Lesson 1: Welcome!

Welcome to Getting Started with Staffbase! Launching a new platform can seem overwhelming at first, but it's also exciting. Staffbase opens the door to new ways of connecting with your employees and sharing what matters most. And the good news is, you don't have to figure it out alone — your onboarding team and Campus will be with you every step of the way to help you succeed. Whether you're a content contributor or an administrator of the platform, you'll gain the knowledge to use Staffbase effectively. When you complete this course, you'll be able to recognize commonly used Staffbase terminology, navigate Staffbase's user interface to locate common features such as the dashboard and profile settings, and configure settings within Staffbase Studio to align with your organization's security protocols and branding preferences.

Lesson 2: Understanding Staffbase Language

Every platform has its own language, and Staffbase is no different. News is how you share the stories, announcements, and updates that matter to employees, ideal for keeping everyone informed about what's happening across the organization in real time. Pages are static landing spaces for structured information that is accessible and easy to find, such as HR policies, office information, documents, or resource libraries. Plugins are mini applications you can add to the platform to extend its functionality, such as surveys, an employee directory, or an event calendar. Widgets are design elements that show particular content within a page or news post, like link buttons, an infobox, or an accordion. An Admin is the user role responsible for configuring and managing the platform, controlling settings, user permissions, and the overall structure of the entire platform. An Editor is the user role responsible for creating content in the platform — editors can publish news, pages, or other content but don't have access to administrative settings. Groups are collections of users that make it easy to target content, organize audiences, and manage user access across the platform.

Lesson 3: Navigating the Studio

Staffbase Studio is the central hub where admins and editors manage the platform. It's where you create and publish content, adjust settings, and organize how employees will experience the app or intranet — think of it as the "control center" where everything behind the scenes comes together to support communication across your organization. The Dashboard gives an overview of your most recent and top-performing content. Content is where you create and manage news, pages, and plugins. Files is a library of reusable graphics and assets. Analytics provides detailed metrics around how users engage with content. Planning contains strategic tools like the editorial calendar and campaigns.

Lesson 4: Admin Platform Settings

This lesson focuses on the admin role and its responsibilities. As an Admin, you have access to control core settings that change the platform's function, behavior, and look, as well as who can access the platform — these are essential settings that should be configured before your editors create content. Putting this into practice, admins should add their company's brand colors, configure security settings to conform with their organization's information security policies, and enable and configure the Welcome Page. For a comprehensive list of everything an admin needs to set up, Staffbase provides a Studio Configuration Checklist to guide setup step by step.

Lesson 5: Congratulations!

Understanding terms like news, pages, plugins, widgets, admin, editor, and groups gives you a solid foundation to navigate the platform. The Staffbase Studio is your control center to help you manage content and features efficiently. Admins control branding, security, and overall functionality, ensuring the platform operates smoothly for your organization.

Lesson 1: Welcome!

Welcome to News Basics: Organize, Create, Publish! Effective internal communication is more than just sending updates — it's about reaching the right people, at the right time, in the right way. News in Staffbase is the framework for delivering important, timely, and relevant internal communication across your organization. Whether you're looking to modernize internal newsletters, reach global teams with multilingual content, or boost engagement through interactive features like comments and likes, this course shows you how to make the most of News in Staffbase to strengthen your communication strategy. When you complete this course, you'll be able to identify different types of news channels and what content would be appropriate for each channel type, configure news channel settings — including authors, visibility, and notifications — to support your organization's content strategy, and create and publish a news post in Staffbase.

Lesson 2: What is News?

News in Staffbase is how you share the stories, announcements, and updates that matter to your people — a structured way to keep employees informed, aligned, and connected to what's happening across your organization. News is built on three key building blocks: news pages, news channels, and news posts, and there's no set number of any of them — you can create as many as your audience needs. A News Page is a central hub for organizing and displaying internal news content, bringing related updates, announcements, and stories into one place; in the platform these pages appear like menu items (for example, a page called "My News"). News Channels help you structure information by topic, team, or audience, and each channel lives inside a news page — there are three types of news channels: articles, media, and updates. News Posts are the key content elements used to share updates, announcements, and information with employees; each post is created inside a specific channel and appears in employees' newsfeeds, much like the articles inside a newspaper section — an example post might be an article about a recent update to a company's mission statement.

