Imagine that you are managing a creative project: a new website and a rebrand.
To complete this project, you need website copy from your copywriter, images from your client and custom illustrations from your illustrator partner.
How do you ask for these different files and make sure they arrive on time? Maybe you send an email to each person or ask them to join your project management system and set up different tasks.
This is what I used to do and I often found myself searching through email chains for the latest version or sending messages politely reminding everyone to send those late files.
When you don't have the right content on time it's a recipe for scope creep.
I also realised that the bigger our agency got, the more people were involved in each project and they needed access at different stages. For example, a project manager needs to receive and approve files while a designer who is creating the concepts only needs the approved files to work with.
Enter Kayla. We built our own tool!
I am beyond excited to show you how you can use Kayla to collect files on time and move your creative projects forward together with your team!
OVERVIEW:
How does Kayla work?
Start with on-boarding
Plan out what you need
Who is providing what?
Set up a new project in Kayla
Send requests with Kayla
Invite your team
Changing contributor
How does Kayla work?
Kayla is built to be easy to use and flexible to fit your projects.
The overall structure is a project. Inside each project, you can create a request for each stage of your design process or for each person who need to send in files.
Set a due date for the request and assign it to your client. Now you can sit back!
If files are late, Kayla will automatically send a reminder.
Once the files are in, you will get notified and you can either approve or reject files. If you need more options, just ask for new files with one click of a button.
In Approved files, you can find all the approved files which means your team never have to guess which version they should use.
Have a look at the short video below to see the product demo!
Start with on-boarding
On-boarding is where you let your client know what to expect from the project, what you will do and what you expect from them. This is the perfect time to let them know that you need files from them and when you need them by.
If you like, you can show your client how Kayla works. There is no need for them to set anything up. When you have a request ready for them to fulfil, you just add their email and they get an email asking them to send in files. An account is automatically created and they just need to set a password.
Letting clients have their own login means that they can always see what they sent in or even save a submission as a draft and come back to it later. This is great if your client does not have all the information all at once. Instead of you receiving multiple messages with content dripping in, you just get notified when everything is ready for you to use.
Plan out what you need
Once the project is under way, look at the scope of the project and plan out everything you need from start to finish.
When do you need it by, who do you need it from and who from your team needs access? Knowing the answers to these quick questions will set you up for a smooth project.
Who is providing what?
If you team up with other creatives or if your client has a bigger team, make sure you know who is responsible for which part of the content creation.
But don't worry if something changes, when you send a new request you assign it to a contributor. However, if this is not the right person, the contributor can easily reassign the request to the responsible person from their team and voila, it's done!
Set up a new project in Kayla
You have planned out what you need and now it is time to set up your project in Kayla. When you log in, you will already be in your projects dash board.
Just click the + and add the client name and project description to set it up. You can also add your team members now or you can add them later.
Send requests with Kayla
Great! You have your project set up, now we are setting up a new request. Inside your project, you can now see your team and a + to create a new request. Click the + and add in the details so your contributor knows what you are looking for.
You can customise how often you want a reminder to go out if the files are missing and assign the contributor by adding their email.
Invite your team
If you skipped this step earlier or would like to add someone to your team later on, just click on the project you want to add them to. Inside, you will see the team panel on the right hand side. Click the + to add someone new to your team and decide what level of access you would like them to have.
Project managers have full access, meaning they can create new requests and approve or reject files. Creatives can only access approved files which is perfect if you have team members that only focus on creating concepts or final designs.
Changing contributor
Sometimes teams change. Someone goes on holiday, move department or maybe they were just not the right person to send you files. This is an easy fix. When a contributor gets a request, they can easily click "reassign" and assign it to someone else. That's it, super simple!
If you want to start using Kayla, sign up for early access and learn more about how it works on our website.
Do you have something we should add or a question for how Kayla can help you business, join our Facebook community and let us know how we can help!
