It's well-known that maintaining accurate and organized documentation is considered to be one of the best ways to keep things efficient and consistent in your organization.
The Publications app centralizes your processes to make information easily accessible to everyone. It also facilitates collaboration with features allowing you to work asynchronously while keeping your team in the loop!
🚀 Activate the Experimental features mode to test the new Publications app and share your feedback with our team!
What are publications for?
Every organization has contents which need to be documented and be easily accessible to its members. These contents exist to make understanding the way the organization and the different teams work simple and transparent. They can be processes for day-to-day tasks, guidelines to follow, onboarding information and more.
The Publications app centralizes your documentation and allows teams to easily collaborate asynchronously to keep everything (and everyone) updated. Working together on publications and requesting the formal approval of your team for updates becomes simple!
The Publications views
The app offers two sections for easy access and searchability:
My publications
In My Publications you can view and access the publications published in your roles and circles. It makes it easier to search and find the contents that actually relate to you and your team(s). There are two views of My Publications:
Library View
This view is where you can find and access publications that are already published and relevant to you: assigned to your roles and circles.
Edition View
This view is dedicated to edition and update: that's where the member goes to work on publications.It displays all the publications on which you have edition rights as they are assigned to your roles and circles.
📌 Note: Publications can be pinned for quick access, and the views configured with the sort and group bys.
All publications
In All Publications, you can easily find and consult the publications from your entire organization.
📌 Note: Circles can decide to make their publications private directly in their own settings, meaning the publication of these circles won't be visible for non-circle members.
Collaborate on publications
With Publications, you can:
Work together in real time on the same publication.
Invite external members, not part of the circle, to collaborate on a publication.
Comment on a publication and mention members, which will be notified.
Work on a publication with your circle
When a publication is either created or updated, all members of the circle in which the publication exists can join the edition.
To open the edition of an existing publication, access said publication and click on the Edit button. This will open the same version for all circle members to work on.
You can also create a new publication. For that, simply click on the Add publication button in the top right corner.
The collaborative edition is now open for your circle. This means the publication will show in the Edition view for the members of the circle, allowing them to join the publication by simply clicking on it.
📌 Note: You can view the cursor of the members that are working on the publication, in real time!
To invite external members, it's very easy: simply add them to the publication itself by clicking on the Member icon. Even if they're not a member of the circle in which the publication exists, they'll be able to participate in the edition! Read more
Collaborate asynchronously with your circle
To facilitate asynchronous collaboration even more, members working on a publication can comment and mention other members in the publications directly.
To open a comment thread on the publication while the edition is open, click on the Comment icon and on the + Add comment.
If you wish to add a comment relating to content in the publication, you can also do that by highlighting the part in question and clicking on the Comment icon.
To mention a member, simply type @ and select their name in the drop-down list. They will receive an email notification to access the comment on the publication and reply.
Organize your publications
In order to keep your documentation organized, Admins can create and customize publications types in the Administration settings. These types will be available to use by all members, to help clarify the category in which the publication falls in, and improve categorization.
Apply consent to publications
Many organizations work with consent decision-making, so members participate in the decisions, take ownership in contributing to the work and stay in touch with the changes.
When consent decision-making is applied to publications, it allows the circle members to request formal approval for content but also to ask your team's opinion through proposals, either in meeting or asynchronously.
Consent can be applied to publications in the entire organization, at the circle level, but also only for certain publication types.
Work with versions
When working on publications, members actually work on creating a new version of that publication. Every time a publication is published, it means that a new version is created and made visible to the organization and its members.
With collaborative edition, it's crucial to keep track of everything not to lose previous work. That's why publications have their own history of versions. It allows members to consult the changes made over time, know who contributed, and restore a previous version if needed.