Internal newsletters in Sway
Sway is a new app from Microsoft Office that makes it easy to create and share interactive reports, personal stories, presentations, and more.
Here are a few examples of Sways:
- Microsoft’s advertisement for their webinar series
- Stephen Hawking – Science’s Brightest Star
- Microsoft Innovative Educator (MIE) entry
The benefit of using Sway
- There’s no need to spend lots of time on formatting, like you would in Publisher or MailChimp – Sway does it for you
- You can customize the theme to suit your corporate branding
- Share with others by sending a link, embedding on a website or providing a QR code
- Your content isn’t limited to text and images. You can upload video, audio and embed a wide variety of content.
Does anyone on campus already use Sway?
In September 2018, IT Services moved their internal newsletter to Sway. Initially, they used Microsoft Publisher to enter and format the content.
Since we’ve moved to Sway, we circulate internal newsletters more regularly but spend less time producing them. We try to include training videos, feedback forms and polls to engage staff.
Collaboration
Sway provides two sharing links: one to view what you’ve made and one to collaborate. This means that multiple staff members can work on a Sway at the same before distributing it.
Privacy
Add a password to your Sway so no one can view it if you haven’t shared it with them.
Change your privacy settings to suit your communication type. A Sway is basically a private web page. It won’t appear in search engines and it can’t be found by anyone but you unless you choose to share it. If you’ve used OneDrive, the permission settings are the same:
- Specific people: The author has specified that only specific people can view the Sway. Only the people permitted will be able to access it.
- Those in your organization: The Sway can only be accessed by people in the author’s organization or school.
- Anyone with a link: Anyone who has the link will be able to access the Sway.
Thinking of moving to Sway?
There’s a lot of newsletters at the University so we hope you can use this tool to save time and enhance your communications. If you’d like to attend a group session to discuss how Sway can work in your School or Professional Service Unit, please register your interest below.