If you’ve just signed up to build your guide or simply want to experiment with Guidebook Builder, this instructional guide will help you get started.

Interested in learning about the branding dashboard? Read our branding dashboard article for a walkthrough of app design and app store submission via Builder.

First, please visit builder.guidebook.com and log in to your Builder account. If you haven’t set one up yet, it’s free to sign up. In case you have any trouble with your password, reset your password here.

When you log in to your Builder account, you will arrive at the Builder homepage.

Your guides will appear on this homepage. The gray bar at the top will be visible throughout Builder; click the Home icon in the middle to return home any time.

You can find announcements, see the history of your account, and manage your account and purchases using the buttons in the top-right corner.

At the top left, you’ll find Recents (your recently viewed guides), Tools, and Support (helpful articles).

To start building a guide, click Build New Guide in the upper right of your Builder homepage.

If you’re building a guide for an organization, select your org first. Clicking Build New Guide will show your org’s available guides. See Managing Your Organization as an Admin for steps.

First, choose the kind of guide you’re building: Event guide, Campus guide, Enterprise guide, Tour guide, or Place guide. Click Select & view templates on the one that fits best, then pick a template from that category.

Templates are suggested outlines to help you get started. You’ll have access to all features no matter which template you choose, and you can fully customize it later.

If you’ve saved a template from a previous guide, click Start from saved template in the upper right. To start from scratch, choose a category and click Continue without a template.

If you’re starting from a purchased guide, you’ll skip the template categories and choose to start without a template, copy features from another guide, or start from a saved template.

The next few screens will lay the foundation for your guide. You can skip any step by clicking Skip for now. You can make changes to the basic details later as well.

Guide Icon and Cover Image: On the next screen, add your guide icon and cover image.

Venue Name: Provide the name of the guide's primary or central location.
​Address: Use the Address bar to search for and set the street address.

Privacy: On the next screen, you can determine the privacy setting for your guide.
​Sharing: The Sharing option allows attendees to share the guide via X, Facebook, messaging, and email.

Once you have created a guide, you will arrive at the guide-building editor. Here you can draft your content and design a great tool for your users.

Your navigation menu is on the left side of the screen. This is what your users will see in the menu in the app.

The middle of the screen shows a preview of your guide. In the example above, the General Info module is the home screen, so the editor shows a preview of that menu item.

To the right, you will see a progress bar. Builder will alert you to any menu items missing content. When you’re ready to publish, the Submit guide button will no longer be grayed out and will be clickable.

Once your guide is published, this panel will show Updates pending when you have changes ready. Click Update guide to push them to your users.

To add any feature to your guide, click on Add features at the top of the navigation menu on the left. You can find out more about adding specific features via the links below.

Click Back to Dashboard to access your guide dashboard. Here you can dive back into guide-building, or view the Activity History to see what changes were made and when. You can also create forms, schedule notifications, add collaborators to help build your guide, explore promotional materials, and even review the metrics when your guide is in use.

When editing your guide, use the Search this guide bar at the top right. Click the bar or the magnifying glass, or press T on your keyboard, then start typing and click the result you want. You can search for custom list items, features, schedules, sessions, and areas of your guide like Metrics and Forms.

After you’ve added content to your guide, you can generate a preview of your guide to see what it looks like in-app.

We recommend reviewing the promotional materials on the guide dashboard to strategize how you’re going to share your guide with your users.

When you are ready to share your guide, click Submit guide. Guides published to the Guidebook space are approved automatically and typically appear in the app within 30 minutes. If you publish to an organization’s space or branded app, that organization’s admin will need to approve it first.

Will users require Internet access to access my guide?
On iOS and Android devices, downloading a guide requires Internet access. After downloading a guide, most of the guide information will be stored directly on the iOS or Android device. This means schedules, custom lists, and maps will be available offline.

There are, however, certain features that rely on network connectivity including:

How secure is my information?
Guidebook takes a proactive and holistic approach to security. Our Developers write security-related tests and administrators make sure we have properly configured security controls. We also contract security vulnerability assessments and penetration tests to highly respected third-party security engineers in order to validate our products.

We use Amazon servers, and Amazon takes a world-class approach to secure their servers. For details regarding Amazon's security please read the following: https://aws.amazon.com/security/.

User email addresses and passwords are only used for authentication. Passwords are hashed using bcrypt.

You can find out more on Guidebook's Security Page and via our Security FAQ.