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Work OrganizerAn in-depth guide

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Table of Contents

Power Tips: Attachments

Power Tips: Task Templates

Power Tips: Task Rules

Power Tips: Team Management Dashboard

Power Tips: Kanban Project Dashboard

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No more digging through email threads, desktop folders, and various file versions! Upload and attach

all your images, videos, files, and misc. project assets in ONE place with CoSchedule attachments. Stay

organized, find the right files fast, and keep your projects on track! .

Power Tips: Attachments

Here are a few ways teams use attachments to organize their projects.

Blog Copy: attach/share your blog copy in a WordPress post, Text Editor, Google Doc, or File

(Word Document). The type of attachment will vary based on how you draft your blog content.

Blog Images: attach image and video files you need for your blog post. This could include your

header/hero image, social promotion images and video, and in-line graphics.

Social Campaign: attach a social campaign to promote your new blog post on social media.

Blog Posts

Tons of teams organize their blog posts in CoSchedule. Typically, you need at least three attachments

for each post, including:

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Pro Tip: If you have the same number and type of attachments for a recurring project, assign default

attachments in your project settings. **Available for Growth Plans + Up.

Case Studies/Customer Stories

One project that requires a lot of project attachments is a case study or customer story. You’ve got

research, interviews, social promotion, and other files you need to keep organized. Here’s a quick list

of attachments you might include:

1. Audio Files: attach the audio (or video) recording of your customer interview. This gives the

entire team access to the discussion to help pull quotes for the landing page, download, or social

messages.

2. Interview Transcript: if you prefer to include an interview transcript, attach it in the text editor

or upload the file so it’s accessible for the entire team.

3. Case Study/Customer Story Copy: attach a text editor, Google Doc or file that includes the

drafts and final copy for your landing page/PDF (or preferred medium for customer stories).

4. Social Campaign: attach a social campaign to promote your new customer story once it goes

live.

5. Image Files: include image files required for design. This could include headshots, photos,

graphs, featured stats, or pull quote graphics.

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Podcast

Taking a podcast from idea to iTunes requires a lot of files, including:

1. Audio Files: this includes the podcast recording, intro audio, mid show ads, and wrap up.

These often get edited together into the final audio recording - which you’ll also want to attach

to your project.

2. Image Files: you’ll need a podcast graphic, social promotion graphics, and a variety of other

images required to publish and promote your new episode.

3. Misc. Files: this includes your show notes, episode description, show transcript and other help-

ful files you need before your can publish your podcast. These can be uploaded as a Google Doc,

Text Editor, or file.

4. Social Campaign: Last but not least, you’ll want to promote your podcast once it goes live.

Add a social campaign to share your latest episode with your audience.

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Of course, your podcast process might include fewer (or more) attachments. Add them as you need

them to get your podcast live and into your prospects’ earbuds.

Pro Tip: Not sure what attachments you need for a specific project? Duplicate a past project to copy

all of your attachments to a new project. Update them as you need, and get to work faster!

Linked Projects

The most unique project type in your attachment picker is Linked Projects. Instead of uploading or

attaching content or files, this connects related projects in CoSchedule together.

Linked projects make it easy to jump from one project to the next - without having to search your

calendar.

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Teams are using linked projects in two ways - to link related projects together to form a “mini cam-

paign” and to create personalized project lists.

Related Projects

Sometimes you don’t need to build out a full-scale marketing campaign. Create “mini-campaigns” to

quickly reference related projects.

It works great for working on multi-email announcements.

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So you can find (and update) the projects you’re looking for - when you need them quickly.

Active To-Do Lists

But one of the most unique (and beloved) uses for linked projects is to create weekly, personalized

to-do lists.

At CoSchedule, many team members create a weekly project titled “Active List.”

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Each person uses this “active list” to link together every project she/he is working on that week. So

they can have a clean, quick way to jump from their active projects throughout the week.

Each Monday, our team creates a new active project list to keep things organized and more efficient.

Plus managers can jump into any team member’s active project list to see what each person is work-

ing on that week.

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Have recurring projects? You know the kind - social campaigns, blog posts, landing pages, email cam-

paigns, etc.

