OVERVIEW
Our Series Release Schedules feature allows you to easily create up to hundreds of episodes at once to streamline your publishing workflow, or create future inventory for forecasting purposes. With this feature, the system will automatically generate Planned episodes for a series based on one or many customizable release schedules. This simplifies the episode creation process and allows users to easily maintain a posting schedule.
You have the option to create multiple release schedules at a time, and to differentiate between Full, Bonus, or Trailer episodes. For example, you can set up one release schedule for full episodes 2x/week, and another for bonus episodes 1x/month. You can also specify exceptions to the release schedule, or “Off Periods,” for times when you plan to release no episodes. For example, if you know you won’t be publishing episodes during the holidays, or if you have downtime before sports seasons. Including Off Periods helps keep forecasting as accurate as possible.
WALKTHROUGH
The Release Schedules card is found on the Series Details page, below Subscription Links and Advanced Settings. Select “Add Release Schedule” to create a new release schedule.
When creating a new release schedule, you may specify a description. For example, if your series features a special guest episode twice a month, you may choose to call that Bonus episode release schedule “Guest Episodes.” If you do not write a description, it will default to “Per Week” or “Per Month,” depending on the Release Days you choose.
Next, you must select which episode type you’d like this schedule to apply to: Full, Bonus, or Trailer episodes. Then select the Start and End dates for the creation of Planned episodes. If you would like the system to create episodes continually, for example, if you have a daily show, you may leave End Date blank and the system will continue to create episodes up to 15 months from the current date.
Release Days can be selected “Per Week” or “Per Month.” Per week assumes that you release at least one episode per week on specific days of the week. In the example shown below, it will create Planned episodes every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday for every week in the selected date range.
The other option is Release Days “Per Month.” This is useful if you release three or fewer episodes per month. First, you select how many episodes you release on a monthly basis, and then the exact days of the month that you release them. In the next example shown, the system will create Planned episodes on the 10th, 20th, and 30th of the month.
Note: If you select a date that does not exist in that month (e.g. February 29th), then it will use the last date of the month.
Finally, you set the time and time zone for when you plan to release your episode, as well as the way you’d like the titles of your Planned episodes to be formatted. These titles are simply placeholders, and can be changed once the episodes have been created.
There is no limit to the number of release schedules you can add. However, you may not create schedules with overlapping time periods for a single Episode Type.
For example, say you set up a Full episode release schedule for every Tuesday and Thursday with no end date. If you’d like to add a weekly Wednesday episode starting immediately, you can edit your current schedule and check the box for Wednesday.
However, if you only plan to release Wednesday episodes starting three months from now, you’ll first need to set an end-date for your Tuesday/Thursday schedule. You can then create a new release schedule for Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday with separate dates, rather than creating two conflicting concurrent release schedules.
When you’re done setting up your release schedule, press “Create” and then “Process” to process changes and create your Planned episodes. If you don’t “Process” your changes, your release schedule will remain in “Draft” mode and will not generate any episodes. While the schedule is processing, the episodes being created cannot be deleted and their type and release date cannot be changed. A banner at the top of the page will show the status.
Once it’s been processed and the episodes have been created, you can find these newly generated Planned episodes under the Episodes List view. You may then edit these Planned episodes as usual by clicking into their individual Episode Details pages.
Episodes that have been created by a release schedule are linked to that schedule. This means that you can return to an active release schedule and make changes that will apply to all Planned episodes generated by this schedule.
Note: If you make changes to the date range of a release schedule, then linked Planned episodes outside of that date range will automatically be deleted.
There are four changes that will unlink an episode from its release schedule. If you edit an individual episode’s release date, release time, or episode type, it will become unlinked and that episode will not change if you edit the release schedule. Episodes are also unlinked when they are transitioned from “Planned” status. As always, any episode may be edited independently on the Episode Details page.
If you click the Description of a release schedule, it will take you to the Release Schedules Details page, where you can view additional information about that schedule, and make edits as necessary.
Once the end date of your release schedule passes, its status will change to “Concluded.”
If you want a release schedule to stop creating planned episodes at any point, change the End date to the last day you want it to be Active. A warning message will appear to make sure you want to end your release schedule and delete any future planned episodes for this release schedule.
You can also revive a Concluded release schedule to make it “Active” once more by extending it’s end date.
You will find the Off Periods card on this Release Schedules Details page. Off periods are another important part of planning inventory. If there is a period of time within a release schedule when you do not want planned episodes created, then you can create an off period.
Add the Start and End dates for the period of time when you do not plan to release an episode. Additionally, if you delete a linked Planned episode from the Episode List view, that action will automatically create an off period on that day.
All off periods for a release schedule will be visible on the Off Periods card of that release schedule. Deleting an off period will cause any removed episodes to be re-added.