Getting Started with EasyContent

Thank you for joining EasyContent! We hope it's the beginning of our long journey together and that this article will help you learn how to use our platform to its full potential. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact us via support@easycontent.io.

Your Account Structure

There are two main navigational menus in your account. The first one is the account menu (#1). This is visible anywhere within EasyContent when you're logged in.

🎯 Business plan users can add a custom logo and customize the background color of the top menu.

The next one is the sidebar menu (#2), also known as the project menu. It changes based on the project you've selected.

There is also a dropdown menu (#3) that allows you to edit your profile and account settings, along with other things. You can access it by clicking your avatar (the colored circle with your initials) at the top right corner of any page.

The exact set of menu items that will appear changes depending on your role and permissions.

Account Menu

• Projects - sends you to the page where all projects you can access are displayed.
• Team - contains the following submenu items:
  • Users - invite and manage your team members here.
  • Roles - create and manage roles and permissions here.
  • Teams - create and manage teams here. Teams are only for organizational purposes and don't affect a user's role and permissions.
• Calendar - view your editorial calendar, update deadlines, assign users, create new content items, or create events.
• Integrations - generate and manage API keys for use in our Figma Plugin, WordPress plugin, Zapier Integration, or for your custom web app. You can also add and manage webhook endpoints here.
• Reports - contains the following submenu items:
  
  • Content Report - a chart of your project's progress over a period of time.
  • Communication - view all messages and comments from all users on the account.
• Content Migration - allows you to migrate your existing content from another platform to EasyContent via CSV.
• Mailbox (the envelope icon to the far right of the menu) - access your EasyContent mailbox. Communicate with other project members by sending and receiving messages. You'll also receive message copies in your registered email.
• Help (the question mark icon next to your avatar) - access EasyContent's documentation page (this page). If you are inside a project, you can create or view your custom documentation for that project.

Sidebar Menu

If a project is selected in the project dropdown, the sidebar menu will be populated with items. The exact set that appears will vary depending on your permissions.

• All Projects - sends you to the page where all projects you have access to are displayed.
• Project dropdown - lets you select what project you want to work on. If a project is selected here, more menu items will appear in the sidebar menu.
• Dashboard - gives you a summary of the active project's activity.
• Content - displays all the content items in the project and, depending on your permissions, allows you to edit, view, or manage them.
  • If you are currently editing a content item, this will also display a list of all content items in the current project, allowing you to seamlessly switch between them.
• Briefs - a page of "to do" items, upcoming tasks, or ideas that can be turned into content items. A brief becomes a content item when it's assigned to or claimed by a user. Users responsible for the first workflow stage can claim a brief.
• Files - manage all of the active project's files.
• Workflow - set up and manage the active project's workflow statuses.
• Templates - create and manage templates that you can use on the content items in the active project.
• Categories - create and manage categories for the active project. Use them to organize your briefs and content items.

Creating Roles and Permissions

In this section, you'll learn how to create roles and permissions. In the account menu, go to Team > Roles.

The following default roles are available to your account:

• Writer (writes the content)
• Editor (reviews and approves content)
• Admin (has full access to the account)

There are also content manager (who oversees content creation and can publish content items to external websites) and subject matter expert (mainly responsible for fact-checking, a must-have role in legal, medical, or other highly complex niches) roles. Those are for larger teams and are disabled by default, indicated by the lock icon, but you can activate them anytime.

Click "Add new role" to create a new role. Give it a name and a description and save it. You can now assign this role to a team member. But that team member won't be able to do anything because this fresh role won't have any permissions.

🎯 If you are on a business plan, you can create an unlimited number of roles.

Scrolling down the page will bring you to the permissions section. Assign permissions to your new role so users with that role can do what they need to do.

Permissions are grouped by the application area they apply to. For example, you might want to grant all account-related permissions to the admin role, allow your content managers to manage everything on the project level, and provide your editors with access to briefs and content items inside a project.

Permissions define what users will see on their screens. For example, the "calendar" item in the account menu will only appear if the user has the "view publishing calendar" permission.

Inviting Users

After you've defined and customized your roles, invite your team to your account by clicking the "invite" button on the "users" page (accessed from the account menu via Team > Users).

When inviting new users, you must assign them a role. By default, the role is set to admin, so be sure to change this accordingly. You can also immediately assign them to projects if you want.

After the invitations are sent, the invited users will receive emails with links to join your account.

You can copy their invite link by going to the Users page and then to the pending invite tab. This way you can manually send it to your invited users, if, for some reason, they didn't receive an email.

Creating Teams

Teams help you organize your users. To access it, go to Team > Teams in the account menu. You can also click the "Teams" button next to the "Invite" button on the Users page.

Your First Project

In this section, we'll guide you to creating your first project in EasyContent. Go to Projects in the account menu if you want to follow along.

