Nelio Content 3.2 introduces Task Presets

It’s been just a few weeks since our previous release, and we already have a new version available. You can now download Nelio Content 3.2 from WordPress.org and, assuming you’re a subscriber, get Task Presets with it. If you don’t know what they are or why you should be interested in them, keep reading.

Editorial Tasks

Editorial Tasks have been around since the first version of Nelio Content, which we launched back in 2016. They’re basically an easy way to assign tasks to a post’s author and other team members and keep track of their progress, so that no one misses anything important:

When creating new posts, Nelio Content users could easily create and assign new tasks using the task editor. All they had to do was write down the task, assign it to someone, set a deadline, and, boom!, done:

Screenshot of Nelio Content’s task editor modal — Using the task editor, you can easily specify what should be done, who has to do it, and when it’s supposed to be done. You can also assign colors to a task.

The Problem with Plain Tasks

The problem, as reported by many users, is that creating editorial tasks manually, one by one, for each new post, was cumbersome and often extremely repetitive. How our users work follows certain patterns, and so they found themselves creating the same tasks over and over again. That is, every time they added a new post in their editorial queue, they had to manually create all the tasks associated with it – even though these tasks never changed from post to post!

Task Presets

Task Presets aim to solve this issue once and for all: create the tasks you need once and group them in a task preset you can then reuse when creating/editing posts. Pretty simple, huh?

Just install the latest version of our plugin, go to Nelio Content » Settings » Task Presets, and you’ll find the following:

Task Presets interface in Nelio Content settings showing two presets with two tasks each — Task presets let you group a set of tasks that you can then instantiate when creating or editing posts.

The previous screenshot shows a couple of Task Presets, one named Interview and the other one Case Study, with a couple of related tasks each. This way, when creating new blog posts in our editorial calendar, we’re now able to easily attach the tasks associated to that blog post (assuming the blog post we’re creating will be an interview or a case study).

Nelio Content

I’m so happy about Nelio Content that I will sound like a payed advocate… but here’s why you’ll love it: it works as promised, its auto-scheduling feature is top-notch, Nelio’s value for money is unmatched, and the support team feels like your own.

Panozk

WordPress.org

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Creating New Task Presets

Of course, you can have more than two task presets. Just click on Add Task Preset and give it an insightful name. This name will be then important, because it’ll help you quickly identify which presets are relevant for the post you might be creating at that time:

User interface to add a new task in a task preset — You can easily create a new task preset using the “Add Task Preset” and then add as many tasks as you please in it.

Then, you can add as many tasks as you need inside of that preset. There isn’t much to say here, as the task editor inside a task preset is basically identical to the one you’re already used to.

Using Task Presets

When creating new posts in the Editorial Calendar, you now have the option to also create all the associated tasks at once. Just click on View Details » Tasks and you’ll see the following user interface:

Task summary interface in Nelio Content’s modal to quickly edit posts from the editorial calendar — You can view and edit your tasks, as well as load task presets, when creating/editing posts from the editorial calendar.

Then, click on the Load Tasks button to open the Task Preset Loader dialog:

Task preset loader in Nelio Content - a dialog where you can select the preset and instantiate its tasks — Simply select the task preset(s) you’re interested in, and you’ll be able to instantiate its tasks for the current post.

Here you can select one or more presets and automatically load all the corresponding tasks into the post you’re creating (or editing). As you may have noticed, there’s two buttons: Replace Tasks and Merge Tasks. The former will remove any existing tasks currently replaced to the post and replace them with those defined in the selected presets. The latter, on the other hand, will simply merge the existing tasks with the new ones.

Finally, notice that you can also load tasks from your presets in the editor post screen. Just go to the Nelio Content tab in Gutenberg, then expand the Editorial Tasks section, and click on Load Tasks to open the Task Preset Loader we’ve just presented:

User interface in post editor to load tasks from task presets or add new tasks — There’s a new button in the post editor to load tasks from your presets.

Other Improvements

A few more things you should know about this new release:

Requires at least PHP version 7.4
Flags templates as invalid when using incompatible placeholders
Fixes a few issues with editorial tasks, like hiding them from the calendar when the related post is unscheduled
Allows editorial reference editing in Calendar’s post editor

Featured Image by Eden Constantino on Unsplash.

Nelio Content 3.2 – Task Presets