Publishing Schedule

Shift as needed for holidays; January 1 and July 2 were both Thursdays in 2026. Publishing on January 22 and July 23, the fourth Thursdays, still left four weeks before the next monthly publication.

Timeline:

1. Reminders for submissions go out approximately 17 days (12 business days) prior to the publication date.
2. Submissions are due end of day on the second Friday, six days (four business days) prior to the publication date.
3. Send a test from BeeFree to the IT Customer Experience Director on the third Monday afternoon. This Director will share with the other IT Directors for review/revision.
4. Final Director revisions are due 1pm ET on the third Wednesday. The Directors will send their notes to the IT Customer Experience Director, who collates for the CIT Spotlights editor.
5. Publish on the third Thursday morning of each month.

Step 1. Request Kudos Submissions

1. For a broad reminder, use the CIT General Teams thread. Don't publish on the TSP channel at this point.
2. Include the link to the TDX form and general instructions.  For example:
   • Open a Comm & Doc team ticket.
   • Choose "Recognition."
   • Add a comment with the person or team name and a few words capturing their recent kudos-worthy moment.
3. For the IT leadership reminder, the IT Customer Experience Director will announce in one of their weekly meetings.

Step 2. Review Transition and Kudos Submissions

The Program Assistant in the Communications and Documentation team receives notices of new employee arrivals and employee departures as part of the onboarding/offboarding training process.

1. This information is used to create a list in Box.
2. The names and dates can be checked by one of the CIT HR Associates or by the CIT Directors in their review of final content.

The Program Assistant also adds Kudos content received via TDX ticket to the Box note for the appropriate month.

• Rewrite the submitted kudos to fit the short and upbeat style of the celebratory newsletter.
  • Streamline the idea. Try to fit it in one or two sentences for a total of 30-45 words.
  • Research and/or re-framing is often needed for Director submissions.
• Avoid crediting the CGIO, CIO, Directors, or other Cornell leaders with direct or indirect quotes about great work. This sets up unrealistic expectations and perceptions about the other kudos. Example:
  • Submission: Jerry Shipman, Walter Hoehn, Hong Ye: Extensive work on the CEMI IDM initiative; working as a single, cohesive unit with the WCM team. Dr. Curt Cole recently identified this effort as the one area of the CEMI initiate that's making real tangible progress.
  • Published: Somewhere Over the Login: a common login is much closer than the rainbow's end, thanks to extensive work by a dedicated team demonstrating tangible progress in this CEMI Identity Management effort.
• Emphasize numbers where possible. Example:
  • TeamDynamix Times Ten: leveraging Cornell’s unlimited-use license, the support team partnered with five units across the Ithaca and Cornell Tech campuses to launch 10 new apps—five ticketing and five client portals—streamlining operations in late 2025.
• Spell out acronyms. Example:
  • DMARC Enhancements: Enabled anti-impersonation protections to reduce spoofing and safeguard Cornell’s reputation. The acronym stands for Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance, an email security protocol.
• The first publication was very long, but contained many promo examples.
  • Ask Microsoft Copilot to create a newsletter promo based on a previous sample, then paste in a promo from a prior newsletter followed by the raw text from the Kudos TDX ticket. You should get a pretty good promo to edit. Sometimes you only need a catchy phrase or title; Copilot is also good at creating several options you can use or edit.

Step 3. Build the Drupal Webpage

The new page will be titled Month Year Spotlights & Transitions. This content is grouped under Recognition, a Topic that appears at the bottom of the Subsites & Topics tab when the subsite "CIT Intranet" is selected.

1. Begin building the newsletter in a CIT Intranet web page.
2. There are no graphics or images on the Intranet page.
3. Be sure to lock down the web page audience to IT Professionals.
4. Do not Publish until the newsletter is about to be distributed. Once published, it cannot be hidden, even by returning it to draft.
5. Use best judgment for the grouping and/or order of the kudos.
6. End with a request for new submissions; copy from previous month's page.

