Content Items

This feature is available on all plans.
Users with view all content items or manage content items permission can access this page.

The Content Items page can be accessed when you're inside a project. Here, you can see all your content items and make changes to their attributes such as their status, due date, assigned people, and more. Available options and content items you see depend on your role and permission.

What is a content item? A content item can be a blog post, a page of a website, a review article, a newsletter, a Facebook post, a tweet, and more. It can be any text content that you can publish online to bolster your content marketing efforts.

⚠️Important Note: Everything in this help article is presented from the point of view of an admin user. Some options and menu items won't be visible if you're not an admin user. See Complete Guide to Permissions and Roles for more info.

Managing Your Content Items

Your content items are neatly displayed in a table-like structure. Information about them such as their current status, assigned users, due date, and more is visible at a glance.

Title Column

This column displays topic titles as well as folders. We call this "topic title" because this is not necessarily the same as the content item's actual h1 title in the content editor.

When you click on a title, you will be sent to the text editor. There, you can edit its content if you have the right permissions or if you are the assigned user to its current workflow status. Learn more about the text editor here.

Status Column

This column displays a content item's current workflow status. Hover your mouse over it to see how long an item has been in that status. Click on it to change an item's status, edit its assigned users, or set due dates.

People Column

This column displays the assigned user for a content item's current workflow status. Hover your mouse over it to see their name and role. Click the add person icon (which will appear on hover) to edit assigned users.

You'll notice that some content items have 2 icons under this column.

The first, semi-transparent user icon is the writer or the user assigned to the first workflow status. The 2nd icon is the user assigned to the current workflow status.

Sometimes the 2nd icon will be the add person icon. That means no one is assigned to the content item's current workflow status. Any user with a role responsible for that workflow status will be able to claim it. Users who have the manage people and deadlines permission can assign someone to it.

Due Date Column

This column displays the due date of a content item's current workflow status if there's any. You can click it to edit it if you have the manage people and deadlines permission.

Template Column

This column displays the content item's current template. Clicking on it allows you to change it. You can learn more about templates here.

Category Column

This column displays the content item's categories. Click it to change it. If it's empty, hover your mouse over the column and a "+" icon will appear to let you add categories to the content item.

Action Column

This column holds the action menu and the claim button.

Click the claim button to assign yourself to the current workflow status of the content item. Note that this will only appear if you are responsible for the current workflow status.

The action menu will appear when you click on the three-dot menu. It holds multiple options, like assigning people, duplicating the item, exporting it as an HTML or Word document, and more. Its menu items will change depending on your permissions.

Folders

You can create folders to organize your content items. To create one, click the chevron in the add item button. Then in the menu that opens, click Add folder.

Creating Content Items

Click the add item button to create a new content item. Fill out the details in the modal window that appears.

💡The assign people after creating option will only be available to users that have the manage people and deadlines permission.

Bulk Creating Content Items

If you have many content items in mind, creating them one by one will be a pain, so we have a feature that lets you bulk-add multiple content items.

Click the chevron in the add items button. Then click on Add multiple items in the dropdown menu.

In the modal window that will appear, you can add multiple content items and folders and even define their hierarchy structure. Let's take a better look at this feature.

• Every line will represent a content item title or a folder name.
• When adding folders use brackets, for example: [folder name].
• You can use hyphens (-) to nest an item or a folder under another item or folder.

In the image example above, we're creating five items and one folder. Item A, Item B, Item C, and [Folder A] are top-level items. "-Item 1" will appear under [Folder A], and "--Item 2" will appear under "-Item 1". Note that "--Item 2" has two hyphens, signifying its hierarchy depth. If you only put one hyphen before it, it will appear under [Folder A] instead.

You also have the option to import your content item list from a .txt or a .csv file. Remember to follow the formatting discussed above.

If you want to import content items including their attributes such as template, categories, keywords, etc. please use the briefs page. You can learn more about briefs here.

Creating and Organizing Hierarchies

We've demonstrated earlier that you can bulk-create multiple content items and have them arranged in a hierarchy. You can also manually drag & drop your content items to rearrange them in any order and to form a hierarchy.

Click and drag a content item or a folder to other items or folders to make it a child item. When dragging an item or a folder, wait for the target parent to have blue lines above and below it before letting go of your mouse.

💡If you have sorting applied, drag and drop is disabled.

You can select multiple items and folders using the checkboxes and drag and drop them together.

You can also use drag and drop to rearrange the order of your content items and folders.

If you want to remove an item or a folder under its parent, drag and drop it above its parent.

💡Clicking on a folder name will expand or collapse it

Sorting and Filtering Content Items

If you have thousands of content items, it can be hard to find the exact one you're looking for. Thankfully, we have powerful filtering and sorting options, allowing you to easily find the content item you're looking for.

Expand the filter menu by clicking on "filter" to reveal additional filtering options. You can filter by assigned people, workflow status, due date range, and category. You can combine these filters to narrow down the results.

You can sort content items by clicking the two up and down arrow icons next to a column name.

How Does Sorting Work with Hierarchy?

When sorting a hierarchy of content items, you may notice that the results may differ from what you'd expect. This is because the sorting process begins by sorting all top-level items in the hierarchy, followed by the sorting of child items, their child items, and so on.

Here's a pro tip for sorting content items with a complex hierarchy: start by using the "collapse all" button next to the search bar to collapse all child items and display only the top-level items or folders. Then, sort the items as desired. Now everything should be properly sorted. Expand the parent items or folders, and you'll see that their child items are also correctly sorted. If those child items have their own child items, expand them to see that they are also sorted properly.

Exporting Content Items

You can export your content items one by one, a selection of them, or all of them at once. Let's take a look at how this is done.

Export to Word (DOCX)

If you export your content items one by one, you can export them in a Word document (.docx) format. Under the action column, click the action menu and click "export to DOCX".

Export to HTML

You can also export your content items as an HTML document. Under the action column, click the action menu and click "export to HTML".

Exporting Multiple Content Items

To export multiple content items, select the content items you want to export using the checkboxes. After that, click the new "Actions" menu that will appear in the top right corner, then click "Export to HTML". Right now, only HTML format is supported for bulk content item exports.

Export All Content Items

To export all content items, click the chevron in the add items button. Then click "Export all items".

All the current project's content items will be converted to HTML and downloaded as an archive. If you have a lot of content items, the process might take a while so it will be emailed to your registered email address.

And that's everything you need to know about the Content page! If you have further questions not discussed in this help article, or if you have feature requests or found a bug, don't hesitate to contact us at support@easycontent.io.