Workflows

Introduction

Workflows connect all the ContentGems pieces. They pull in new content from Filters and Feed Collections, notify you that there is new content, let you curate it, and then push the curated content to your selected Destinations.

A Workflow helps automate your work process, performing all the configured actions in sequential order. Depending on your needs, Workflows can be very simple, with one or two Actions, or they can get very complex with multiple Workflows interacting with each other and pushing information from many sources to many Destinations—ramping up to meet your content goals.

The Setup Wizard gets you started. There are three parts to the process:

1. Input: Fetch new articles from Filters or other Workflows.
2. Curate: Review and curate the new articles (this is optional and can be skipped for fully automated sharing)
3. Output: Share the articles to one or more Destinations.

The Workflow performs actions related to input, curation, and output of articles. The actions will be performed during each Workflow run, in the given order. The input actions add new articles to the current set and mark them as fresh. The curation actions give you an opportunity to review the found articles. And finally, the output actions will move the remaining fresh actions to one or more Destinations, or to other Workflows.

Input

First, let’s schedule how often the workflow should run. The default is to run daily at 7:00AM in your specified time zone. (You can set your time zone in the Profile option)  You can change the frequency instead to run weekly, only on weekdays, monthly, or even yearly—whatever fits your publishing schedule.

Now, let’s attach our “Coffee” Filter to the Workflow so we can receive articles. In addition to adding existing Filters, you can also create a new Filter, or use an existing Workflow. (Linking Workflows is a great way to draw from one Workflow and serve multiple audiences.) If you choose a new Filter, you will create the name and then after you finish the Setup you can finish your Filter, and then your new Workflow will be done.

Curate

By default, ContentGems will send a preview of all recommended articles to your email. Next you can automate in ContentGems when the Workflow continues. You can choose manually, with a 3 hour delay, or automatically without hold or delay. The default is to put the Workflow on hold until you continue manually to ensure that nothing gets shared without your eyes on it first. The other options come in handy if, for example, the articles are going to an internal audience where it isn’t as necessary that everything gets curated ahead of time.

Output

Finally, you have the option to share curated articles to a Destination, including channels like email, Twitter, Slack, or to a newsletter. We’ll discuss more about this in the next step.

We’ve finished the Setup Wizard, and all of the options are changeable, so you can always return to fine-tune the settings. With our new Workflow, now the fun begins! You will see the results for articles, and you can now curate and edit the results into your set of articles. 

Your Workflows appear in the left navigation column. They are ordered alphabetically, and you can create a new Workflow by clicking the "+New Workflow" button.

In this section you see the name of your Workflow, and the ability to change views. 

In Grid view, you see a preview image, the web domain, when ContentGems found the article, an excerpt of the copy, a select box on the lower-left corner to select the article, and in the lower-right corner options to edit the article, share to your Destinations, block a website, and to archive the article (which means to curate out your article, but does not delete it).

In List view, you get the exact same options as in Grid view. 

Lastly, in the Compact view, you can skim more articles at once, but you receive less information: there is only the headline, a shorter excerpt, and the ability to select articles.

The Top Toolbar

In the top toolbar, you can choose to select all articles, which then you can either archive all articles with the box icon, or to share all articles using the curved arrow icon. 

The default view is to look at your new articles, but you can also swap over to see your archived articles, which are articles that you’ve shared or curated out.

By pressing the magnifying glass icon, you can check for new articles. (You can also change how often ContentGems pulls fresh articles if you need a quicker frequency.)

Finally, you can also add articles manually.

Add Articles Manually

ContentGems will automatically add lots of great articles to your Workflow. However, sometimes, you will find a really good article outside of ContentGems. You can easily add it to a given Workflow by selecting the "+ Add Article" button in the curation space toolbar.

You can then paste the URL into the window, or you can invite anybody to add articles to this Workflow by sharing the provided link to the encrypted URL submission form: they'll be able to add to the Workflow right from the browser.

Let’s go more in-depth into the options with each article in the Workflow. Underneath are icons with additional options that help you curate your content.

• Select box: Use this to select multiple articles, which you can then share or archive
• Edit: Customize the title, featured image, add or remove images, and body of the article
• Share: Share to your Destinations or directly to social media including HootSuite, Buffer, Instapaper, Pocket, or email
• Archive: Move the article to the Archive tab
• Block: Block any and all articles from this site (performing this will update the source settings on the Filter that contributed this article to the Workflow)

Editing articles

Sometimes articles need a bit of touching up. The headline might be awkwardly cut off, or the image could be more relevant. No problem. You can easily edit articles once they are in your Workflow. 

The title, featured image, and excerpt are all changeable, including being able to add or remove images. This ensures that the articles go out fine-tuned for your audience.

Archiving articles

You can either archive as you go along by clicking on the icon on the article, or you can select multiple articles and archive them simultaneously using the toolbar above. This removes them from your bucket as part of your curation. Archiving does not mean deleting, instead it moves to your Archives tab. You can always unarchive articles as well, if you change your mind.

Editing Your Workflow

The right side of the Workflows tab shows your current actions. If you have actions on hold, then you can let the process continue by clicking the “Continue” button, or click the “Cancel” button to stop the actions. As we said from the beginning, your configuration from the Setup Wizard is changeable. Simply click the “Edit” button to adjust them.

Every part of the Workflow is editable. 

Run Actions

Your actions can either run "Manual" (Workflow actions will not run until you trigger them manually) or "Scheduled,” running daily, on business days only, or on a custom schedule that you can set up.

You can also choose what happens to existing fresh articles when a new Workflow run starts. Typically you would archive any existing fresh articles before you add new ones. However, there may be cases where you want to keep them fresh, and just add more fresh ones.

Let’s go through each one in depth.

Start Input

This is where you assign the sources for articles.

Edit Existing Action

Click on the existing Action and a window will open allowing you to

• Change the number of articles to surface
• Choose when to surface articles
  • Articles from the past 24 hours
  • Articles from the last 7 days
  • Articles since the previous actions ran

• Choose the Filter to draw from

• Or, create a new Filter

Create a New “Find” Action using an Existing Filter

Similarly you can add a new “Find” Action and a window will open allowing you to

• Change the number of articles to surface
• Choose when to surface articles
  • Articles from the past 24 hours
  • Articles from the last 7 days
  • Articles since the previous actions ran

• Choose the Filter to draw from
• Or, create a new Filter

Fetching From a Feed Collection

You can also choose to fetch from a Feed Collection without using a Filter. Here, you choose the number of articles you’d like and the Feed Collection. You can also conveniently create a New Feed Collection as well to draw from.

Start Curate

You can change which curation actions should occur. 

You can add and remove the preview of articles to your email, introduce or remove a delay, or hold the process so that it requires manual approval each time. 

Start Output

The Output section is where you can assign or change where you share articles to. 

In addition to a Destination, you can also use the "Copy" option to direct a copy of articles to another Workflow. This helps reduce the amount of work you do if you want to take a pool of curated articles and need to direct them to other audiences.