Writing with your team

Anybody who holds a seat on your team can write, schedule and publish posts, file posts in your categories and choose who a post is by. Only the owner and admins can change the blog's settings, import a blog, or see its analytics.

Admin and editor seats come with the Growth plan. On other plans you are the only seat, and this article is about what changes when you add people. See Invite a teammate to your team.

What each seat can do

• Owner and admins: everything, including turning the blog on or off, its Settings, import, categories, guest authors and everyone's profiles, and the Analytics tab.

• Editors: write posts, schedule and publish them (unless approval is switched on, see Review before publish below), Email this post, and edit their own author profile. In Settings every row is greyed, with the reason at the top: Only the owner or an admin can change the blog's settings. There is no Analytics tab and no Import button.

Any seat can make a post members only, or make it public again. Limiting a post to a tier, or taking a tier off, is for the owner and admins.

When you publish or schedule with subscribers on the list, an editor's answer to Email it to your subscribers? holds for that one post. The blog's own setting stays the owner's and the admins'.

If the blog is off, an editor can still write, and can publish too. The post then reads Published, blog off, with a line saying nobody can read it until the owner or an admin turns the blog on.

Bylines

A post with nobody picked is by the owner. Pick who a post is by in its settings, under By. Teammates can set up their own profile in the Authors tab. See Categories, authors and featured posts.

Two people, one post

On every plan, if a teammate saves while you are typing, your editor stops saving, the indicator reads Not saving and a banner asks you to reload. Your edits since the last save are not kept, so copy anything you need first, then reload to pick up their version.

On the Growth plan you see it coming. A post, and its row in the Posts list, shows Marcus Kim is editing, and teammates who have it open appear as faces in the top bar. The first person to open a post holds it. Anyone else who opens it sees a banner naming the holder and a Take over button. Any seat can take over, because this is a soft lock rather than a permission. The person who was taken over keeps their unsaved words on screen and can use Copy your unsaved text before they leave. Closing the editor releases the hold at once, and a crashed tab lapses on its own within about a minute. Publishing a post while someone else is editing asks you first, and what goes live is what they last saved.

Write in the same post at once (Growth)

On the Growth plan, teammates can write in the same post at the same time. Each person's cursor shows their name, and their words appear as they type, so nobody has to take over. Publishing, scheduling and featuring show for everyone in the post straight away.

• Text merges letter by letter. A block that is one piece, such as a set of columns, a callout's words or a caption, keeps whichever change came last if two people edit it at once.

• Restoring a version, discarding changes, or an edit from your assistant replaces the words for everyone, and every open editor reloads.

• An editor whose posts need approval does not join live editing. They get the hold and Take over described above, so their words never go out as a reviewer's.

• If the live connection cannot start, the editor works exactly as described above.

Review before publish (Growth)

The owner or an admin can switch on Editors' posts need approval in the blog's Settings. While it is on, an editor cannot publish or schedule a post, one at a time or in bulk. They submit it for review instead. The owner or an admin then approves it, which publishes or schedules it as usual, or sends it back with a note saying what needs changing. Posts waiting for approval are under the In review filter on the Posts list.

• Turning it on needs the Growth plan. Turning it off works on any plan, and posts already in review can still be approved or sent back after a downgrade.

• Submitting a scheduled post takes it off its schedule. Whoever approves it picks when it goes live.

• If the post changed after the reviewer opened it, approving is refused until they read it again.

• An owner or admin who presses Publish or Schedule on a post in review counts as approving it.

• People are told. When a post is submitted, the owner and every admin are told, but never the person who submitted it. When it is sent back, whoever submitted it is told, with your note. Nobody is told when a reviewer sends back a post they submitted themselves, or when a post is approved. An editor's save or restore that puts a scheduled post back in review counts as submitting it. Each notice is one email with a link, a badge on Blog in your console, and a dot on the review label on the post's row in the Posts list. A notice only counts while it is still true, so it clears once the post is approved, or when you resubmit it.

• Changes to the settings of a post that is already live, such as its link, categories or who it is by, are not held for review.

Assign a post (Growth)

Any seat can give a post an assignee and a due date. The assignee has to hold a seat on your team. Assigned posts show under Assigned to me in the Posts list, and due dates show on the calendar. The person you give a post to is told: they get one email with a link that opens the post in your console, and until they open it a badge shows on Blog and a dot sits beside You on the post's row in the Posts list. Nobody is told when you assign a post to yourself, assign the same person again, change only the due date or clear the assignee. Moving a post on to someone else takes the first person's unseen notice away. Sending a post for review, or back, tells people separately, as described under Review before publish. Clearing an assignee or a due date works on any plan.

Comments on a post (Growth)

Select some words or click a block in the post and press Comment, or comment on the whole post. Words and blocks inside a column can be commented on too, and the comment stays pinned to them if you cut and paste them into another column. Replies, @teammate mentions, editing your own comments, resolving and reopening all work inside a thread. Only your team sees comments: they never appear on the public post, in your RSS feed, in an email made from the post, in search or in version history.

• A mention, or a reply to a thread you started or were mentioned in, shows as a badge on Blog in your console and sends that person one email with a link to the thread.

• You can only mention people who hold a seat on your team.

• Only the person who wrote a comment can edit it, not even the owner or an admin. Use the Edit comment pencil that shows when you point at your own comment. The comment then reads Edited, with the time. Someone you add while editing is told like any new mention, with one email, and nobody is emailed twice about the same comment. Someone you take out keeps what they were already sent, but is no longer listed on the comment.

• If the words a thread points at are deleted, the thread is marked No longer pinned and stays listed.

• Writing, replying, editing and reopening need Growth. Reading, resolving and deleting work on any plan, so threads stay readable after a downgrade.

• A comment is deleted by whoever wrote it, or by the owner or an admin. Deleting the first comment deletes the whole thread, which an editor can only do while nobody has replied.