Critical. Severity controls the banner’s icon and color so clients can gauge impact at a glance.
4

Target companies

Use the Companies selector to limit the banner to specific companies, or leave it empty to show it to all clients.
5

Schedule it (optional)

Set Show from and Show until to display the banner only during a window, ideal for planned maintenance. Leave both empty to show it immediately for as long as it stays active.
6

Set dismissal and active state

Toggle Dismissible to control whether users can hide the banner after reading it, and use the Active toggle to control whether it’s shown at all. A live Preview at the bottom of the dialog shows exactly how the banner will look.
7

Save

Click Save. If the banner is active (and inside its schedule window, if set), it appears on the portal home page right away.

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Managing banners

Each banner in the list has:
  • An Active switch to turn it on or off without editing it. Only active banners are shown on the portal home page.
  • A Post update button to add an update to its timeline.
  • Edit and Delete buttons. Deleting permanently removes the banner from the portal.

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Posting updates

As an incident evolves, click Post update on the banner and write a short status update, for example “Microsoft has identified the cause and a fix is rolling out.”
  • Updates render on the banner as a timeline, newest first, with the latest update highlighted and earlier updates collapsible.
  • Posting an update re-shows the banner to users who had dismissed the earlier version, so nobody misses new information. Editing the banner has the same effect.
  • The Update history in the dialog shows everything posted so far, and you can remove an individual update if it was posted in error.

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What clients see

Active banners appear at the top of the portal home page (both the classic and AI home). If several banners are active, they stack: the selected banner shows its full message and update timeline while the others collapse to a single row. Dismissible banners can be hidden with the close button; non-dismissible banners stay until you deactivate or delete them.

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The AI assistant knows about active banners

Active banners are shared with the portal’s AI assistant. When a client asks something like “is email down?” and it matches a posted notice, the assistant answers from the known incident and lets them know it’s already being worked on, instead of a duplicate ticket being filed. It still offers to create a ticket if the client wants individual follow-up or their issue looks different.

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Troubleshooting

The button stays disabled until you’ve entered a subject, written a message, and selected at least one group.
Confirm a verified sending domain is set up under Settings → Email. Without a verified domain, broadcasts can be drafted but won’t deliver. Open the broadcast in History to see per-recipient errors.
These require write and manage permissions respectively. Ask an administrator to grant the appropriate broadcasts permission.
No. Broadcasts send immediately after you confirm. Use Save Draft to prepare a message ahead of time and send it when you’re ready. Portal banners, however, can be scheduled with Show from and Show until on the Portal Banner tab.
Check that the banner’s Active switch is on, that the current time falls inside its Show from / Show until window (if one is set), and that the client’s company is included in the Companies targeting (an empty selection means all companies). If the banner is dismissible, the client may simply have dismissed it; posting an update or editing the banner brings it back for everyone who dismissed it.

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Questions and troubleshooting

No. A broadcast with some failed recipients can still be Completed. Inspect Sent, Failed and Pending counts. A provider-accepted send is not proof that the person read it.
Preview shows the message and applying AI copy updates Compose. Send Test to Me sends a real email; Send Broadcast submits the intended audience after confirmation.
No. Banner Show from and Show until control portal display. Broadcast emails have a separate immediate queueing workflow.
No. It saves your broadcast composition. Saving an active banner can publish it immediately when its display window permits.
Recipients can overlap across selected groups and are resolved within permitted scope. Review the unique-recipient preview and the final per-recipient history.
Turning the banner off controls visibility. Use the separate deletion actions only when you intend to remove the banner or an update.
Inspect the failed recipients and successful sends first. A new broadcast can resend to people already contacted; choose the follow-up audience deliberately.
The banner timeline and email broadcasts are separate workflows. Check portal visibility after posting; compose and send a broadcast separately if an email notification is intended.

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