Publishing

One piece goes out to every account,
and every account reports back.

Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn are built in, video included, and a whole article can be pushed into the site you already run. Pick the accounts and press send, or pick a moment and walk away: work due is picked up within the minute, retried when it fails, and marked missed rather than fired hours late. Every attempt keeps what was sent and what came back.

Publishing, close up

Several things are moving. The ones with an audience stop at you.

PlanningTo doDoingTestingProduction

What goes out

Runs through

Where it lands

What is travelling those lines

  • A post goes out nowthe same path a scheduled one takes, run immediately
  • A post waits for its momentread when it fires, not when you set it
  • An agent gets next week readywords, pictures and accounts wired, and a person still opens the gate
  • An article reaches your own siteand the identifier it returns is kept for next time
  • A picture is signed on the way outa short-lived address, minted at the moment of sending
  • A send fails and tries againa longer wait each time, then it stays visible as failed

This is the same map as the one on the front of Solutions, zoomed into one surface. Sending now and sending on Tuesday take the same path through the same queue, which is why a scheduled post behaves exactly like one you sat and watched.

What it does

Sending is the easy half. What happens around it is the part worth paying for.

Checked before you press anything

Each network's real caption length, media count and accepted formats live in one list that the composer, the send path and the graphics generator all read. So the warning you see while writing is the same rule that will be enforced on the way out, and a caption that is fine on one account and too long on another is flagged on the one it breaks.

Read at the moment of sending

Nothing is frozen when you schedule. What is held is an instruction to send this piece to this account at this time, and the words and the pictures are resolved when it fires. Fix a typo an hour beforehand and the corrected version is what the world sees.

The same path, now or next Tuesday

Pressing send and setting a time run through one execution path. There is no second, thinner route for unattended work, which is why a scheduled send behaves exactly like one you watched go out.

Retries, and a missed slot that stays missed

A failed send is tried again with a longer wait each time, then stops and stays visible as failed with the reason on the piece. A send whose moment passed while nothing was listening is marked missed instead of firing late, so a post meant for Friday morning does not surprise you on Saturday night.

One instruction per destination

Three accounts is three separate sends. One failing leaves the other two untouched, and can be retried on its own without re-sending the ones that already worked.

Never the same post twice

An account that already carries this post is skipped rather than posted to twice. Sending again is a deliberate second action, and where the network allows it the studio edits the existing post; where it does not, it tells you a new one will be created before you agree to it.

Your files never sit open on the internet

A network cannot fetch something that needs a login, so at the moment of sending the server mints a short-lived signed address for each file and hands that over. Nothing in your library has to be made permanently public for a post to work.

An account we do not post to is still worth having here

Register a network the studio does not post to and it says so plainly, down to telling you not to spend anything on access it cannot use yet. The post is still written, dated, filed and tracked with everything else. You send that one yourself, and it stops living in a spreadsheet.

Destination by destination

Every network takes something different, and gives back less than you think.

A publishing page that says "post everywhere" is hiding this table. Here it is instead: what each destination will actually accept, what happens when you send the same thing again, and what it hands back afterwards. Where the answer is nothing, it says nothing.

Destination What it will take Sending it again What comes back
FacebookBuilt inA caption of practically any length. Text on its own, one photo, a set of them in a single post, or a video. If the brand has a website on its record, a text post carries a link back to the piece there.Edited in place. The post keeps its identity and its comments, and the button says Update rather than pretending.The post identifier and the time, plus reactions, comments and shares when you ask for them. Reading those counts needs one more permission on the connection than posting does, and you are told that in plain words instead of being shown a zero.
InstagramBuilt inA caption, and it will not go without a picture or a video. One image, or a carousel of them. A video goes out as a reel, which is the surface a single video has here. Pictures are converted on the way out to the format, size and shape this network accepts, so an oversized image posts instead of failing.A new post. This network has no way to edit one, the button says re-publish, and the original is left exactly as it was.The post identifier and the time, plus likes and comments. No share count, because none is offered.
LinkedInBuilt inA caption up to its own limit, posting as a company page or as a person. A single image, several in one post, or a video.The wording is edited in place.The post identifier and the time. Nothing else: no counts are read from this network, and the page will not claim otherwise.
Your own siteBuilt inThe whole article. The body is converted, the cover image is uploaded into your site's own library, and the search and share fields are filled on the far side. Live and staging are separate destinations with separate credentials.The identifier your site handed back is kept, so the second push updates that item rather than creating a twin. Translations of the same piece attach as versions of one item rather than as unrelated pages.The identifier of the item on your site, and whether the last attempt worked.
X, TikTok, YouTube, WhatsAppYou post itNothing to send. Register the account and the post is written, filed, dated and tracked here with everything else.Yours to make.What you record. The studio says outright that it does not post there for you, and tells you not to spend anything on access it cannot use yet.

