When a guide is published, it is available for users to download. You can promote it to your users so they can find and access your content.
When you submit your guide to be published, it needs to be approved. Your guide will be published to a space, and the space owner must approve it. You may wish to contact the organization admin prior to clicking submit, so they know to approve your guide.
For guides published to the Guidebook app, please keep in mind that it may take up to two days for a guide to be approved.
If you are an organization admin and you would like to learn how to approve your organization's guides, please click here.
Publishing a Guide
As you add content to your guide, Builder will provide you with progress updates. You will see prompts to fill out menu items on the right-hand side of the guide-building screen.
When your guide is ready to be published, you will see a blue Submit guide button.
If you don’t see this button, you likely have a list of action items that must be addressed. These may be an empty guide module or a feature beyond your current plan level. Either add content to the blank menu item, unpin the schedule track, disable the feature, or remove it. For a feature that requires an upgrade, click Upgrade or remove the menu item.
When you click Submit guide, ensure your guide’s basic details are correct.
Once you publish your guide, the majority of the guide details can no longer be edited. You will still be able to change the description, actual attendance and lock or unlock the time zone. If you need to make a change to any of the other fields after submitting the guide, please reach out to support@guidebook.com.
You can continue to edit all other content. If you need to change the name, short name, or dates post-publish, please reach out to support@guidebook.com.
You will then be asked where your guide should live. Select the space(s) to which your guide will be published.
Builder will send an attachment request email to the org admins who will review your guide.
If you select multiple spaces, please keep in mind that each attachment request will need to be approved by each org admin separately.
You can select the Guidebook space, spaces you personally own, and spaces owned by the organization you're a member/admin of. If you would like to create a new space/app and publish there, please reach out to sales@guidebook.com.
Guide Approval Process
Once your guide is submitted, you can continue to make changes to your content. You should expect to receive a message from Guidebook Support and/or your organization administrator about the status of your guide attachment request. It will be either approved or rejected.
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Approved: Your guide has been published to the space(s) you selected. You're ready to promote your guide to your users.
- If you are attaching to a single-guide app, the app will require resubmission before the guide is accessible.
- Rejected: You will receive an email with brief details explaining why your guide has been rejected. You can edit your guide and resubmit it for approval as many times as needed until it's ready to be shared with your end-users.
Once your guide is approved it's time to tell people about your guide. Visit the Promote section of your guide and make use of our promotional best practices document for ideas on sharing download instructions.
Publishing Updates
After your guide has been published for the first time, you can continue to make changes to it before, during, and even after the event. In order for people to see changes on their mobile devices, you’ll need to publish a guide update.
Once you make a change in your guide, you'll see a blue Publish updates button at the top-right in the guide canvas.
Updates can also be published from the guide dashboard.
When published from this location, the builder has the option to publish pending update to the guide, Event Marketing Website, Guidebook Registration, or all three.
Viewing Updates In-App
The guide will update in-app under the following circumstances if your device is connected to the internet:
- Anytime the guide or app is opened after being closed.
- Within 5-30 minutes, when you navigate to a different menu item.
After clicking the Publish Updates button on your computer, the update will be available on mobile within 5-30 minutes.
An update is automatically applied when the guide is re-opened. If you are viewing the guide when the update comes through, you'll see a pop-up to Update now. You can choose to tap the button or tap in the background to ignore the update. If you ignore the update, you can open the navigation menu and tap the Update now button there.
If you get an automatic update or select Update now, you’ll see a bar loading across the top of the screen, an Updating guide message in the middle. The update process looks slightly different on Android, but it operates the same way.
FAQs
My update is taking a long time.
It takes between 5-30 minutes for updates to propagate from Builder, through servers, and to mobile devices. Navigating between menu items will prompt an update if one is ready.
If you'd like to check your content before the update propagates, you can generate a fresh preview using Preview on your device in the bottom-left of Builder. Note that a preview is a static snapshot — you'll need to delete any existing preview and generate a new one to see recent changes, and some features (anything requiring a connection, like notifications or Interact) won't function in preview mode.
I’m not seeing the publish updates buttons. Where are they?
If you’re not seeing the publish updates button(s), it’s because you have some action items you need to take care of before publishing. You’ll see a list on the right in Builder that will show you the outstanding issues.
To resolve this, you have two options. You can add a placeholder item to the empty feature, such as an item named "Coming soon," to satisfy the requirement until your content is ready. Alternatively, navigate to the feature's Settings tab and toggle off its availability to disable it from the guide.
Another reason you wouldn’t see the publish updates button is if you haven’t made any updates yet. Go ahead and make a change to the guide and the button will appear.
If you still do not see this option, your guide may no longer be publishable. If you create a guide with a start date and an end date (i.e., for an event), your guide will become archived 90 days after the guide’s end date and you can no longer publish updates.
Alternatively, if your guide shows 'No Plan' and you've never seen a Submit guide button, see below.
I don't see a Submit guide button, and my guide shows "No Plan." How do I publish it?
"No Plan" means your guide hasn't been activated on a subscription (a pre-purchased guide) yet, so it can't be published. This is different from the action items above — the guide first needs to be paired with a plan. If you already have a pre-purchased guide with the right date range on your account, you can copy your content into a new guide on that subscription; see I Activated the Wrong Guide — What Now? for the steps. If you haven't purchased a guide yet, see How To Purchase A Guide. If you're not sure what's available on your account, reach out to your account manager. If you don't know who your account manager is, please email myam@guidebook.com. Someone will get you sorted quickly.
If you have a question about your guide's status, please review this article here.
I received an error when clicking publish updates. Help!
If you get an error when publishing updates, try refreshing your browser. Another collaborator or an automated process (such as changes via our API) may have already published changes. If you publish too soon after a previous publish when it's still processing, you'll see an error. After refreshing, you may see that the guide is in the publishing queue and your updates are processing.