Those consistent projects that happen week or week over week. ;)

Instead of manually adding the same to-dos one at a time….why not apply a template (or customize

one yourself)!? Your team will have tasks assigned and be ready to get to work in seconds!

Our default process may be different than yours though.

But, have no fear! These template won’t go to waste.

Edit our existing task templates by deleting, adding, or tweaking the to-dos to make them work for

your team.

Power Tips: Task Templates

Default Templates

To help you get started, CoSchedule has default templates (based on how we manage our own proj-

ects at CoSchedule) for blog posts, social campaigns, email marketing, articles, newsletters, podcasts,

videos, and white papers.

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If you’re new CoSchedule, you’ll receive eight default task templates. Below are three of the eight

you’ll have access to. To get started, walk through each of our default templates and note the updates

you should make to reflect your team’s current workflow for these types of projects.

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Custom Task Templates

Have a rather unique recurring project? Create and add custom task templates for every any project

inside CoSchedule (no matter what type of project it is!). Once created, simply search in the task tem-

plate dropdown, hit apply, and get to work.

Not sure what types of task templates you should add? Here are a few examples from some of our

power users.

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Recurring Events

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Email Newsletter

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Product Launch

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Video

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Twitter Chat Pre-Promotion

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Marketing Report

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Intelligently Assign Due Dates With Relative Scheduling

Automate your workflows by adding relative due dates. Now you can make sure things get done in the

right order at the right time to meet your deadlines.

There are two different options for assigning due dates.

• Assign Due Dates Based On Project Publish Date

• Assign Due Dates Based On Project Start Date

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Think through your current workflows for recurring projects your team works on. Build templates that

match up with your current process, so you can apply and reuse your templates again and again.

Tasks Relative To Publish Date

Some projects require work to be completed prior to the publish. Take blog posts - for example. Your

designer needs 2-3 days to create graphics. And your content editor likes to have a few to review copy

before it goes live.

Add relative due dates to define the timeline your team needs to follow in order for the work to be

completed in time for the publish date.

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Tasks Relative To Start Date

Some projects are triggered by a specific event or start date. For example, you’ve got a post-event

checklist for tasks your team needs to complete after they return from an industry conference. You

need to send the Sales team leads from the booth. You want to send a post-event email. Or maybe

you will share a post-conference recap blog post.

Add relative due dates to signify how many days after the start date tasks should be completed.

Here are a few examples of how teams are using relative due dates. Note that they include time for

editing, image design, and promotion - so everything is ready to go on the publish date.

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Blog Post

Pro Tip: If your team doesn’t work on weekends, be sure to check the “Ignore Weekends” box. This

ensures tasks don’t fall over the weekend (and updates your due dates so you still stay on track).

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Facebook Ads

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Monthly Email Newsletter

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Google Ad Reporting

Pro Tip: If you have tasks that require a client or manager’s approval or review, add in task approvals.

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Save Existing Workflows

If you’ve already added projects with tasks to your calendar, you can save the task list as a template.

Jump into your project, view the task list, and select “Save from Existing…”

And it will save as a template, saving you time when creating future projects.

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Assign the manager, stakeholder, or client who needs to sign off on the task, and they’ll receive notifi-

cations when work is ready for review.

Discussions + Attachments on Tasks

As you collaborate with your team, you can leave comments and attach files on individual tasks inside

CoSchedule.

This keeps your conversations and files hyper-relevant and organized to a specific project.

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So you can only loop in the people that care about that specific part of the project.

Create task templates to transform your team’s current workflow process. Go to your CoSchedule

calendar to get started.

Need a little extra help? Learn how to create custom task templates in our help docs.

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You spend hours managing your team’s projects + progress every week.

Assigning and approving tasks. Messaging coworkers for updates. Updating timelines. Keeping project

statuses up to date.

Your work is exactly the same (every time), yet you still manually manage huge parts of the process.

With task rules, you can automate your entire workflow.

And take the work out of workflow management. Automate your team’s processes, keep projects on

track, and eliminate bottlenecks. Update your task templates to include agile, automated workflows,

so you can save time and focus on the work that matters most.

