Getting started with the Communications Hub

Getting started with the Communications Hub

The Communications Hub is where you plan, write, approve and publish your practice's public communications — social media posts, website copy and newsletter content — from one calendar.

It is for communications to the public, not messages to individual patients. Patient messaging (FFT survey invitations and the like) stays in its own areas.

Opening the hub

Communications in the header opens the hub. Access is per staff member, so if you get an "access to this page" message, ask a practice administrator to grant it under Access control.

The hub has four tabs:

  • Calendar — everything planned, on a month or week view
  • Campaigns — group related content together
  • Connected accounts — your practice's social accounts
  • Settings — publishing information (more options arriving later)

[SCREENSHOT: Communications Hub, Calendar tab]

How a post travels

Every piece of content moves through the same steps, and the last two are deliberately separate so nothing reaches the public by accident:

  1. Draft — write it (or have AI write a first version)
  2. Awaiting approval — you send it for checking
  3. Approved — a practice administrator has signed it off
  4. Scheduled — you pick the date and time
  5. Published — it goes out automatically at that time

You can cancel at any point before it publishes. See How approvals and scheduling work for the detail.

Creating your first draft

On the Calendar tab, select New draft. Give it a title and write the copy, then choose where it should go — any connected social account, plus Website and Newsletter, which are always available.

Social channels only appear once you've connected that platform. See Connecting your social media accounts.

Each channel can have its own version of the wording — useful because X has a 280-character limit while Facebook and LinkedIn allow much more. Leave a channel's wording blank and it uses the main copy.

Drafts with no date sit in the side rail next to the calendar, so nothing gets lost while you decide when to send it.

Campaigns

A campaign is just a label that groups related content — "Flu jabs October", say, or "New patient registrations". Create one on the Campaigns tab, then pick it when writing a draft. Useful when several posts belong to one push.

Suggested for you

Above the calendar you may see suggestions drawn from your own practice data:

  • From your FFT results — when your last complete month scored well, a ready-to-edit post sharing that; or, if responses were low, a post asking patients to take part
  • New national data — when a national dataset relevant to patients has just been published

Suggestions only ever create a draft. Nothing is written, approved or published on your behalf. Accept one and it lands on the calendar for you to edit; dismiss it and it goes away on your device.

Suggestions quoting FFT results use aggregate figures only — percentages and counts, never anything about an individual patient.

What this module includes

Your plan may include some or all of:

  • The hub itself — calendar, campaigns and the composer
  • Social publishing — connecting accounts and automatic publication
  • AI-assisted drafting — see Using AI to draft content

If a tab or button says it isn't included in your plan, that part hasn't been purchased. Speak to us about adding it.

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