Lesson 3: Channel Types

News channels are the foundation of how you share information with your employees. Choosing the right channel type not only improves how your message is received, it also shapes how employees experience and interact with your content. There are three channel types — articles, updates, and media. The Articles channel supports a title, teaser text, image/video, and body text. The Updates channel supports image/video and body text only (no title or teaser text). The Media channel also supports image/video and body text only. Each channel type supports a different kind of message, whether that's detailed storytelling (articles), fast updates, or visual highlights (media).

Lesson 4: Channel Settings

Once you've chosen the right channel type, it's time to adjust its settings. Channel settings control how content is created, shared, and experienced within each channel, helping align your communication style with your goals. An "Allowed" setting means a feature is available to use, while a "Default" setting means it's automatically turned on (or off) when creating a new post. Putting this into practice, you might create an articles channel named "Company News", assign a contributor and an editor to the channel, and allow email notifications while turning off the default setting.

Lesson 5: Creating and Publishing Posts

Once your channels are set up, it's time to start sharing content with your employees. Posts are the core way you deliver updates, announcements, and stories across your platform — each one lives inside a channel, and posts can be tailored to specific audiences with targeting and translated into multiple languages to reach everyone. Creating posts in Staffbase is simple and flexible, with tools to format your content, add media and widgets, and schedule publishing; posts can be published in more than one language. Putting this into practice, you can add a title, teaser text, and article text, use live preview to see what the post looks like before publishing, and toggle on highlighting and acknowledging settings.

Lesson 6: Congratulations!

News is made up of news pages, channels, and posts — each serves a different purpose to organize and deliver internal communications clearly and effectively. There are three channel types: articles, updates, and media, each designed for different communication styles, from long-form storytelling to quick alerts and visual content. Channel settings let you customize how each channel functions, including visibility, contributor roles, and feature availability. Posts are the main way content is shared with employees, and you can add text, media, widgets, and more to tailor communication.

Lesson 1: Welcome!

Welcome to Building Better Pages with the Content Designer! Keeping every employee in your organization informed isn't easy — as your company grows, so does the volume of information, and keeping everyone updated in a timely, consistent way becomes a challenge. This is where pages come in. Pages are an effective way to share structured content that needs to stay available long-term, be simple to update, and easy for users to navigate, meaning less searching and a better experience for everyone who needs to find and use that information. When you complete this course, you'll be able to understand the purpose of using pages to deliver structured, evergreen content to your audiences and what types of content they're best suited for, manage your pages using administrative tools and settings, and create and format pages with the new Content Designer.

Lesson 2: Choosing Your Editor

The page designer is where you bring a page to life — you can structure your layout, style text, and add visuals to make your content engaging. In Staffbase, you have two options for building pages: the Content Designer and the Classic Editor. The Content Designer uses modular blocks, a side panel library, and draft mode, while the Classic Editor offers a linear document flow, top toolbar access, and instant updates. Because of its flexibility and design control, Staffbase recommends using the Content Designer for your Pages (those who prefer the Classic Editor can take the course Your First Page With Classic Editor).

Lesson 3: What are Pages?

Pages solve the problem of scattered, hard-to-find information. Unlike news, which is great for timely updates like quarterly results or office closures, pages are ideal for structured, contextual messaging that needs to stay accessible over time, such as HR policies or IT guides. With control over layout, visibility, and access, you can tailor each page to the right audience, ensuring your messaging stays available, searchable, and reliable. A page is built from Sections — the broad horizontal areas used to organize a page into different topics; Containers — the layout framework that lives inside a section and controls how many columns you have; and Blocks — the specific content elements you add to a page, such as text, images, or buttons.

Lesson 4: What Content Belongs in Pages?

