Editorial workflow and calendar

Summary#

The editorial calendar is where your content plan lives: one row per planned piece, each with a title, a target publish date, an owner and a workflow stage. Read it as a sortable list or as a month grid where every piece sits on its date. It replaces the spreadsheet that nobody updates. It is a planning surface, not a publishing engine, and the difference matters — nothing in it publishes anything.

Purpose#

Content work fails at the seams. An idea is agreed in a call, a draft is written in one place, a review is waiting on someone who does not know it, and the publish date exists only in one person's head. By the time anything is visibly late, it is late.

This screen makes the seams visible. Five stages, one date, one owner per piece, and a month view that shows the real shape of the next few weeks. Two questions it answers immediately: what ships next, and who is holding it.

Requirements#

• A signed-in account. Signed out, the screen reads Please sign in to use the editorial calendar.
• Nothing else. There is no plan requirement, no integration to connect, and no credit cost. Every action on this screen is free on every plan.

Permissions#

Items are stored on the account that created them, and the screen loads the items saved under the account you are signed in as. Editing and deleting are restricted to your own items.

The screen describes itself as shared with your team. In practice each account sees its own pipeline, in the same way as monitored competitors, rank alerts and scheduled reports. If several people plan together, either work from one account or use the export and share options to distribute the plan. See What teammates share.

Navigation Path#

Dashboard → Write & Optimize → Editorial Workflow & Calendar

The five stages#

There are exactly five, in that order, and they cannot be renamed or extended. A piece moves between them because you change its status, not because time passes.

Step-by-Step Guide#

Add a piece#

1. Press Add item. A form opens above the results.
2. Fill in Title. This is the only required field. The example is e.g. Q3 pillar post. Titles are stored up to 300 characters.
3. Pick a Target date. This is the day you plan to publish, and it is what places the piece on the month calendar. You can leave it blank.
4. Choose a Status. New pieces default to Idea.
5. Enter an Owner. Free text, up to 120 characters, so a first name is fine. The field's placeholder is assignee.
6. Add Notes if useful, up to 2,000 characters. The placeholder is optional.
7. Press Save. The form closes and the list reloads with the new piece. Cancel closes the form without saving.

If you press Save with an empty title, nothing is saved and the cursor returns to the Title field.

Move a piece through the workflow#

1. In list view, press Edit on the row. In month view, select the piece's chip on its day.
2. The same form opens, pre-filled.
3. Change the Status, and the date or owner if they have moved too.
4. Press Save.

Switch between list and calendar#

The segmented control next to Add item has two options, List and Month. The switch is instant and does not reload anything.

List shows a Content pipeline table with the columns Title, Date, Status, Owner and Actions. Dated pieces sort first by date, soonest first; undated pieces follow, newest first. A piece with no date shows —.

Month shows the current month as a grid, Sunday to Saturday, with today highlighted. Each day lists up to three pieces; a busier day adds +N more. The header names the month and counts how many pieces are scheduled in it. Prev and Next move a month at a time.

Delete a piece#

Press Delete on the row in list view. The piece is removed immediately.

Export or share the plan#

The buttons above the screen export the current plan: Export PDF, Export Excel, Export CSV, Export JSON, and Share public link, which produces a page a client can open without signing in. See Exporting results and Sharing a result by link.

Reading the summary#

Above the list and the calendar, four figures summarize the pipeline.

The header beside them reads Editorial calendar with <N> items and <N> due in 7 days, and a badge reading Active once there is at least one piece, Empty before that.

With nothing planned yet, the list reads No content items yet. Click "Add item" to plan your first piece.

Screenshots#

Tips#

• Capture ideas without dates. An undated Idea costs nothing, stays out of the calendar and keeps the backlog in one place instead of in a chat thread.
• Put a name in Owner even when the team is two people. An unowned piece in In review is the single most common way work stalls.
• Use Due next 7 days as your standup number. If it is higher than the team can ship, move dates now rather than explaining later.
• Date pieces on the day you intend them to be live, not the day the draft is due. The calendar is a publishing view; internal deadlines belong in Notes.
• Export to CSV before a planning session. Editing in a spreadsheet and re-keying the survivors is faster than dragging twenty items around.

Best Practices#

• Keep one calendar per brand or client account rather than mixing them, and use the Owner field for people, not for brands.
• Move a piece to Published on the day it goes live. The Published count is only a useful measure of throughput if it is honest.
• Review undated ideas monthly. A backlog nobody prunes becomes a backlog nobody reads.
• Write notes as decisions, not as status. "Angle agreed: migration pain, not price" survives a month; "waiting on Sam" does not.

Common Mistakes#

• Expecting Scheduled to publish something. It is a label. Nothing on this screen pushes content anywhere.
• Expecting a teammate to see your pipeline. Each account has its own.
• Pressing Delete to tidy up. There is no confirmation and no undo.
• Typing a date into Notes instead of Target date. Only the date field places a piece on the calendar and feeds the seven-day count.
• Expecting an alert when a date arrives. The calendar does not notify anyone. Nothing in the notifications feed comes from this screen.

Limitations#

• Five fixed stages. No custom stages, no sub-tasks, no dependencies.
• One owner per piece, stored as free text. It is not linked to a Metric Vault account, so it does not assign anything or notify anyone.
• No attachments and no draft body. Notes are limited to 2,000 characters. Write the piece in the content tools and keep the calendar for planning.
• No drag-and-drop on the calendar. Change a date by editing the piece.
• No recurring or repeating items.
• No reminders, no due-date emails and no feed entries.
• The month view shows three pieces per day before collapsing the rest into +N more, which is not expandable in place; switch to list view for a busy day.
• No filtering or search within the list.

Troubleshooting#

FAQs#

Does the editorial calendar cost credits? No. Adding, editing, deleting, viewing and exporting are all free on every plan.

Can it publish to my blog automatically? No. It plans; it does not publish. Blog Studio publishes to a Metric Vault blog, and Publish Integrations pushes drafts to external platforms. Scheduled social posts are the one thing in the product that really does go out on a timer: see Scheduled social posts.

Can I share the calendar with a client? Yes, with Share public link, which produces a page they can open without an account, or by exporting to PDF, Excel, CSV or JSON.

Is there a week view or a board view? No. The two views are list and month.

Can I import my existing plan? Not from this screen. Items are added one at a time.

Will it remind me when something is due? No. Nothing here sends email or appears in the notifications feed. The Due next 7 days figure is the reminder.

What happens to a piece dated in the past? Nothing. It stays where it is, on that day in the calendar, at whatever stage you left it.