News Stands

Part of the IP4CMS portal. ← All module guides

What it's for — News Stands is how you publish newsletters, notices, and other "publication"-style content to your members through their resident portal/app. Each news stand is a container (think of it as a publication or a noticeboard) that holds one or more articles (the individual issues, notices, or downloads). You control what members see and when, by marking articles available and optionally scheduling a "available after" date. Articles can carry a cover image and a downloadable PDF or an attached document so members can open and read them.

Where to find it — Main navigation: Communications → News Stand. Route /app/communications/news-stands. The landing screen is the News Stands grid (each row is one news stand, with its article count). Click View on a row to open that news stand and manage its articles at /app/communications/news-stands/:id.

Before you start

• The News Stand licence module (newsstand) must be enabled for your tenant. If it isn't, the API rejects the calls and the screens won't load data.
• You need News Stand permissions on your role (see Permissions & access). At minimum a read permission to open the module; create/update/delete and a media-upload permission to do real work.
• If you plan to attach an existing file (rather than upload a PDF directly), the Documents module should be enabled and you should have access to it — attachments are drawn from documents stored against the news stand.

Key tasks

Create a news stand

1. Go to Communications → News Stand.
2. Click Add news stand (top right). A dialog opens with the news stand form.
3. Complete the fields:

• Name (required) — the publication/noticeboard name. Up to 255 characters.
• Description (optional) — a short summary. Up to 2000 characters.
• Promoted (optional checkbox) — flags this news stand as promoted. Promoted news stands can be highlighted/filtered separately (the grid has a Promoted filter, and the member portal is told which stands are promoted).
• Default cover (optional, requires media-upload permission) — an image (JPEG, PNG, GIF, or WebP, up to 10 MB) used as the news stand's cover. Drag-and-drop or browse to select; you'll see a preview. The image uploads when you save.

1. Click Create. The news stand is saved and the grid refreshes.

Edit or delete a news stand

1. On the News Stands grid, find the row (use the Search box, or the Promoted filter).
2. Click Edit to reopen the form pre-filled, change fields, and click Save Changes.
3. Click Delete, then confirm, to remove it. This is a soft delete — the record is retired (it stops appearing in the admin grid and the member portal) but is kept behind the scenes.

Add (publish) an article

Articles are the actual content members open. "Publishing" is controlled by the article's Available flag and optional Available after date — there is no separate publish button.

1. Open a news stand (View on its row).
2. On the Articles grid, click Add Article. The article dialog opens.
3. Complete the fields:

• Name (required) — the article/issue title. Up to 255 characters.
• Description (optional) — up to 2000 characters.
• Available (checkbox, defaults on) — controls whether the article is visible to members. Untick it to keep the article hidden (draft/withdrawn) while you work on it.
• Available after (date) (optional) — schedule visibility. The article stays hidden from members until this date, then becomes visible automatically (provided Available is also ticked). Leave blank to make it available immediately.
• Cover image (optional) — drag-and-drop or browse (JPEG, PNG, WebP, up to 10 MB). Uploads when you save.
• Article PDF (the simplest way to make the article appear in the member app) — upload the downloadable PDF (PDF only, up to 25 MB). The form shows a "Resident app ready" / "Needed for resident app" badge that reflects whether this article has member-visible content yet.
• Attachment (optional, at most one) — instead of (or as well as) a PDF you may attach one item: either a file picked from the documents stored against this news stand (or uploaded on the spot), or a custom URL. See the note below about URL-only attachments.

1. Click Create (or Update when editing).

Member-visibility guard: the form will not save an article that has no member-visible content. You must provide at least one of: an uploaded Article PDF, a previously-attached PDF, or a file attachment (a document). A URL-only attachment does not count — URL links do not appear in the resident app, so an article with only a URL and no PDF/document will be blocked from saving with a validation message.

Add an attachment to an article

1. In the article form, in the Attachment panel, click Add attachment (or Replace attachment if one already exists — only one is allowed).
2. In the attachment dialog choose the type:

• File — search the documents stored against this news stand and select one, or upload a new file there and then (it's saved to this news stand's documents and selected). You can give it an optional label.
• URL — type a custom link and an optional label. (Remember: URL-only attachments do not show in the resident app.)

1. Confirm. The attachment appears in the article's attachment table. To remove it, tick its checkbox and click Remove selected.

Schedule when an article appears

Use the Available checkbox together with Available after (date):

• Available unticked → hidden from members regardless of date.
• Available ticked, no date → visible to members immediately.
• Available ticked, date set → hidden until that date passes, then visible automatically. No manual action is needed on the date — visibility is evaluated against the current time whenever a member loads the news stand.