List below are a list of ways real teams use Task Rules to automate their workflows. To see the full list

of task rules + how to set them up, visit our help doc.

Pro Tip: Task rules are the most powerful when added to task templates. Now rules are automatically

applied every time the template gets applied to a project.

Power Tips: Task Rules

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Assign Tasks

The most popular way to use task rules is to trigger task assignments. This helps managers ensure their

team’s tasks only appear in to-do lists once they’re ready to be executed on.

Trigger: when a task is completed or approved, then the next task is assigned

When your copywriter’s blog post is approved, your designer gets assigned to design it.

Your designer needs required assets, context, and copy before they can work on a project.

Once a task is approved or completed, the design task will get assigned to them. Making sure they

have clear direction before a task is on their to-do list.

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Update Project Status

You have control in CoSchedule to update your project status. And can also create custom statuses

specific to your team’s current workflow.

Now, with Task Rules, you can build in workflow automation into those project status updates.

Trigger: when a project status is changed, complete this task.

When your blog manager changes the project status to “Approved,” your “Review post” task is

completed.

There are various internal teams creating content for your blog.

As your blog manager reviews and finalizes details on every post, he can change the status to “Ap-

proved,” and automatically complete the “Review Post” task in the task template.

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Reschedule Overdue Tasks

Many things come up that impact project timelines. A coworker is out sick. You are waiting on feed-

back from a client. Or stakeholders are taking longer than you anticipated to approve your budget

proposal.

Resulting in overdue tasks.

But with task rules, you can automatically reschedule overdue tasks; giving you more flexibility when

managing your team’s workloads and project timelines.

Trigger: when a task becomes past due, reschedule this project to {new date}

When you want to push back the due date on an overdue task.

Your copywriter had to take an unexpected day off of work - sick kid at home. So her “draft landing

page copy” task is now past due.

But with task rules, CoSchedule automatically pushes the due date back 2 days, so she can focus on

her up-to-date task list when she returns to the office tomorrow.

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Update Project Owner

Your marketing team is made up talented writers, designers, social strategists, content marketers, PR

pros, and SEO specialists.

Each member is responsible for executing different stages of your team’s workflow process.

So assigning a project owner can get complicated, as a typical project goes through many owners

throughout the production process.

Now it’s easy to see who is actively working on every project by changing the project owner as a spe-

cific task is completed. It’s a visual way to trigger the action of “passing the baton” on to the next team

member.

Trigger: when you complete a task, the project owner is changed to {specific user}

When your blog post is staged, the project owner changes to your social strategist - who is now

ready to start drafting social promotion.

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Bonus: when you look at your calendar or Kanban Project Dashboard, you can see exactly who is

working on the project in real-time - without having to jump into the project.

Add task rules to your task templates to intelligently automate your workflow process. Go to your Co-

Schedule calendar to get started.

To see the full list of conditions and actions for tasks, check out our help doc.

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It can feel like a full-time job managing your team’s projects, tasks, and priorities.

Use CoSchedule’s Team Management Dashboard to get a handle on your team’s bandwidth, and

weekly to-dos.

Power Tips: Team Management Dashboard

Review Your Team’s Priorities

Knowing what every person on your team is doing and what their priorities are is challenging - espe-

cially when you’ve got a ton of active projects happening at the same time.

Like many CoSchedule users, your team can use the Team Management Dashboard to see what every

person has on their to-do list for the day, week, and beyond.

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Confirm the tasks on their list are in the right priority order and adjust to new due dates if they aren’t.

Review During Employee Check-Ins + Team Standup Meetings

As a supervisor or marketing manager, you want to make sure your employees have a project list they

can handle every week. Your team wants to be busy and challenged (but not overwhelmed).

Many CoSchedule teams review the Team dashboard during daily standup meetings and one-one

employee check-ins to make sure that expected tasks and timelines are realistic for every person to

complete.

If work is taking longer than expected or a project is behind, you can discuss why and easily move it to

a new “due date.”

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Or if the project has a hard deadline, you can reassign the task or project to a team member that has

the capacity to take it on and keep the project on track.

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Identify Bandwidth To Take On New Work

Marketing teams never have a shortage of work to do. And you’re probably getting new requests for

projects and campaigns often.

