Summary
With Planhat, you have access to a wide range of data (structured as "content"), but with a fully personalized, streamlined Home for each Planhat user
In Content Explorer, you can view the Pages and Sections within your Planhat tenant, and choose which of them to add to your Home
This is flexible and you can always make changes later
"Verified content" is organized into Libraries by your Planhat admin(s)
You can also view and add content (templates) created by Planhat
Each Planhat user therefore doesn't need to create everything from scratch, and doesn't have their Home swamped with lots of content that isn't relevant to them
Who is this article for?
All Planhat users
Article contents
Technical details
Introduction
Data is vital for understanding your customers and prospects, but in many businesses - before Planhat - there can be various related issues:
Data is spread across various different tools (different software), making it really hard to find any specific detail, and wasting your time as you switch between apps
Data is siloed into departments and access is restricted - e.g. only the Support team can see customer tickets
Even if data is compiled together in one place, it's really hard to make sense of it - e.g. it's difficult to identify what's your organization's "official" content rather than just one teammate's point of view, or to find the information relevant to you personally, or to find the opportunities/risks within a sea of all your customer data
Fortunately, upgraded Planhat (ws.planhat.com) solves all of these potential problems:
It's your "single source of truth", housing all your different types of data
Everyone within your business can access the data that's relevant to them
It's easy for you to organize and visualize that data ...
... and to customize the UI for different Planhat users, making it highly personalized for each person
Content Explorer is an important feature within Planhat that helps you democratize data in this way. It's a place for all Planhat users to view existing Pages and Sections, automatically categorized so you can see verified content, content shared with you, content created by you, and so on. You can use this content to customize your Home. We'll go into this in further detail within this article.
🚀 Tip
For definitions and an overview of Pages, Sections and Libraries, check out our separate article here.
Principles of content in Planhat
When it comes to creating content, you don't want everyone within your organization to have to make their own Pages and Sections from scratch, wasting time "reinventing the wheel", with junior team members struggling to know what's optimal. But on the other hand, you don't want everyone's Planhat to be cluttered with all the possible Pages and Sections from across your business, with some of them not being applicable to every Planhat department/user.
What you need is that each Planhat user has access to the content (Pages and Sections) that have already been built, and that a suitable selection of this content is included in their Home screen.
Content in each user's Home can be chosen from a "top down" or a "bottom up" perspective:
Top down - a Planhat admin can pin Sections and recommend Sections/Pages via Home Templates
Bottom up - a Planhat user can choose which of the recommendations to include in their Home, plus can search for and add their choices of Sections/Pages from Content Explorer (what we'll be focusing on in this article), as well as creating their own Sections/Pages
One of the great things about this customization is that it is not fixed, but rather can be adapted over time - e.g. you can choose to add a particular Section to your Home while it's relevant to you (such as a Section for a short-term project you're working on) and then remove it from your Home (without deleting it from the whole tenant) when you no longer need it.
All content is saved in Content Explorer, ready for you and/or your team to view and potentially add to Home at a later date. You can think of it as a bit like a big database of your organization's content.
Adding Sections and Pages from Content Explorer to your Home
You can take a look at Sections and Pages in Content Explorer, before deciding whether to include them in your home.
The screenshot below shows an example where I have clicked on a Section from "Verified content" in Content Explorer. As the blue banner at the top states, the Section is temporarily showing in my Home (the gray bar on the left-hand side). This means I can click around in it, check out all its components, and decide whether or not I want to put it in my Home. If I do, I can simply click the orange "Add" button. If I don't want to add it, I can click "Hide", and it won't stay in my Home - but it will still be available in Content Explorer if I (or any of my colleagues) want to add it at a later date.
Click the image to view it enlarged
Similarly, in the screenshot below I have selected a Page from "Verified content", and it's shown for me so I can decide whether or not to add it to my Home. If I do want to, I can click "Add to Home" and then choose which Section within my Home to add it to.
