Livingdocs Release March 2025: Media Center, Page Management & Smart Quotes

Media Center

When it comes to the Livingdocs Media Center, we have been focusing on improving its foundation so we can continue to expand on its capabilities moving forward. We have concentrated this development in two areas: image variant storage and delivery; and a clearer approach to image archiving, deletion and revocation.

Based on your valuable feedback, we understood that the workflow for archiving and revoking images needed clarity and improvement. 

Therefore, in this release, we're introducing three distinct image actions. First, you can now permanently preserve important images by storing them in the archive. Second, you can now completely delete images — but only if they've never been published, aren't referenced in any document or inbox and aren't stored in the archive; this lays the groundwork for future automatic deletion workflows. Third, you can revoke an image, which prevents its use and delivery while preserving all associated information — particularly valuable for legal purposes.

Furthermore, we've restructured the image flow in Livingdocs to better handle edited images as well as their originals. The system now stores the original image alongside its variants (such as pixelated versions). Livingdocs ensures that the correct and valid variant is always delivered.

To use the new Media Center features, you'll need to enable them in your configuration. In most cases, data migration will also be required. For the smoothest transition possible, please contact your account manager and we'll work together to find the best way forward.

Page Management: Teasers

With the March 2025 release, working on pages is even smoother thanks to two additions.

The new teaser containers let you define an algorithm or a list as the source for all teasers within this container, thereby allowing the setting up of new pages — or making big changes on existing ones — to take much less time. Selecting specific articles for specific positions within this container is, of course, still possible.

We also introduced a virtual, personal side table for teasers. 
The side table is self-cleaning so it remains visually clear and orderly. It has five slots for teasers you replaced, the ones that are not used at another position will get cleaned up as new ones are stored on the side table. For example, when you replace teaser A with teaser B, teaser A is stored on the side table ready to be placed at another position.

The side table is personal and not shared between different users.
The side table is available on top of every sidebar from which you can drag teasers, the Document Inbox or any dashboard opened in the sidepanel.

Smart Quotes

Typography plays a vital role in newsrooms. Standard keyboards, however, make it difficult to insert proper quotation marks efficiently.

Livingdocs' new Smart Quotes feature helps you use the correct quotation marks by automatically replacing them as you type with the ones configured in your system. The feature eliminates the need to copy and paste text into Livingdocs for quote replacement or to set quotation marks manually through the editing toolbar, though these options remain available.

To use Smart Quotes, they have to be enabled in your configuration. They work in conjunction with your global or locale settings for quote and single quote styles. For more details, please refer to our documentation.

Further improvements in the March 2025 Release include:

1. Design Version Handling

   With this release, Livingdocs has reworked how changes to components and content-types are handled so they can better meet expectations and, ultimately, make change easier by reducing error potential. Now, all documents are always served to your delivery systems in a format which matches the latest version of your content-types and components. And when you edit an existing article or page, you will automatically have the newest adaptions to your components available. To understand all the technical details, please read the Technical Release Notes.

2. Document Inbox: Images and Indicator of New Entries

   In addition to documents, images can now be added, sorted and grouped within the Document Inbox. Images can be added either from the Media Library or directly within the inbox. This allows you to conduct image research independently from writing, thereby allowing you collect suitable images early in the story development process. 
   To make it easier to notice when new documents or images arrive in the inbox while working on a page, we enhanced the counter with an animation effect.

3. Editorial Workflows: Distribution Dates

   There is a Metadata Plugin in Livingdocs called the Estimated Time of Completion. It's used so authors can offer a piece and signal when they anticipate they could be finished with it. Now the Distribution Dates Plugin accommodates takes care of this; it allows for editors to signal a demand for a piece of content for a specific date and time.
   Planning Boards, which present all the content from the perspective of a specific day or week, show both offer and demand.
   We are more than happy to show you what is possible with this increased functionality. Please contact your account manager to explore the details.

4. UI Improvements

   This release brings several UI improvements for clarity and efficiency. When working with push message proposals, the interface now guides you better and prevents accidental proposal deletion. We've also clarified the image component UI, making it obvious where to select an image and access the Media Library. The task cell now displays information consistently throughout the system. Additionally, hovering over the collaboration icon reveals full user names, helping you instantly identify who else is working on the document.

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 March 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!