Assigning Users

We will start by creating a new project and assigning users to it. Click the "Create a new project" button.

When creating a new project, you will be asked to assign users to it. You can always do it later, but it's a good idea to assign users to the projects they will work on immediately. Otherwise, even though they might be able to view and edit projects if they have the "manage projects" permission, they won't be able to participate in the approval workflow inside this project.

Once you've created your new project and optionally assigned users to it, you will be redirected to its Content page and it will ask you to create a content item, click cancel for now. This page is where your articles, blog posts, newsletters, social media posts, etc.—a.k.a. content items that you'll be working on will live.

Setting Up Workflow

Proceed to the workflow settings page by clicking Workflow on the sidebar menu. If you can't find or see it, make sure a project is selected in the project dropdown.

Every project will have a default set of workflow statuses which consists of the following: Draft > Editorial review > Approved for publishing > Completed.

You may also want to add statuses like "Client Review" or "Expert Review", depending on the purpose and type of content you put out, or just add any status you want.

After adding workflow statuses, you can rearrange them in the correct order by dragging and dropping them into place using the handles next to their names.

Next, assign responsible roles under the "reviewing roles" column. When a content item reaches a workflow status, any user with a reviewing role for that status will be able to claim it if no one is currently assigned to it.

⚠️ If you don't assign a reviewing role to a workflow status, no one will be able to claim or can be assigned to content items that are in that status!

You can also add a default assignee to a workflow status. These users will automatically be assigned to newly created content items.

Next, you may want to configure ratings for each of the intermediate workflow statuses. By default, we have the following ratings enabled for the "Editorial Review" status:

When responsible users for the workflow status defined in the rating approve or submit the content item, they will be asked to leave star ratings.

You can choose to delete these ratings if you don't need them. However, we have found that providing actual ratings to writers provides valuable feedback, ensures better quality control, and increases transparency for project administrators.

Configuring Templates

The final step of setting up your project is configuring content item templates. To follow along, from the sidebar menu, go to Templates.

Create a new template by clicking on the "Create template" card. If you can't create a new template, you can delete one of the preset templates that you think you won't be using.

ℹ️ You can always create a new project to "recover" the preset templates as they are always present in newly created projects.

Give the new template any name and you can leave the template description blank.

Once you've created it, you'll be redirected to its settings page. Here you'll see two tabs: Main Content and CMS Fields.

Main Content Tab

The main content tab has three default fields: title, main content, and files. You can rearrange them in any order as you see fit. Notice that they have a system field identifier. These are special fields that are tied to our CMS and API integrations.

You can add default text in the main content field by clicking "add/edit default content". You can use it to add written outlines or instructions for your writers. Note that the default text will only show up in content items and briefs claimed or assigned for the first time.

The visible checkbox allows you to hide a system field if you don't need it. The required checkbox allows you to prevent the content item from being submitted or approved if the corresponding field is empty.

CMS Fields Tab

The CMS Fields tab is hidden by default. Click the three-dot menu and click "show" to unhide it.

It comes with multiple default fields, and most of them are used for SEO and can be synced to WordPress (more on that later). Notice how all of them are also marked as system fields.

Creating a Custom Tab

We give complete freedom when it comes to customizing your templates. You can add new tabs, new fields, etc.

Click the "new tab" button to create a custom tab. Give it a name and click the green check button to save it. There's no limit to the number of custom tabs you can create.

Your new tab will be empty, so you'll have to fill it with custom fields. Currently, the following are available for you to use:

1. Single line text
2. Paragraph text
3. File/image upload
4. Checkboxes
5. Radio buttons
6. Date
7. Dropdown select
8. Heading
9. Guidelines

You can also add custom fields to the default tabs alongside system fields. However, you currently can't add system fields to custom tabs.

Template fields can be reordered by dragging and dropping, as shown below. The order in which they appear here determines the order in which they appear in the Content Editor.

If you want more custom fields or perhaps additional features or flexibility in the template editor, please let us know at support@easycontent.io or click the "Report an issue or request a feature" link in the sidebar menu's footer. We'd love to hear your suggestions!

Adding Briefs to Your Project

Congratulations! The basic configuration is over and you can now start creating with EasyContent.

Start by creating a brief for your writers. Click "Briefs" on the sidebar menu, then click the "Add your first brief" button on the page.

When adding a brief, fill in its title. This name will be used everywhere in the project, so make it descriptive. It can be the proposed title of a content item, its purpose, or simply a task name.

Some good examples of a brief title would be:

• "About Us" page
• Best content marketing tools
• Why does my cat hate me?
• Write a blog post about cats

More detailed instructions for the brief can be provided in the "Description" field. If you need your writer to use specific keywords, include them in the "Keywords" field separated by commas.