Edit or delete an article

1. On a news stand's Articles grid, use the Search box or the Available (Yes/No) filter to find the article.
2. Click Edit to reopen the form, or Delete (then confirm) to soft-delete it. A deleted article disappears from both the admin grid and the member portal.

The public / member view

Members see news stands and articles through the resident portal/app, which reads a separate public set of endpoints (not the admin ones). What members get is filtered automatically:

• Only news stands that exist (not deleted) appear, each showing a count of articles that are currently visible.
• An article is member-visible only when it is Available AND its "Available after" date (if any) has passed. Hidden and not-yet-scheduled articles are filtered out entirely — a member cannot open or download them even with a direct link.
• Members download an article via a generated download link, which the system only issues for articles that are currently visible. The link resolves to the article's PDF (newer or legacy uploads) or its attached document.

There is no separate "member preview" screen in the portal; to confirm what members will see, check the article's Available flag and Available after date, and watch the "Resident app ready" badge on the article form.

Send logs (related)

Send Logs is the landing page of the Communications area (/app/communications/send-logs) and is reached from the same breadcrumb as News Stand. It records outbound communications sent through the platform's communication channels. Note that News Stands itself does not send notifications or push messages — creating or making an article available does not, on its own, generate a send-log entry or a push. News Stand is a pull/publish surface (members see content when they open the app); any explicit member messaging is done through the other Communications tools (Compose, Bulk) and is what appears in Send Logs.

How the data connects

• News stand records (name, description, promoted flag, default cover) are stored in the tenant database (news_stand). The default cover image is uploaded to tenant file storage and referenced by the record.
• Article records (name, description, is_available, available_after, cover, file path, attachments) are stored in news_article, each linked to its parent news stand. The Article PDF is stored in tenant file storage (file_storage_path); file-type attachments reference a document held against the news stand (via the Documents module); URL attachments store the raw link.
• Admin screens read the permission-protected endpoints and show everything (available or not). The member portal/app reads the public endpoints, which apply the availability + schedule filter described above, and serves covers, counts, and download links accordingly.
• News Stand data feeds the member portal/app directly. It does not feed the notifications/Send-Logs pipeline — those are driven by the separate Communications messaging tools.

Permissions & access

• Licence module: newsstand must be enabled for the tenant; every News Stand endpoint (admin and public) requires it.
• Role permissions (granted on your role; the API enforces them, and the UI hides buttons you can't use):
• newsstand:newsstand:create — create a news stand (controls the Add news stand button).
• newsstand:newsstand:read:all — open/list news stands and their articles.
• newsstand:newsstand:update:all — edit a news stand (Edit button).
• newsstand:newsstand:delete:all — delete a news stand (Delete button).
• newsstand:article:create — add articles (Add Article).
• newsstand:article:read:all — view/list and download articles in the admin view.
• newsstand:article:update:all — edit articles (Edit on the articles grid).
• newsstand:article:delete:all — delete articles.
• newsstand:upload:media — upload cover images and article PDFs (controls the cover/PDF upload fields).
• admin:full:access — a super-permission that satisfies the above checks.
• Member visibility is not permission-based for members — it is governed entirely by each article's Available flag and Available after date through the public endpoints. Members never see the admin grid; they only ever receive currently-visible articles.

Tips & gotchas

• "Available" is the publish switch. There's no Draft/Publish button — untick Available to hide an article, tick it to publish. Combine with Available after to schedule.
• A URL alone won't reach the app. URL-only attachments are intentionally not shown in the resident app. If you want members to read the article, upload an Article PDF or attach a file document. The form blocks saving an article that has neither.
• Watch the badge. The green "Resident app ready" / amber "Needed for resident app" badge on the article form tells you at a glance whether members will be able to open the article.
• One attachment maximum. Adding a new attachment replaces the existing one — the panel button changes to Replace attachment once one is set.
• File attachments come from this news stand's documents. The attachment picker only lists documents stored against the current news stand (you can upload a new one inside the picker). If the documents list won't load, check the Documents module is enabled and you have access.
• Cover and PDF size limits: images up to 10 MB (JPEG/PNG/GIF/WebP); article PDFs up to 25 MB (PDF only). The wrong file type is rejected with a validation message.
• Deletes are soft. Deleting a news stand or article retires the record (hidden everywhere) but keeps it for history; it isn't permanently destroyed.
• News Stand doesn't notify anyone. Publishing an article does not push a notification or create a Send-Logs entry. If you need to actively alert members, use the Communications messaging tools (Compose/Bulk) in addition.
• Scheduling is evaluated live. An article with a future Available after date appears for members the moment that time passes — you don't need to revisit it on the day.