Review the dashboard to determine what kind of availability a writer, designer, or other team member

has to contribute to a new project.

This helps you set realistic timelines with your stakeholders to create quality work without feeling

rushed to get it done.

Proactively Plan For Time Off (Or Pivot When “Life” Happens)

You can’t expect your team members to be working 5 days a week, 52 weeks a year.

There are paid holidays, vacation days, and maternity leave that you can proactively plan for.

If you know a team member is planning to be gone a few days (or longer), you can reassign their

scheduled tasks or projects to another team member.

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And inevitably, there will be unexpected absences due to sick leave, daycare closings, weather cancel-

lations, etc. Jump into the dashboard to see what work was on that employee’s list and reassign it or

move deadlines as needed without worry.

Plus - all of the project details, assets, and progress will be in the CoSchedule project, so your team

members can easily pick up where they left off and keep working.

This ensures work moves forward - even when someone is out of the office.

Review Work By Team OR Role

If you have a lot of team members in CoSchedule or want to review work for a specific role on your

team, you can create a Saved Team View to focus in on the work and team members you care about.

If you’re a manager, create a view for your team.

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If you want to see how much capacity your design team has available, create a view for Graphic

Designers

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These saved views can be helpful when determining how much capacity your team has to take on

new work (and complete their current list). This can provide much-needed context for your VP or CEO

to confirm your staffing requests.

You can actually send a Read-Only view of your Team Dashboard to give leadership visibility into your

team’s work.

To learn how to use the Team Management Dashboard and create Saved Views, check out our Help

Doc.

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If you feel like you spend more time managing projects than you do actually completing them, it’s

time to use the Kanban Project Dashboard.

Ready to organize your team’s projects? Here are a few ways real teams use the Kanban Project Dash-

board to manage their projects and get a pulse on their team’s work.

Power Tips: Kanban Project Dashboard

Track Your Team’s Progress

Most teams use the Kanban Project Dashboard to track their team’s progress. With the help of custom

statuses, it’s easy to visualize where all of your work is at in your pipeline.

Review this during team meetings to identify if work is on (or off) track, identify bottlenecks, and deter-

mine if you need to adjust timelines or assignments.

All you need to do is filter your Kanban Project Dashboard by status.

By default, your team will have the following statuses outlined in CoSchedule.

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Or create custom statuses that reflect your team’s actual workflow process. Here are a few custom

statuses that may inspire your own.

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Create statuses that mirror your internal processes, so you can quickly identify what stage of the

workflow any project is at in seconds.

• Write

• Draft

• Design

• Create

• In Progress

• Social Promo

• Staging

Ideas for Custom Statuses

As you’re trying to determine the custom statuses that make the most sense for your team, think

through your current workflow. Here are a few statuses that you could include:

Statuses For The Creation Stage:

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Statuses For The Review Stages:

Statuses For Finished Work:

• Pending Review

• Compliance Review

• Legal Review

• Pending Client Approval

• Ready for Final Review

• At Review

• Needs Approval

• Scheduled

• Completed

• Done

• Live

• Published

You can add as many custom statuses as your team needs. Your custom statuses should be clear,

helpful, and straightforward - not confusing for your team.

Ready to setup your custom statuses? Visit this help doc for the step-by-step process.

Review Work During Stakeholder Meetings

One of the top uses for Project Dashboard is to review projects during stakeholder meetings.

Create a Saved Project View for every client, stakeholder, or internal team.

Pull up the project dashboard during meetings, and review their active projects.

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You can quickly update them on the status of their projects, confirm deadlines, and identify and re-

mind them of required approvals (when needed).

They can quickly review what stage of the process their requests are at without having to contact your

team for updates or schedule unnecessary meetings.

These are just a few ways your team can use the Kanban Project Dashboard to organize your projects.

Customize views and statuses to tailor your dashboard for your team.

For more information on using the Kanban Project Dashboard, visit our help docs.

Share Progress Updates In Real-Time

Once you’ve got these read-only views setup, you can share the read-only links with stakeholders or

clients. This will keep them informed of your team’s progress on their projects in real-time.