Captions and pictures are set once, on the piece. The same caption and the same gallery go to every account you picked, resized where a network insists on it.

One attempt, start to finish

What happens between pressing send and knowing it worked.

This is the whole path, in order, for one destination. It is identical whether you pressed the button just now or picked the moment last Thursday, because both run through the same queue.

  1. 1

    Ready, or nothing moves

    Every account you picked is checked before a single one is sent: a connection that works, a brand that is not paused, and a network the studio actually posts to. If one of them fails that check, the whole send is refused rather than half of it going out.

  2. 2

    A real call before your post

    The first send of the day on a connection makes a small real call to the network and records what it found. A credential that died overnight is caught by that call rather than by your post.

  3. 3

    Save first

    If the piece has unsaved edits, the flow stops and asks, so what goes live matches what is on the screen.

  4. 4

    One instruction per destination

    Three accounts become three separate units of work, each with its own state and its own attempts. They were never one operation, which is why one failing leaves the rest alone.

  5. 5

    The words and the pictures, now

    The caption is built from the piece as it currently stands, and each file is given a short-lived signed address so the network can fetch it without the file being left open.

  6. 6

    The network's own limits

    Caption length, how many items, whether this network will take a post with no picture at all. Checked against the same list the composer showed you, so the two can never disagree.

  7. 7

    Already there?

    An account that already carries this post is skipped rather than posted to twice. Sending to it again is a deliberate second action, and the button tells you whether that means an edit or a new post.

  8. 8

    What came back is written down

    The identifier goes onto the piece against that account with the time. What was sent and what returned are both kept, on success and on failure, readable on the piece and across the workspace.

  9. 9

    If it failed

    Tried again after a growing wait, a small number of times, then left alone and visible as failed with the reason on the piece. Nothing is sent to you about it. You find out by opening the piece, and you can retry it or cancel it there.

Where this sits

Publishing is the last step of something that started somewhere else.

None of this is a separate copy of your post. It is what a piece does at the end, using the accounts, the files and the clock the rest of the workspace already holds.

Content

The piece is the thing that goes out. Publishing is a property of it rather than a workflow beside it, which is why every outcome lands back on the same record.

Read Content

Digital assets

The cover and the gallery are real files from your own library, referenced rather than copied, and signed for a short window at the moment of sending.

Schedules

The queue that drains every minute is the same runner that does the rest of the workspace's background work, and it is switched on in every workspace from the first day.

Your agent

An agent prepares everything: the words, the pictures, the accounts, the dates. It has no way to send, so releasing anything stays with a person.

Read Your agent

Yours to keep

Publishing is where being careful matters more than being clever.

Every one of these we would choose again.

The accounts are yours

Posts go out from pages and profiles you connected, per brand, on credentials held for that brand alone. Nothing is published from an account of ours.

Nothing goes out on a status

Marking a piece done publishes nothing. No rule sits watching your board for a state to change. Something reaches an audience because a person sent it, or because a person picked a time.

A person is the last step

Sending is its own permission, separate from writing. An agent can prepare a whole week and still cannot release any of it, because that step has no tool for it to call.

Pause means paused

Switch a brand off and it publishes nothing, while its work stays open and editable. Pausing is not archiving, and it is not a permission change.

What was sent is written down

Every attempt keeps what went out and what came back, failures included. An argument about what was actually posted is settled by a record rather than by a memory.

We publish into what you already run

Your own site stays your own site. The studio pushes into it and keeps the identifier it returns, so you are never asked to move anything here to make publishing work.

Questions

Questions people ask before they trust anything to send on their behalf.

Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn, natively, video included, plus a push into the site you already run. You can also register an account on a network the studio does not post to, and it will tell you so up front rather than letting you find out at the worst possible moment: the post is still planned, dated and tracked here, and you send that one yourself. What gets added next is decided by where people are actually publishing.

Keep reading

The surfaces on either side of this one.

Content

The piece itself, and everything that goes into making one.

News

Where a good deal of what you publish starts its life.

Artifacts

The brief and the open questions that travel with a draft.

Your agent

Exactly what an agent may do here, and the one thing it may not.

Start free. Bring your own agent.

Open the workspace, do one real piece of work in it, and the joins will show you the rest.