Create and Maintain Structure and Field Types in Content Workflow

The structure is essentially the building blocks of items and consists of different content input fields such as text fields, asset fields, and selection fields. You can combine different field types depending on the required content type. As a basic example, for a news article, you may need an asset field for the article image, a text field for the article title, and another text field for the main article content. Structures are rigid in that they can't be changed on the fly by authors, allowing for more accurate content creation.

An item can have a custom structure, which is a specific structure that exists only on that item, or it can have a template applied.

A template is a saved structure that can be easily applied to other similar items. Using the example above, you can save the news article structure as a template called News article and use that template across multiple items that are also news articles. This saves time and ensures content requirements are consistent and accurate.

​Tip: Are you planning to migrate your content using one of our CMS integrations? All of our integrations with CMS systems work on template mappings, so we recommend saving all item structures as templates if you plan to migrate your content.

Note: If you plan to migrate content to your CMS using one of our integrations, your items must use Templates. Custom structures will not be recognized when creating field mappings.

Learn how to create and manage templates. 

How to Add Structure to an Item

You can add structure to an item in two ways: from within the item and from the Structure tab in your project.

From within the item

1. Navigate to Content Workflow.
2. Select Create New
3. Add a name for your template. 

There are five different types of fields that you can add to your structure. These allow you to be specific with requirements when gathering content from authors and stakeholders.

Text Field

• Text fields store any text content. You can switch between a rich text field (the default) and a plain text field, depending on whether you want to allow formatting. Name your fields to let your people know what content should be added.
• Use the field instructions below the field to clarify what content you're looking for in a field, for example, a specific tone of voice or several key points to cover.

• Add word and character limits to your rich text fields to better guide your content writers on how much content to write.

Asset Field

• Asset fields are how Content Workflow handles anything other than text. This can be an image, a PDF, or a Word Doc that's going to be attached to a webpage or any file up to 50MB in size.
• You can add a field label to all asset fields to clearly indicate what files you expect to be uploaded, and you can add instructions to the field for extra clarity.

Reminder: Any files or images uploaded to an asset field won't be compressed or edited.

Tip: You can view and download all the assets in a project at once.

Guideline Field

• A guideline field can be used in a structure to add instructions about the content to be added or provide links to key resources or information that your content writers might need, such as Brand Guidelines or links to wireframes.
• These are best used for more general instructions rather than those specific to individual fields.

Checkbox Field

• A checkbox field can be used to collect information about an item. Much like a radio button field (below), they are a set of defined variables that people can select.
• Unlike radio button fields, you can select as many options as possible.
• A good example of this could be if a blog post needs several categories to be selected, specific labels on this item, or a product selection on this page.

• Similar to checkbox fields, radio button fields can be used to collect information about an item.
• Like a checkbox field (above), they are a set of defined variables that the author or stakeholder can select. But unlike checkbox fields, you can only select one of these options.

​Tip: You can also add an "Other" option to select from the list for a less commonly chosen option.

• A component is a group of fields that can be used multiple times across multiple templates. They are useful for commonly repeated structures, like headers and footers, image galleries, and testimonials.
• When editing a template, clicking this will show your component library, where you can simply drag the fields into place. 

You can use tabs to display different related content, for example, if you have content in multiple languages or multiple versions or SEO content for a webpage or blog post.

1. Open the structure editor. This can be done in two ways:
   • From an item, click the structure applied to the item ( 'No template applied' or the template name), and then 'Edit the structure/the template.'
   • By editing the template directly from the Templates tab
2. Click the New tab +.
3. Enter the name of your new tab and press Enter/Return on your keyboard.
4. Add the fields you need to create the new tab's structure.
5. Select Save and Close.