Contacting authors within the CMS

Send an email to a fellow user without leaving the CMS.

There may be times when you need to reach out to a fellow author about their content. Maybe you’ve stumbled upon a broken link, or maybe you share similar information and would like to collaborate.

Whatever the reason, it’s easy to contact any author without ever leaving the Mass.gov content management system (CMS) with the “Contact the author” tool.

Step 1: Find the author

There are 2 ways to find the author you need to contact. You’ll either find them on the “New Draft” screen or the Revision Log.

New (or Edit) Draft

When on the New Draft screen (it will be titled Edit Draft if the content has not yet been published), you’ll find information about the original author on the right side of the page. This is the author that created this content, but not necessarily the last one to make edits.

Revision Log

To see who made the most recent revisions to the content, check the Revision Log by clicking the Revisions tab.

Step 2: Open the contact tool

Once you’ve identified the author you’d like to contact, it’s time to send them an email.

From the New Draft screen, choose the Contact the author link next to the username:

From the Revision Log, click the CONTACT THIS AUTHOR button below the username:

Step 3: Draft your message

Once you’ve opened the contact tool, some of the fields will be pre-filled with information pulled from the CMS, including:

  • Your username

  • Your email address

  • The username of the author you’re contacting

  • A generic subject line with reference to the page title and node ID of the page you’re reaching out about

Now you can fill out the message field that will make up the body of your email.

You can choose to send a copy of the email to yourself by checking the Send yourself a copy box below the message field.

Step 4: Send your message

When you’re ready to send your message, select the Send message button:

After sending the message, you’ll be taken to the user profile of the author you just messaged and see a green confirmation banner at the top of the screen:

Help & tips

Receiving an email from a fellow author

Here’s what the email will look like in the other author’s inbox:

If you’re on the receiving end of this email, you can reply to the author by emailing them at the listed email address. If you reply to the original email, the author won’t see your response.

What if there’s no author information available?

If you’d like to get in touch with the author of a specific page but can’t find their contact information in the CMS or if you’ve reached out and haven’t received a response, we’re happy to help.

Please submit a ServiceNow support request and include the URL to the specific page. We’ll reply to your request within 2 business days with the best point of contact that may be able to assist you.

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