Introducing Shorthand’s refreshed design and a smorgasbord of new features.
From our redesigned and improved dashboard to a suite of useful new features and tools, we’re excited to announce one of the biggest updates in Shorthand’s history.
“Nothing is permanent except change,” said the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus, and the team at Shorthand are on his wavelength. We’re always working to improve Shorthand and are excited to see these updates supercharge your web content and simplify your workflow.
In this article, you’ll find details about:
Explore our new dashboard
You’ll easily filter and find your work in the refreshed, collaborative dashboard.
We’ve swept out and spruced up the dashboard with a new, clean look. We’ve made it easier to filter your stories, collections, and projects, and manage your deleted stories.
The new left-hand sidebar separates your stories from your collections and projects, and is also where you manage your account settings.
We’ve made a few other small but useful tweaks. You’ll find:
- a list view to display your work,
- the search box has moved to the left,
- a top-right button is the new starting point to create a story, and
- you can manage your team with the dropdown menu in the sidebar.
Leave comments for your team members
Simplify your workflow and enjoy seamless collaboration with new commenting capabilities in the editor.
Now you can leave comments for your colleagues in Shorthand. If you’re collaborating on a story, click Add a comment and, in the sidebar, you can ask a question, suggest a change, or shower your colleagues in praise.
Tag your teammates in your comments and they’ll get a notification in their inbox. They can jump into Shorthand and respond or resolve your comment thread.
You can also subscribe to a daily comment roundup that gets delivered to your inbox — helpful if you’re working on multiple stories.
Transform your web pages and PDFs into Shorthand stories
Import pre-existing PDFs and web pages and this feature will automatically convert them into a Shorthand story.
This feature will radically speed up your publishing workflow. Simply import a PDF or paste in a URL from a publicly-accessible website then sit back while it transforms into an immersive, responsive story. Easy!
This feature takes the first time-consuming step out of creating a Shorthand story from your PDF reports or preexisting web content. After your story is generated, you can edit and add any images, text, or other media.
Generate new layouts with AI-powered suggestions
Publish at speed with AI-powered technology that builds bold visual layouts for your content.
If you’ve ever been stymied about how to lay out your story in Shorthand, this feature is for you. Write, copy and paste, or import your text into the Shorthand editor and, with one click, an AI-powered tool will suggest a layout with sections and titles.
Don’t like it? Click again and this tool will create another distinctive layout until you find a look that suits.
Stay on-brand and visually cohesive with our new theme builder
Apply consistent fonts, colours, and logos across all your stories.
Now available on select plans, our new basic theme builder lets you assign fonts, colours, and logos to your own theme for use across all of your Shorthand stories.
Your team will all be working together to the same style guide and your content will look cohesive and engaging as you scale up your publishing.
Build multi-page reports and catalogues with new project templates
Our template library has expanded with a suite of beautiful, new multi-page templates.
Kick-start your content creation and publish at speed with a new selection of stunning project templates. These are specially designed for multi-page content like magazines, catalogues, and guides.
In the projects area of your dashboard, you’ll find new templates for a:
- digital magazine
- product catalogue
- staff handbook
- event guide
- art catalogue
- multi-chapter e-publication
- services brochure
Collaborate with care with password-protected publishing
Password-protected publishing lets you closely control who can see your stories.
You can curate who sees your stories with tiered access and visibility options in Shorthand.
With password protection, collaborators will be sent a unique link and code to access your published content and you can add and remove people at any time.
Simplify your reporting with CSV exports
Streamline your reporting workflow and understand your metrics with analytics downloads.
On select plans you can now download your Shorthand Analytics data as a CSV file. You’ll see:
- how many people have viewed,
- the percentages for mobile or desktop,
- the number of readers that scrolled to the last section of the story, and
- the average time readers had the story open in an active browser tab.
Learn more from our knowledge base article on Shorthand Analytics, or get in touch about adding this feature to your workspace.
Questions? Comments?
We're excited to see the beautiful stories you create with these new features.
If you have questions about how to use the tools in this article, or simply want tips on navigating the new dashboard, the best place to chat with the Shorthand team and other Shorthand users is our Master the Craft community.
You can also get in touch with our team — we're always happy to help!
