Why use articles on PlusPlus?
With PlusPlus articles you can keep the entire org in the know with written content or dig into technical questions for the benefit of a specific team. You can assign stand-alone articles, integrate them into a PlusPlus track, or make them discoverable for team members to engage on their own.
Here are a few more benefits:
You can track who has read articles and receive feedback from them.
Articles can connect readers to other content you’re offering in PlusPlus, like office hours covering similar topics.
Team members can save an article so they can return to it easily and read it later on.
Articles are typically learning-focused. Hosting them in PlusPlus easily differentiates them from other reference/technical documentation living in other knowledge management systems.
Solution
Here are the typical steps for getting started with articles on PlusPlus.
Enable article content for your instance of PlusPlus.
Learn how to enable self-paced content types.Create an article.
In addition to drafting an article, in this step you can also give it a cover image, make it more discoverable with tags, and more.
Learn how to create and edit an article.Assign the article to a team member.
If you want to do more than just make an article available and discoverable, you can assign it directly to a team member as a one-off or you can add it to a PlusPlus track.Collect feedback on the article.
See who has read the article and how they rated it or responded to surveys about it. Learn more about feedback in PlusPlus.Return to the article and edit is as needed.
Go deeper
How articles get marked complete
Readers do not have to do anything extra to get credit for an article. When someone scrolls to the end of the article body, PlusPlus marks the article complete for them and shows a confirmation: Marked complete — You reached the end of this article.
A few conditions apply:
The article's Completable setting has to be on. With it off, nothing completes the article at all — no automatic completion, and no Mark Complete button either.
The reader has to scroll. An article short enough to fit on screen without scrolling is not completed automatically.
The end of the article has to stay in view for a moment, so scrolling straight past the bottom does not count.
An article with a PDF attached is never completed automatically. PlusPlus cannot tell how much of a PDF someone has read, so those articles stay on manual completion.
Previewing an article does not complete it, and neither does opening an archived one.
Nothing happens if the article is already complete, or if the assignment was marked exempt.
The confirmation appears once, at the moment the article completes. The Mark Complete button remains available until the article is complete, and using it does not show the confirmation.
Articles in the big PlusPlus picture
Articles are just one way you can offer self-paced learning content with PlusPlus. We also offer videos and courses, as well as the ability to facilitate live, relational engagement with live events, office hours, and mentorship. You can also incorporate videos, articles, courses, and live events into a sequential learning playbook with PlusPlus tracks.
For a closer look at all the content types available in PlusPlus for both live engagement and self-paced content, see PlusPlus 101: Content you can create.
Embed media in articles
Ramp up your article by embedding a video, an image, a cloud doc, or a website.
Note that a video embedded in an article (rather than uploaded as a stand-alone content item) cannot be individually tracked for auto-completion, assigned to people, or added to tracks.
For more, see How to embed media in an article.
PowerPoint embed
PlusPlus does not support PowerPoint files natively, so a presentation reaches readers one of two ways.
Export it as a PDF and attach it to the article. The PDF renders below the article text, where readers can also download it. This is usually the closest thing to an embedded deck, and PowerPoint, Keynote and similar applications all produce good PDF exports.
Bear in mind that attaching a PDF turns off automatic completion for the article — readers have to click Mark Complete themselves.
Create a Link content item that points at the presentation. Put the presentation's URL in the Url field, which becomes the Open button for the reader. The deck opens in its own tab rather than displaying inside PlusPlus, and whoever clicks it needs access to it wherever it is hosted.
If the presentation lives in Google Drive, you can also embed it in the article body. In the Description editor, use the embed menu and choose Google Drive Doc, then paste the Drive URL.
The embed menu offers Video, Google Drive Doc and Confluence Doc. There is no general-purpose website embed, so a PowerPoint Online or OneDrive link cannot be embedded into the article body — use one of the two approaches above instead.