Ideas for Arc XP

Allow users to schedule a publication time/date for Collections

For organizations using Collections to curate content, it would be ideal to allow for users to schedule publication of a Collection.

Currently, WebSked allows for automatic publication (upon addition of new content to the Collection) or for manual publication (a user must click "Publish" on the Collection to update the feed and publish the content in the Collection). It would be nice to have a scheduled publication of a Collection "happy medium" option between automatic and manual publication.

A potential use case for this would be when an editor wishes to organize their weekend Collection(s), including published and unpublished (scheduled) content. They can pitch stories, change promo elements as needed, pin top stories, and set the appropriate order, but they don't have to log in over the weekend (or have somebody else log in) to press "Publish". Instead, they could schedule the publication of Collection A for 6am on Saturday morning and the publication of Collection B for noon on Sunday, for example.

  • Guest
  • Mar 13 2020
  • Future consideration
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  • Admin
    Stuart Ridgway commented
    25 Jul, 2023 06:16pm

    Hi Florian,

    Thanks for your input -- really helpful.

    Regarding your question, "if we set the collection on manual mode, we would be able to scheduled multiple times this same collection after the first autopublish ?" I haven't worked out the full solution yet. But it makes sense that you could set a Collection to auto-publish over and over again.

    - Stuart


  • Florian Desloires commented
    5 Jul, 2023 09:41am

    Hi Stuart,

    We agree with previous comments, the best solution for our organisation would be the 3.

    Just to be sure, if we set the collection on manual mode, we would be able to scheduled multiple times this same collection after the first autopublish ?

    Thank you

    Florian Desloires
    Libération

  • Admin
    Stuart Ridgway commented
    26 Jun, 2023 05:34pm

    Thank you, Jean-Philippe. I really appreciate your input!

    - Stuart


  • Jean-Philippe van den Hove commented
    14 Jun, 2023 10:30am

    Hi Stuart,


    Our preferred solution is option 3:


    "The Editor/Manager who configures the Collections also sets Autopublish to either Automatic or Manual and the Collection follows that behavior once the scheduled publish date has passed."


    Many Thanks,


    Jean-Philippe

    IPM Group

  • Admin
    Stuart Ridgway commented
    5 Jun, 2023 01:26pm

    Thank you, Doma. I really appreciate you sharing your perspective!

    - Stuart


  • Doma Bang commented
    5 Jun, 2023 12:54am

    Hi there,


    This feature of scheduling articles to collection is also necessary for my organization. The ability to automatically reflect articles in the future when the person in charge is not working will increase work efficiency.

    I wish the editor could check the desired settings, manual or automatic, and schedule an article.


    Thanks,

    Doma

  • Admin
    Stuart Ridgway commented
    31 May, 2023 02:49pm

    Thank you J.T.!

    - Stuart

  • J. T. commented
    31 May, 2023 08:43am

    Just adding my two cents. If the colection is set on autopublish, scheduling would be a bit confusing as the main point of this mode is that all of the changes are imidiatly pubblished and visible on the parts of the site powered by the collection.

    In my opinion this would make more sense:
    - If you want to do a scheduled publish of the collection you switch to manual mode
    - make the adjustments needed
    - schedule them
    - after schedule happens the collection stays in manual mode
    - If you want auto publish again, you switch the collection mode in settings

    Not sure how the collection would distinguish that the changes you are setting up need to be scheduled while in auto mode.

    A nice to have feature would also be that you would be able to schedule multiple collection variations. That way you would be able to curate multiple article layouts that automatically change douring the holliday period without having to log in.

  • Admin
    Stuart Ridgway commented
    30 May, 2023 07:14pm

    Hi Brian,

    This is exactly what I'm looking for, thank you!

    I'm all ears for other use cases.

    Best,
    Stuart


  • Brian McAlister commented
    30 May, 2023 06:22pm

    Stuart,

    Thanks for getting this on the roadmap!

    once the scheduled time has passed then I think it should revert to the autopublish setting based on the Collections editor's preference, as it exists today.

    So if my collection is autopublish=true, I schedule a publish time of tomorrow morning, and then add articles to my collection and arrange them, that collection will not publish until the scheduled publish time. But an hour after that scheduled publish time I want the collection to behave the way it did prior to me scheduling a publish time, whether that be automatic publish or manual publishn (as indicated in the Collection settings).

    Does that make sense? Is that the direction you're thinking of?


  • Admin
    Stuart Ridgway commented
    30 May, 2023 06:10pm

    Hi all,

    I'm getting this update into the development cycle and have a follow-on question for you: once the scheduled publish date for a Collection has passed how should the Collection behave?

    1. Autopublish always defaults to Automatic so any new content added to the Collections causes the Collection to automatically re-publish.

    2. Autopublish always defaults to Manual (non-automatic) so any new content added to the Collections requires the Collection to be manually re-published.

    3. The Editor/Manager who configures the Collections also sets Autopublish to either Automatic or Manual and the Collection follows that behavior once the scheduled publish date has passed.

    Please let me know which solution makes the best sense for you, and if you can include a use case that would be great! We want to be sure that we create a usable solution that doesn't confuse your teams.

    Thank you,
    Stuart Ridgway
    Sr. Product Manager for WebSked

  • Natalie Mugavero commented
    2 Nov, 2022 01:25pm

    Hello,

    I see these ideas have been merged recently. Wondering if this has gone into planning?

    Thanks,

    Natalie

  • Natalie Mugavero commented
    13 Jul, 2022 03:10pm

    Hi Stuart,

    For updating blocks on a Saturday, the team will order a scheduled story at the top of the Collection list, so when it goes live on Saturday the update applies automatically (at least this is what I think the team does).

    For the holiday period, this differs slightly because a) a lot of the content they want to feature in the homepage blocks is already published and b) there are a lot of stories that would need to be lined up.


    Thanks,

    Natalie

  • Admin
    Stuart Ridgway commented
    11 Jul, 2022 07:14pm

    Thank you for the details on this, Natalie.

    Can you give me a little bit more information? Collections are most often used to populate blocks on a page. If you wanted to a particular Collection to automatically populate blocks on your Home page on Saturday, how would you image you populate those blocks before Saturday?

    I'm curious how you would want to set those blocks up in advance so come Saturday the blocks are populated by the new Collection.

    Thanks!
    Stuart
    Product Manager for WebSked


    I've closed WS-I-223 so it can be tracked here.

  • Natalie Mugavero commented
    23 Mar, 2022 11:17am

    Definitely need this within our business as well! Another use case we have is over the holiday period when our office closes.

    We don't want stale content on our homepage for the two weeks our office is closed, but also don't want members of our team to have to log on during this period.

    I note that similar idea has also been posted on the portal previously:
    https://ideas.arcxp.com/ideas/WS-I-223

    Any idea on timing for this feature?

  • Anais Felt commented
    14 Apr, 2020 06:34pm

    looking into this for near term future!