While News is perfect for timely updates, Pages are built for the content people need to find again and again — if information needs to be referenced more than once, it belongs on a Page for easy access. Service Pages share processes and resources employees use often (such as requesting PTO or claiming expenses); links and files take precedence on this type of page. Topic Pages highlight organization-wide topics, values, or initiatives that shape company culture; text dominates the space while links remain accessible for convenience, such as a Company Goals or Mission page. CEO Communication Pages provide a direct channel between leadership and employees to build trust and transparency, enabling employees to ask questions directly to the CEO and/or organizational leaders, with senior leadership responding directly in the news channel.

Lesson 5: Pages for Admins

As the administrator of your platform, one of your first tasks is deciding who sees each page and who can edit it, configured in the page settings. Page settings include: Space, the area where the page lives; Creator, the user who originally created the page; Show in Menu on, which devices (desktop, mobile, or both) the page should appear on; Breadcrumb Setting, whether breadcrumbs appear only on desktop, always, or never; Icon/Custom Icon, an icon shown next to the page name; Visibility in the App, who can see the page — everyone, specific users or groups, or hidden; Visible in the Public Area, allowing the page to be visible even when users aren't logged in; Page Owners, who can edit, publish, unpublish, and update a page's title or description and are responsible for keeping content accurate and compliant; Editors, the users assigned to edit the page and access its settings; and Update Reminder, a reminder for when the page should be reviewed next.

Lesson 6: Putting into Practice: Building a Page

As you build, focus on making your content easy for everyone to read and navigate, which ensures your message is clear to your audience as well as tools like screen readers and AI. Recommended best practices include: using headings to guide your audience by organizing content into sections with consistent headings, which helps people scan the page quickly and ensures screen readers understand how information is grouped; using descriptive links instead of vague labels like "Click here" or "Read more", such as "Download the HR Policy"; adding alternative text (alt text) to images so screen readers can describe visual content to users who can't see it; making sure your text has high contrast against the background and uses plenty of white space to avoid a cluttered look; and keeping content short and scannable by breaking long walls of text into smaller paragraphs and bullet points, which helps AI tools summarize your main points accurately.

Lesson 7: Congratulations!

The Content Designer is your modern canvas for building high-impact, visual pages using a modular drag-and-drop approach. Pages are designed for sharing structured, long-term information that users will need to reference repeatedly over time. Pages follow a simple hierarchy: Sections for broad areas, Containers for layout, and Blocks for your content. Different page types serve specific purposes — design with your goal and audience in mind to maximize the impact of your content.

Lesson 1: Welcome!

Welcome to Menu Made Simple! Designing a menu that works for every employee is about more than just listing pages — it's about guiding the right people to the right content, at the right time, in the right way. When you complete this course, you'll be able to evaluate how well your menu helps users find key content, compare mobile and desktop menu experiences to optimize content structure for different users, and configure and customize the menu structure in Staffbase to align with your organization's communication goals.

Lesson 2: Why Menu Structure Matters

Think of your menu as the essential blueprint for your app or intranet — it helps guide employees to the right content, reflects your organization's core priorities, and shapes how users experience your platform. Key factors that make a menu effective include: Content Structure — organize content logically, using folders, dropdowns, and clear labels; Audience and Role — target navigation to specific roles, departments, or locations, showing each group only what's relevant to them; Access Options — highlight high-value content by placing it in the menu, signaling that it's important; Device Formats — design for both desktop and mobile, using horizontal menus for desktop, hamburger icons for mobile, or Quick Links and Launchpad where appropriate; and Usability and Scalability — keep the menu simple to use and easy to update as your organization changes.

Lesson 3: Mobile vs. Desktop Navigation

On desktop, Horizontal Navigation is the main menu users see at the top of the screen; it works well for high-priority, top-level items because there is enough screen space to display multiple links side-by-side. Dropdown Navigation lets you group related links under one heading — for example, a "Departments" menu item could reveal links to HR, IT, and Communications. On mobile, horizontal menus are replaced by the "hamburger" icon (three stacked lines); tapping it reveals a vertical list of menu items. The bottom navigation bar holds up to five Quick Links, always visible, ideal for links employees need constant access to, like shift schedules, contact directories, or forms. The Launchpad provides one-click access to external tools, apps, and websites; it works across both desktop and mobile and can be customized by user segment.

