Content Releases user guide

Content Releases allow teams to organize and schedule updates across multiple documents. Teams can plan, preview, and validate significant changes in advance, ensuring seamless and conflict-free content deployment.

Content Releases provide several key benefits:

• Coordinate Updates: Simultaneously manage and publish updates across multiple pages and channels, ensuring consistency.
• Reduce Manual Effort and Risk: Automate scheduling to minimize manual tracking and prevent errors or conflicting changes.
• Gain Confidence with Previews and Validation: Preview and validate scheduled releases to guarantee readiness before going live

For developer documentation on how to configure, integrate, and interact with Content Releases programmatically, go here:

Content Releases requires that your studio and plugins be up to date. If you're experiencing issues using Content Releases, check with your administrator and direct them to the Studio configuration.

Content Releases introduces the concept of a release. Releases are a way to group multiple document changes together into a single unit that can be previewed, validated, scheduled, and published as one.

The most basic workflow is as follows:

1. Create a release.
2. Add documents to a release to create new document versions.
3. Make changes to documents.
4. Publish the release.

When you're working on a release, the document screen displays details about versions of the document. Document version names correspond to release names. Published and drafts are always enabled, but additional versions are displayed as documents are added to releases.

Select a version name to switch between versions. Right click the names to copy versions between releases, or discard a version.

The releases screen displays any upcoming releases. Bold dates in the calendar indicate releases with date estimates. You can also see the number of changes in each release, and warnings if there are validation errors.

Release layering is the concept of displaying documents based on where a release falls in the release timeline and which perspective is active.

This allows editors to preview document changes across multiple releases. You can see a simplified version of this in how drafts override published documents in Presentation.

In Studio, release layering works on a timeline. The type and time of release indicates where a release falls on the timeline. You already know published and draft, but there are also as soon as possible (ASAP), timed, and undecided.

The layer follows this order, starting at 1 and adding changes.

1. Published
2. Draft
3. As soon as possible (ASAP)
4. Timed (e.g., a set time in the future)
5. Undecided

When viewing a release with an undecided release time, you will see all changes from drafts, ASAP releases, and timed releases stacked atop published documents—plus any changes on the undecided release(s). These views of your content in Studio are the global perspective.

The global perspective is your view into the state of all documents at a point in time. By selecting a release, you're viewing not only its changes, but all changes in prior releases. You can hide individual releases form view, or view just the Published perspective.

You can work directly on a draft and publish it without needing to create a release. You can also work on a draft, then copy it to a release.

One important thing to keep in mind. Publishing a release will not reset a draft. If you created a draft and made changes, then copied it to a release, that draft still exists. There are two ways you can keep these leftover drafts in check:

• If you know you're working on a release, start the draft in the release. This way a draft document is never created.
• After copying a draft to a release, return to the draft document and discard the draft version.

To add new documents and changes to a release, you first need to create a release.

1. Locate the calendar icon in the top right corner of the toolbar.
2. Select the down arrow icon to reveal a list of releases.
3. Select new release to create a new release.
   1. Select an approximate time of release.
   2. Enter a release title (optional).
   3. Enter a description for the release (optional).

You can change these values later by navigating to the release on the Releases screen.

There are two ways to add a document to an existing release.

1. Navigate to the releases screen by selecting the calendar icon in the top right of Studio.
2. Select the release name to navigate to its detail screen.
3. At the bottom of the list of documents, select Add document.
4. Search for and select a document.

1. Ensure you are in a release perspective by pinning a release. You'll know you've pinned a release if the release name is next to the calendar icon in the toolbar.
2. In a document's editor view, select the Add to release button in the top bar. This button and bar should match the color scheme associated with the release perspective.

Once a document is part of a release, you'll be able to edit the release version by ensuring the release is selected at the top of the document.

Removing a document from a release discards any changes unique to that version. This action won't remove the document from other releases.

There are three ways to remove a document from a release.

1. Select the release name to navigate to its details screen.
2. Identify the document you wish to remove and select the "..." icon to reveal additional options.
3. Select Discard version and confirm the selection when prompted.

1. Confirm you are in the perspective for the desired release. You should see the release name next to the calendar icon in the toolbar, as well as the highlighted release name at the top of the document.
2. At the bottom right of the document screen, select the "..." icon.
3. Select Discard version and confirm the selection when prompted.

or

1. On the document header, find the chip with the version you wish to discard.
2. Right click the chip, a context menu will open.
3. Select Discard version and confirm the selection when prompted.

You can copy a document version to a different release from the document view.

1. Navigate to the document you want to copy.
2. Right click the release name you want to copy from.
3. Hover over "Copy version to".
4. In the popover menu, select the destination release.

Sometimes you want a release to unpublish, or remove a live document. This converts a published document back to a draft once the release is published.

1. Add the document to a release.
2. In the bottom right corner of the document screen, select the "..." icon.
3. Select Unpublish when releasing and confirm the selection when prompted.

To discard a document version, follow the steps listed in Remove a document from a release.

To discard changes from the Draft version, select the "..." icon at the bottom right of the document screen and select Discard changes.

After creating a release, you can choose to publish it on-demand or schedule a publish.

1. Navigate to the release screen for the release you want to publish.
2. Select Publish all documents.

To schedule a release, first set a release time and date. You can do this when creating a release, or by selecting the release time label and selecting At time from the release screen. You can adjust this time later if needed.

Next, select Schedule for publishing in the bottom left of the release screen.

Confirm the release time and date, then select Yes, schedule for publishing.

To unschedule a release, select the Unschedule button in the bottom right of the release screen.

Archived releases are releases that were published, but you can also archive unpublished releases to preserve them for future reference.

There are two ways to manually archive a release.

1. Select the "..." icon for the release you want to archive.
2. Select Archive release.

1. In the bottom right, next to the Publish / Schedule button, select the "..." icon.
2. Select Archive release.

You may unarchive an archived, unpublished release. Published releases cannot be unarchived.

There are two ways to manually unarchive a release.

1. Select the "..." icon for the release you want to unarchive.
2. Select Unarchive release.

1. In the bottom right select the "..." icon.
2. Select Unarchive release.

Release order is determined by when the release will be live, with exceptions for ASAP and Undecided.

• ASAP releases come first, in order of creation.
• Dated releases come next, ordered by date.
• Undecided releases come last, ordered by creation.

To change the order of a release, change the date and time associated with it.

Pinning a release sets the global perspective in Studio. This is indicated by the color change in the toolbar, as well as the highlighted release name throughout Studio.

You can only pin one release at a time.

There are three ways to pin a release.

1. In the top toolbar, select the dropdown arrow next to the calendar icon. If a release is currently pinned, the arrow will display next to the pinned release.
2. Select the release name for the release.

1. Locate the release to pin.
2. Select the pin icon to the left of the release name.

1. Navigate to the release that you wish to pin.
2. Select the pin icon on the top left, above the release name

You can view past releases, including unpublished ones, from the Archived tab on the main releases screen.

You can edit the name, estimated release time, or description directly on the release screen.

To change the title or description, select the field and begin typing.

To change the estimated publish time, select the release time label and choose a new time.

When viewing a future release, you can choose to hide earlier releases from the global perspective view. This lets you hide document changes made by specific releases, while still previewing a subset of changes across releases.

1. To hide versions from a specific release, first set your global perspective.
2. In the release dropdown view, select the open eye icon next to any release you wish to hide.
3. To reveal a hidden release, select the closed eye icon.

If your team has enabled Presentation, you can preview a release by pinning it and then selecting the Presentation tool in Studio.

Keep the release layering concept in mind, and use the hide release feature to customize your preview perspective.