These new features make it easier to find items you need to work on, help keep your content team on track, and ensure updates to content models and localized content items are executed and deployed safely.
We’ll be introducing several more improvements as we move into the summer months, but for now you can learn more about each of these new features below.

1. Archiving content lets you move items into an “archive” state once they’re no longer relevant, in order to ensure they no longer appear on any of your websites or applications.
2. Content Relationships help you find content items based on hierarchical relationships when you don’t know the item’s content type or name.
3. Saving and Sharing Search Filters makes it easier to find frequently used content items and helps colleagues get started faster, without needing to understand the entire content structure.
4. Task Management lets users assign specific content tasks to contributors and then track the progress of those tasks to ensure projects stay on track.
5. Localization Permissions let you control which users have access to each language variant so that regional teams and translators can safely work within their content without affecting other variants.
6. Multiple Environments let you isolate your live content, models, and settings from those being used for development, testing, and/or staging. This ensures new features can be created and content models can be updated safely, without impacting your production environment.
7. Also, in case you missed it, we’ve recently achieved SOC 2 Type 2 compliance. This confirms that we’ve not only implemented the necessary practices and procedures to keep all customer data safe, available, and confidential but that these measures have proven effective over an extended period of time.

Continue reading below for more details on each of these announcements.

Archive Content

This feature allows users to manually change the status of a content item to “Archive”. If necessary, these items can later be restored to the first workflow step available to the user performing the action. Once a content item has been archived, it will no longer appear on your websites and applications unless it’s republished in the future.

Common Use Cases:

1. After a campaign or promotion, the content is often no longer relevant and should therefore be moved into the appropriate stage to reflect that.
2. Content items associated with specific events are often no longer necessary to display after that event has occurred.
3. In some cases, there are legal requirements to remove certain content from a website after a specified amount of time. Archiving the content would accomplish this.

Learn more about Content Archiving in our documentation.

Archiving content removes it from your websites and applications.

Find content faster with Content Relationships

Content Relationships show the hierarchical structure of how content items are related, either through linked elements or through items being included within a rich text element. This hierarchical view helps contributors find specific content when they don’t know the exact content type or name of the item.

How does this improve the ability to find content?
Users are able to find content items by searching and then applying filters until they get the item they’re looking for. While this works a lot of the time, it becomes more difficult when there are large volumes of content. In these cases, it can be helpful to start from a known reference point, and then drill down into the hierarchy until you find the item you’re looking for.

Common Use Cases:

1. Users often get requests to update content that appears on their websites. Content relationships let them navigate through their inventory in a way that maps to how items are related on the website.
2. It is sometimes difficult to find specific content items when dealing with large volumes of content. Content relationships let users start with a known reference point (e.g., the header content on a web page), and then drill down into the related items until they find the content they need.

Learn more about using content relationships in our documentation.

Content Relationships make it easier to find content items based on their association with other items (such as a web page).

Save & share search filters for easier access

Users can now save their search filters in order to make it easier to find frequently used content items. They can also share these filters with others to spare them the need to figure out the optimal filters to get the desired results.

How does this make it easier to find content items?
Users have been able to filter search results to find content items for quite a while. However, they needed to apply the same search and filters every time they looked for certain items in their inventory. Now, they’ll be able to simply click on their saved search in order to quickly access items that they frequently work with.

Common Use Cases:

1. Users can save filters for frequently used items in order to avoid the mundane task of reapplying them every time.
2. Sharing filters with a colleague helps get them up to speed faster, without needing to learn how the content inventory is structured.

Learn more about Search Filters here: Documentation.

Saving search filters makes it easier to find frequently accessed content items in the future.

Increase efficiency and accountability with Task Management

Tasks give content teams greater accountability throughout the content production process while making it easier to manage and track which users are responsible for each part of your content. They complement several of the existing management features within Kontent, from the initial planning phase through authoring, collaborating, and tracking the progress of each content item. With tasks, project stakeholders and team members gain greater clarity into what needs to be done and by whom.

How does Task Management make content production faster?
Project leaders can assign tasks to delegate responsibility for different parts of the authoring process to various team members. The tasks provide clarity on which activities need to be performed, and stakeholders can track the completion of these tasks to make sure the project stays on track.
Combining tasks with Content Groups offers even more control. The Groups limit each author’s access to only the fields they should update, while the tasks provide detailed instructions to ensure proper expectations are in place.

Common Use Cases:

1. Project leaders can assign a user (or a group of users) to review a content item before it’s published.
2. Multiple contributors can be assigned to update different parts of a content item, according to their specific expertise.
3. Project stakeholders can track the progress of assigned tasks to determine which have been completed and which haven’t, helping to identify risks to timelines.

See our Task Management documentation to get started.

Task Management gives project leaders better control over the content production process.

Control access to regional content with Localization Permissions

Localization Permissions let you manage access to different language variants according to user roles. This allows different teams to manage content specific to their region or in their native language without providing them access to content for other regions.

Common Use Cases:

1. Multinational companies often require content to be localized into multiple languages, which is then managed by separate regional teams.
2. Many companies run regional campaigns that are not available in other regions. Localization permissions can prevent other teams from seeing these campaigns when they are not relevant or suitable for those regions.
3. Regional teams sometimes need read-only access to the original version of content in order to create a localized variant of it. This level of permission ensures these regional users cannot edit the original variant of the content.

Learn how to manage language variants in our documentation.

Creating a new user with localized permissions

Develop and deploy new features with Multiple Environments

Project Managers can now create separate Environments within Kontent to isolate content, models, and configurations for development, testing, and production. This allows you to make changes to your content models or application code, push those changes to your testing environment, and then ultimately deploy everything to production once it’s been thoroughly tested.

Within a Kontent project, new environments will inherit content models, items, and users from the “Master” environment, but each will receive their own ID, API keys, and configuration settings.

How does this make deployment safer and easier?
Multiple environments allow developers to make changes to applications and content models without worrying about breaking anything in production. These environments can integrate into your existing CI/CD process to let you make changes whenever you need to—with confidence.

Common Use Cases:

• When developers build new functionality, they can test it on a copy of their content without worrying about breaking anything in their production environment.
• When updating content models, your application code and content items often need to be updated as well. Separate environments provide the structure to make these changes safely and perform all testing prior to deploying anything into production.
• When migrating content, separate environments let you preview the incoming content within your testing environment before ultimately moving it into production.

Learn more in our recent Multiple Environments webinar.
Learn how to set up Environments in our documentation.

Environments keep your production websites safe while new features are developed or updated.

Kontent earns SOC 2 Type 2 compliance

The Kentico Kontent team is committed to providing the highest level of care to any customer data we manage, including its safety, availability, integrity, and confidentiality. While we had previously achieved SOC 2 Type 1 compliance, the Type 2 compliance is a testament to how well our policies and procedures performed over an extended audit.

What does “Type 2” compliance mean?
Kentico Kontent earned SOC 2 Type 1 compliance in 2019. Both Type 1 and Type 2 compliance verify the protection of customer data stored in the cloud. However, Type 1 focuses on the policies and procedures the vendor has put in place, while Type 2 is an assessment of how effective those controls are over a longer period of time (generally 6+ months).

Hopefully, these new features will help improve your content projects right away. Of course, if you have your own ideas for new improvements to add, please let us know!