Livingdocs Release January 2025: Print Diff View, Brand Conditions & User Needs

Print Diff View

In the last release we introduced a new dedicated print copy workflow to help you efficiently prepare your print edition within Livingdocs. To top this off, we added an easy-to-use Print Diff View to this workflow.

When changes are made to the online version that could affect your current print version, you can use the Print Diff View to review the changes with clarity and ease. The side-by-side view clearly displays all changes, allowing you to apply any necessary modifications while maintaining consistency with the existing content. You can also choose to completely overwrite your print version with all changes from the online version at any time.

If you are already using the new print copy workflow, the Print Diff View will automatically be incorporated into it with the January 2025 release.

If you have not yet moved your print preparation to Livingdocs and are interested in doing so, please contact your account manager to find the most suitable solution together.

Brand Conditions

To make the curation of pages even more powerful and facilitate more multifaceted page management — especially if you are covering different brands, regions or countries — you can now make use of our new functionality: Brand Conditions.

Components and containers can now be designated to be delivered only for certain brands.

Brand Conditions are especially useful if you present the same homepage or publish the same articles across different yet connected brands but need to have slight modifications according to regional context, brand voice or thematic focus.

Users can also apply Brand Conditions in combination with conditions related to time and date. Applying both time/date and Brand Conditions to components allows for greater possibilities in more complex page management scenarios.

User Needs

Today's audiences consume news for various reasons. While getting breaking news updates is important, many readers also seek broader perspectives, inspiration, and education when consuming the news.

This release introduces a new metadata plugin that lets you categorise articles according to intended user needs. The new Livingdocs metadata plugin follows the Smartocto User Needs model, which categorises eight different user needs based on four central groups: "know," "understand," "feel" and "do".

The User Needs plugin helps you consider your audience and their needs early in the writing process. This categorisation is also valuable for algorithmic page management, either when creating sections focusing on one specific need or when aiming for a balanced mix of stories. By analysing intended user needs alongside performance data, you can better understand what engages readers and when content focusing on one specific need works best.

In order to continue refining this approach, we are very keen to hear your use cases and workflows around the User Needs model. Please feel free to reach out to product-feedback@livingdocs.io. 

Further improvements in the January 2025 Release include:

1. Page Management: References in Base Filters

   When using algorithms to curate teasers on pages or next-reads in articles, filters can now use values from metadata of the containing document. For example, you can use this to automatically display teasers directed to more articles of the same category.

2. System Metadata Plugins consistency

   Some Metadata Plugins serve internal purposes only — e.g. for supporting workflows, planning and internal communication — and are not meant for publication or delivery. We call these "System Metadata Plugins". To maintain consistency, we reclassified several existing plugins as System Metadata Plugins and added new System Metadata Plugin equivalents for boolean, date and numerical values.

3. PEIQ Integration: Image Drag & Drop

   You can now drag and drop your desired images easily from PEIQ into your Livingdocs article. This image will be automatically imported into the Livingdocs Media Library.

4. Auto-Reload Document Preview

   In addition to the existing feature of being able to manually reload the document preview, you can now enable automatic preview reloading in your Livingdocs configuration. This allows you to edit your article and see the changes in the preview simultaneously.

Breaking Changes & Upcoming Deprecations

In order to keep Livingdocs as streamlined and user-friendly as possible, we periodically remove features when we have found better solutions to the problems they solve. We will always give you ample notice so that you have plenty of time to make adaptations to your setup. 

In the January Release, there are some technical breaking changes and deprecations you need to be aware of as a technician working with Livingdocs. No user-facing features are affected. Please read the Technical Release Notes for a comprehensive list of deprecations and changes that may affect your newsroom.

To get more in-depth, technical information about this release, please refer to our documentation site. There, you can also stream the recordings and peruse the slide presentations of our Feature Webinar and Developer Webinar.

We look forward to showing you what’s in store for our next release!