Lesson 4: Building and Enhancing Your Menu

The Staffbase Studio is where you'll bring your menu to life. Putting this into practice, you can add a folder to group related menu items, reorder your menu based on content importance, add a branded icon to a menu item, and create or update a widget on a landing page.

Lesson 5: Tools in Action

Widgets, such as Link Lists or Tiles, can be added to your homepage or landing pages to highlight important content, tools, or departmental resources. News Pages let you group related content so it appears in the menu — you can use multiple pages for different audiences or topics. Customization lets admins adjust colors, fonts, and alignment in the branding settings. Personalization means employees only see the menu items targeted to them, based on role, department, location, or other audience segments. Personas help you design a menu around your employees' real needs rather than a one-size-fits-all approach. In practice: the HR team might use a tile widget to highlight onboarding links; the Communications team might create a dedicated "Safety Updates" news page targeted by site location; the Marketing team might update menu colors to match a rebrand; Sales employees might see Quick Links to CRM tools while production workers see safety checklists; and IT might set up separate menu views for office-based staff and field technicians.

Lesson 6: Congratulations!

The way users access your platform can vary widely by device — designing separate navigation for desktop and mobile ensures a smoother experience. In the Studio, you can manage the menu structure with drag-and-drop tools, set device visibility, assign custom icons, and group items into folders. The menu is just one part of your navigation strategy — features like widgets, News Pages, and customization allow you to distribute content more effectively while still providing quick access to what matters.

Lesson 1: Welcome!

Welcome to User Management Essentials! If you've ever had to manually update user accounts, lost track of who has access to what, or struggled to target communication due to missing HR data, you're not alone. User management in Staffbase transforms those challenges into opportunities with tools that help you sync user data and assign roles and granular permissions. When you complete this course, you'll be able to add and manage users in the Staffbase Studio, differentiate between the various role types within the platform, and describe the responsibilities associated with each role in managing or accessing content.

Lesson 2: User Provisioning

User provisioning is all about giving the right people access quickly, securely, and at scale. Admins can create, update, or remove users through manual entry, CSV upload, or automated sync. Effective user management starts with clean, reliable HR data, which forms the foundation for creating meaningful user groups and delivering targeted communication. Identifiers act as each user's digital fingerprint, and applying them consistently ensures data integrity; altering identifiers across updates can result in duplicate accounts, lost data, or broken syncs. Manual Individual Updates let you add or disable individual users directly in the Studio without a CSV — fast and easy for small-scale, one-off additions. Manual CSV Import is the primary method for bulk user management, especially useful for organizations using systems like UKG or ADP, offering full control over fields and can be run anytime. Automated Provisioning is a secure, scalable solution for growing organizations, keeping data in sync with HR or identity systems and automatically deactivating users when they leave. CSV Import syncs are scheduled data pulls from systems like Workday, UKG, or ADP pushed to Staffbase on a defined schedule. SCIM 2.0 connects Staffbase to your identity provider (such as Okta, Azure AD, or OneLogin) to automatically sync user data. The User API is the most flexible and customizable method, ideal for advanced use cases with IT or developer support, enabling real-time, programmatic user management. Integrations support direct HR system connections like Workday, Azure AD, and Okta, fully automating user provisioning. SSO uses your company's existing SSO application to create users on the platform, but handles authentication only — full provisioning also requires SCIM 2.0 or another method. Best practices: edit profiles from the user's page to update names, roles, and group memberships; adjust roles as responsibilities evolve; and always deactivate a user before deletion to reduce the risk of data loss.

Lesson 3: User Access and Roles

User roles define both access permissions and functional responsibilities, determining what actions a user can take. System-wide roles grant broad access across the entire platform: the Administrator has full system-wide administration rights, typically assigned to IT or platform owners; the Managing Editor has access to system-wide news channels and posts; the Editor can edit content in existing system-wide channels but cannot create new channels; and the User has access to all content in the app but cannot access the Experience Studio — the default role for new users. Content-specific roles depend on the features installed: the Channel Editor has full editorial control over a single news channel; the Channel Contributor has editing rights to their own content within a channel; the Page Editor has full editing rights for a specific page; the Space Administrator has full management rights within a specific space; and the Group Administrator adds or removes users from assigned user groups, managing people rather than content. Staffbase encourages role-based access control (RBAC) best practices: assign roles thoughtfully, leverage granular permissions, match roles to responsibilities, assign access by area rather than just role, and review roles regularly.