Step 4. Build the Email

Use BeeFree—until MarketingCloud is available—to build the monthly e-news. 

1. Each document is called a Project in BeeFree.
2. Look for the previous CIT Spotlights & Transitions e-newsletter, then edit or copy that Project.
   • The previous newsletters are not archived in BeeFree, so editing the most recent one is fine.
   • If you prefer working in a new document but are prevented from copying the previous newsletter, that means our free account is full. Delete the oldest IT News or CIT Spotlights Project to create space, then copy the issue you want to use.
3. Update the month and year for each new publication.
4. Leave the icons as is unless the sections change.
   • The Communications & Documentation Graphic Designer created 11 icons as the vision for this e-newsletter shifted. All those icons have been added to the IT@C media library. For a quick look, see this draft page, not intended for publication.
5. To keep the e-news brief yet relevant, use a promo blurb and the web page anchors (H2s) for all the web sections except the list of employees in New Frontiers.
   • Awards section - promo and anchor
   • Team and Individual Kudos section - promo and anchor
   • Shared or Divisional Accomplishments section - promo and anchor
   • New Frontiers - repeat this web content in the e-news. Use the same H2 phrase but not the anchor link.
   • Suggest Next Stars - leave as is each month, but update the link to the anchor in the current month's web page.
6. Create a very short Preheader. The preheader section can be found in the project's settings or details. To edit these fields, choose the pencil icon at the top of the project. Hovering over the pencil reveals "Edit details."

Step 5. Publish the Intranet Web Page

On Monday afternoon before the Thursday publication date, publish the Intranet page. Once this goes live, everyone in CIT can view it, but it is also important to test the HTML links and anchors in the email, which isn't possible until the page is published.

Step 6. Align Web and E-News

On Monday afternoon, before the Thursday publication date, send a test from BeeFree to the IT Customer Experience Director, who will share with the other IT Directors.

1. Edit the web page content and BeeFree content with the Directors' revisions by 1pm ET on Wednesday.
2. When absolutely certain the content is final in BeeFree select Export.
3. Like IT News, copy the BeeFree HTML into the Dreamweaver editor.
4. Change the character encoding in the first meta tag to “charset=iso-8859-1”
5. Remove the BeeFree logo in the footer.
6. The Dreamweaver HTML is now ready to copy for distribution via Lyris.

Step 6. Prepare the Final Email in Lyris Bulk Mail

Unlike IT News, which is distributed via the Lyris e-List platform, the CIT Spotlights & Transitions newsletter is distributed via Lyris Bulk Mail. They look very similar. 

1. Log into Lyris Bulk Mail: https://www.bulk.mail.cornell.edu/utilities/login/login/?DocPost=5ecfd5eee23927caf170f53dd6ec5c3d
2. Find the correct list: it-announcement0004-l. This list has been pre-populated with the CIT Staff mailing list as a member.
3. In the left-side navigation, click Mailings and then New Mailing.
4. Mailing name: CIT Spotlights MMM YYYY (Dec 2025).
5. Subject: Month Year CIT Spotlights & Transitions
6. From: the CIO; see previous mailing for formatting.
7. HTML Message: Click Source and paste in the Dreamweaver-edited HTML content.
8. Text message: Create a plain text version using the tool at https://mailmeteor.com/tools/html-to-text.
9. Save and Test: This option is in the bottom right corner of the Lyris interface. Check all hyperlinks in the test message after receipt.
10. In the Tracking tab, turn all radio buttons to Yes. There is no campaign for CIT Spotlights.
11. Choose Send (goes out immediately) or Schedule (you can set the mailing day and time).

Step 7. Seek Approval for the Sent Email

Reach out to the CIO's assistant or executive assistant via Teams and ask them to approve the CIT Spotlights email sent to the CIT Staff email list. Be extra kind to them by providing a heads up earlier in the week for the publication.