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.
From the sidebar menu, select a project from the project selection dropdown. Then, in the same menu, click on content. You will be taken to that project's content items page.
Here, you can see all your content items and make changes to their attributes. You can update 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? It's any written content that your team creates. It can be a blog post, a page of a website, a review article, a newsletter, a Facebook post, a tweet, etc.
⚠️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.
Table of Contents
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.
You will be sent to the text editor when you click on a title. You can edit its content if you have the right permissions or 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.
If you hover your mouse over it, you will see detailed information about the item's workflow statuses, including assigned users and due dates.
When you click on it, you will be able to change an item's status, edit its assigned users, or set due dates.
People Column
This column displays the assigned users for a content item's current workflow status.
If you hover your mouse over it, you will see detailed information about the item's workflow statuses, including assigned users and due dates.
You'll notice that some content items have 4 icons under this column. Here's a basic explanation:
- The first, semi-transparent user icon represents one of the the authors or users assigned to the first workflow status.
- The other 3 icons represent the first three assigned users to the current workflow status.
- Sometimes you'll see the add person icon.
- This means no one is assigned to the 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.
Click here for more detailed info about how avatars or user icons are displayed under this column.
Due Date Column
This column displays the due date of a content item's current workflow status if there's any. You can edit it if you have the manage people and deadlines permission by clicking on it.
Template Column
This column displays the content item's current template. Click it to change the item's template. 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.
Action Column
This column holds the action menu and the claim button.
You can assign yourself to an item's current workflow status by clicking the claim button. That is if you have the role that is responsible for the current workflow status.
The action menu will appear when you click on the three-dot menu.
It allows you to do multiple things, 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. If you want to add a description, keywords, and categories, expand the show additional fields link.
💡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 can be a hassle, so we have a feature that lets you bulk-add multiple content items at once.
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 hierarchal structure.
Here's how to correctly bulk-add content items or folders:
- 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 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. But with the help of filtering and sorting options, this will become a breeze.
Click on "filter" to reveal different filtering options. You can filter by assigned people, workflow status, due date range, category, and template. 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 located next to the search bar to collapse all child items and display only the top-level items and 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... and so on.
Exporting Content Items
You can export your content items one by one, a selection of them, or all of them at once.
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 using the checkboxes. After that, an "action bar" will appear at the bottom left of the content item list. From there, 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.