Lesson 4: Congratulations!

User management in Staffbase is the foundation for delivering secure, targeted, and engaging communication. There are two key methods for user provisioning: manual methods like CSV uploads or single-user adds, which are simple and flexible, and automated methods like SCIM, SSO, API, or HR integrations, ideal for scalability and accuracy. Roles and permissions define what users can see and do in the platform, split into system-wide roles and content-specific roles.

Lesson 1: Welcome!

Welcome to Smart Targeting: Deliver the Right Message! Keeping communication relevant for every employee isn't easy — as your organization evolves, so does the diversity of roles, locations, and interests, and when everyone receives the same messages, information quickly becomes overwhelming. This is where content targeting comes in: by using profile fields and groups, you can deliver messages that truly matter to each audience, reducing noise, increasing engagement, and building trust. When you complete this course, you'll be able to identify the different profile fields and group types used for content targeting, differentiate between global content and targeted content, and design a content targeting plan that aligns with your organization's structure, audience needs, and communication objectives.

Lesson 2: Why Content Targeting Matters

Content targeting helps you share information that's timely, relevant, and personalized, improving relevance, engagement, clarity, efficiency, and scalability. It's a core part of the broader approach outlined in the Staffbase Internal Communications Strategy Model, a research-based framework built from insights gathered from over 2,000 companies, outlining four phases: Strategize, Communicate, Engage, and Optimize — targeting supports each phase.

Lesson 3: Profile Fields and Groups

Content targeting is built on Profile Fields and User Groups. Profile Fields are attributes stored in each user's profile that describe who an employee is, such as location, department, role, or employment type — when profile data changes, content access updates automatically. Groups are collections of employees defined in the Studio using Profile Fields and other settings. Manual (Internal) Groups are created manually, great for one-time projects like an "Event Planning Team". Conditional (Dynamic) Groups update automatically based on Profile Fields — for example, all employees with "Location = Berlin" are added to the "Berlin Office" group. Open Groups are groups employees can join or leave themselves, useful for optional content like a "Sports Club" group. Putting this into practice, you can review existing Profile Fields, create a Manual Internal Group and target a page to it, and set up a Conditional Group using a Profile Field such as "Location = Berlin".

Lesson 4: What Can Be Targeted

Almost everything employees interact with in Staffbase can be targeted. Pages and Menu Items can be targeted so only the right audiences see them — for example, HR pages might only be visible to managers. News Channels can deliver updates directly to the audiences who need them most. Widgets and Plugins can be placed exactly where they'll be most relevant for each user. Apps via Launchpad can provide quick access to tools that matter only for specific groups, such as finance software targeted to accountants. The key is not to over-target — good targeting strikes a balance between global and audience-specific content.

Lesson 5: Outlining Your Content Targeting Strategy

Content targeting is most effective when backed by a clear plan. Step 1: Define your User Segments, based on how employees are organized by department, region, or role. Step 2: Define Your Use Cases, deciding what's global, what's local, and what can be optional through open groups. Step 3: Define Your Level of Personalization, tailoring content using data like department, role, or location. Step 4: Use Existing Data from your HR system to support automation. Step 5: Assign Ownership, defining who is responsible for managing and keeping content up to date. Keep some content global (company-wide announcements and compliance policies belong to everyone), target where it adds clarity, think in layers, avoid over-segmentation, and test and refine your setup as your organization evolves. Staffbase recommends reviewing your plan with your Staffbase team or Implementation Consultant before implementing it.

Lesson 6: Congratulations!

Content targeting keeps communication focused and increases impact, powered by profile fields and user groups. Almost everything in Staffbase can be targeted — targeting isn't just for messages, it's a tool for shaping the entire employee experience. Some messages should reach everyone, while others are most effective when targeted — the key is knowing when to share broadly and when to focus. Targeting works best with a plan: map your organization, define audience needs, balance global and targeted content, and test with pilot users.