When the brief is created, it can manually be assigned to a writer. A writer can also "assign" it to themselves by clicking the "claim" button on the brief page. Note that if you define default assignees on the workflow settings page, those users will also be automatically assigned to this brief when it's claimed by or assigned to a user.

If you cannot assign a user to a brief or a content item, make sure that:

1. The user is assigned to the project where the brief or content item is created.
2. The user's role is responsible for the first workflow status of that project.

Working with Content Items

After the brief is assigned or claimed, it becomes a content item and is transferred to the Content page. You can access this page through the sidebar menu > content, as shown below.

Editing a Content Item

🎯 Some of the elements described below may not be visible to a user depending on their permissions and the template's configuration.

Depending on the template you're using, you will see different things on the screen when editing a content item.

By default, the content item will probably have a "Main Content" tab.

ℹ️ You can easily customize the template by clicking the "customize template" link. This will take you to the template editor for the item's current template.

The Main Content tab is where most of the work will take place. This tab, by default, contains three fields: title, content, and files. Keep in mind that this tab might be named differently and that there may be more or fewer fields present.

The title field should contain the article's h1 title.

The content field is where your content's body or text and images will live. Below is what it looks like when you've added text and images to it.

The files field contains the files you attached to the content item. To add images to the text, you first need to attach them here. Click the add files card to access the current project's files library and look for files you want to attach to the content item.

You can also upload files from your computer to the content item if you can't find a suitable asset from the files library. Please remember that any files you upload to a content item will be added to that project's files library and will become accessible to anyone who can access it.

Learn more about the files library here.

If the CMS Fields tab is activated, you will also see it on the edit content item page.

This CMS Fields tab is hidden by default. To unhide it, click the "customize template" link. Note that this link will only appear if you have the proper permissions.

Once you're on the template page, select the "CMS Fields" tab and click the three-dot menu then click "show" to activate it.

The CMS Fields tab will have the following fields by default:

• Featured image
• Excerpt
• Tags
• Custom post slug
• Meta title
• Meta description

If you've set up WordPress integration, then most of the CMS Fields tab can be automatically synced along with the content item's main text when you publish it to your WordPress site. Learn more about our WordPress integration here.

Just under the tab names, you will see the Actions section. It contains buttons that let you submit or approve the content item, send it back for rework, save version, or publish it to WordPress if the integration is set up. You can also export it as HTML or DOCX or generate a shareable link that you can share with anyone (similar to Google Docs).

Keep in mind that the buttons that appear here will vary greatly depending on the content item's current status and the viewing user's role and permissions.

Sidebar

Next, we'll quickly check on the sidebar and its widgets. These can help you work with the content item more efficiently.

The sidebar is divided into three tabs: Controls, Comments, and Versions.

Sidebar: Controls

Under the control tab, the widgets that appear will depend on your permissions and current activity in the content item, but at most you will see the following:

Messages. Displays all correspondence related to the content item you are viewing. If your role doesn't have the "view communication report" permission, you will see only the messages you've sent or received.

Workflow widget. This displays all workflow-related information. It allows you to approve or reject the content item, change its status, or manage its assigned people if you have the "manage content items" and "manage people and deadlines" permissions.

Item details. Displays the content item's description, keywords, notes, and categories. You can edit this by clicking "edit" at the bottom of the widget.

Sidebar: Comments

The comments tab displays all comments left on a content item. You can add new ones, reply to existing ones, mark them as resolved, view resolved comments, etc.

Sidebar: Versions

The versions tab will display all saved versions of the content item. You can learn more about versions here.

Integrating Your Project with WordPress

You can publish your content items directly to a WordPress site with just a click of a button. You can also pull content from the website into your project. This will allow you to edit and update your WordPress articles within EasyContent without switching back and forth.

To set it up, install our WordPress plugin and generate your API keys on the "Integrations" page (you can access it via account menu > integrations).

Our WordPress plugin works with both the classic text editor and the new Gutenberg text editor.

Creating Documentation for Your Project

If your project requires additional documentation, such as style guidelines for your writers and editors, directions for other approvers, or any other helpful information, you can create it with EasyContent.

When a project is selected in the project dropdown in the sidebar menu, click the "Help" icon on the account menu.

On the page, click the "Add new category" button. A new block will appear, asking you to give it a name. Enter the category name (e.g., Style guidelines) and save it by clicking the save icon.

Once the category block is created, click the pencil icon, and the "Add help article" link will appear. Click it and you will be redirected to a page where you can write your new help article.

When you have more than one category, you can drag & drop to reorder them on the page.

Further Steps

Congratulations! If you've made it this far, you should now be familiar with EasyContent and ready to get started. Feel free to reach us at support@easycontent.io with any questions or feedback.

Happy collaboration!