Click the image to view it enlarged
If you already know you want to add some content, and you don't need to view it first to make your decision, you can mouse over it and click the "+ Add" button, like in the example below.
Navigating to Content Explorer
Right, let's get into the technical details, and start from the beginning.
There are a couple of different ways to get to Content Explorer.
Firstly, you can get there via the "Explore Content" button at the very bottom of the left-hand gray bar in "Home", below your Sections.
Click the image to view it enlarged
Or alternatively, if you go to add a new Section (by mousing over where it says "Sections"), next to the button to add a new Section (i.e. create/design your own Section), you'll see an icon for "Browse Sections". This takes you to the Sections tab of the Content Explorer.
If you've navigated away from Home (e.g. you've gone to your User Profile) and can no longer see your Sections or "Explore Content", simply click on the Home button in the top left of your tenant.
Tabs and features at the top
At the top of Content Explorer, you'll see a series of tabs that define the content that's displayed underneath:
For you
This is the main display of Content Explorer
It includes Pages, Sections and Libraries
Sections
Pages
Archived
We'll go into more detail on each of these next in this article.
🚀 Tip
Remember, for definitions and an overview of Pages, Sections and Libraries, check out our separate article here.
Within each tab, you'll see a search box, so you can look for specific content, or browse general content related to a theme - for example:
Click the image to view it enlarged
🚀 Tip
Whichever tab you're in, "verified content" is highlighted with blue ticks.
Verified content is content within Libraries. Verified content has been curated by your Planhat admin(s), and has been chosen as the recommended, official content within your organization, as opposed to being perhaps just one junior person's thoughts.
Having content verified enables you and your teammates to identify which content to focus on - what you can trust. You know it is aligned with how your business "thinks" - your organization's definitions and focus areas etc.
Above the search and the tabs you'll see there are also "+ Section" and "+ Page" buttons. These are one of the places in Planhat where you can create new Sections and Pages. You especially might want to create them here in Content Explorer if you don't want to make them part of your Home or a View (at least for now).
"For you" tab
This has (up to) 5 parts:
Recently visited - showing the content you have most recently been looking at
Libraries - this is where you, as a general Planhat user, can view the content that your Planhat admin(s) have curated, grouped by department or topic etc. Content within Libraries is "verified"
My private Sections - here you can see private Sections (created by you and not shared with anyone) that you aren't currently displaying within your Home
📌 Important to note:
If you've created a private Section and it's already part of your Home, it won't be shown here
If you don't have any unused private Sections, this part of Content Explorer won't show
Shared with me - this is content created by your colleagues and that you have access to
Recommended from team - here you can see content that's been recommended to you via a Home Template
Click the image to view it enlarged
"Sections" tab
The Sections tab of Content Explorer is useful if you want to filter the content suggested and skip specifically to Sections.
Like elsewhere in Content Explorer, and as previously discussed:
You can use the search box to find relevant content
Verified content is denoted with a blue tick
There is also a built-in filter you can select to filter on Sections created specifically by you. Simply click here to apply the filter - it will turn orange to show it's selected - and click here again to remove it.
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"Pages" tab
The Pages tab is great if you know you want to view and add individual Pages.
As well as the search box, and the "Verified content" / "Relevant for you" parts you've already seen, there are built-in filters for "Created by me" (as with Sections) and also "Page type".
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Having the Page type filter is super useful if you want to view examples of a specific Page type, such as Document Pages.
"Archived" tab
This is currently under development, and more information will be available in future.
The new functionality will help you keep your Planhat tenant "clean" and up to date.
"Latest edited" and "community templates"
There are two more parts of Content Explorer, positioned on the right-hand side of the screen:
Last edited
View the most recently edited content within your tenant - useful to see what's new/changed
Click on an item to jump to it
Explore community templates - Page templates / Section templates
Here you can access libraries of template content provided by Planhat, rather than by Planhat admin(s) within your own organization
For the Page templates, these are the same as those you'll see when you go to add a Page to a Section/View and select "Browse Planhat Global Templates"
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