News Reporting- PDF Reports

Zencity allows creating and sharing different types of reports for various needs, and can especially help when it comes to News reporting. Whether you're tasked with sharing a daily report with your organization leadership, or want to follow the news on your own terms- using Zencity will surely save you time and effort, while bringing you the most relevant news mentions of your organization.

In this article, we'll walk through the different options of creating a News PDF Report (sometimes known as Media Mentions Report), using three main methods: 

1. Starting in the News Feed- Filtering or hand picking items in the News Feed, and exporting them to a PDF one-time report.
2. Starting in the Report Builder- Building a PDF report from scratch in the Report Builder.
3. Automatically- Creating and scheduling a template report  that can either be automatically published, or sent to you as a draft for editing/approval.  

Starting a PDF report in the News Feed 

Zencity's News Feed contains articles based on your organization's configuration, and is a great starting point to create your daily or weekly News Email Report. There are two ways to create a PDF report from your news feed:

Filtered Bulk

Use the Date, Source or Saved Search filters, along with a keyword search, to narrow down the items in your news feed. Once you're satisfied with your results, proceed to the next step by clicking on "Create Report, and choosing "One-Time Report". 

Note, your report can not include more than 100 items, so make sure your filters are actually narrowing down your choice.

Hand Picking

Hand picking articles is a very common method when creating a news report, because it allows you to browse and control which articles to include in each report. 

In your news feed, when hovering over an item, click on the + icon for an item you wish to include in your report. Once you've chosen at least one item, you'll see the + icon appear on all items, allowing you to add more and more items to your email report.

You can use the Date, Source or Saved Search filters to find specific articles, or conduct a keyword search. Don't worry, you won't lose any selections you've made when moving between the filters or searches. 

Once you're satisfied with your results, proceed to the next step by clicking on "Create Report, and choosing "One-Time Report". 

Editing a News PDF Report

Once you've created your report, you'll see a preview of how it will look like as a PDF. At this point, you can choose whether to share it immediately, or click on edit to customize your report. Once you're in edit mode, you can change the layout of the stories, remove add new stories, or even add other widgets and text. To learn more, head over to the next section. 

Starting a PDF report in the Report Builder

The report builder is a world of custom options allowing you to report effectively on your Zencity data. When creating a news report (or editing a template/one-time export), there are some best practices to streamline your process.

Adding articles 

Open the data menu and choose the Stories section, then use the filters menu to focus on News.                      

Now, you can scroll through all the items and hand pick, using the date, search bar and sorting options to help you find the articles to include in your report. If you have a routine of regular topics you cover, use the topics filter or a pre-made project to move between the topics.

To add items in bulk, choose filters and use "Add all", or use the Leading Stories Widget to add a set number of stories with your selected sorting method. 

There are a few controls to customize the appearance of your news items:

• Story layouts can be changed to "full"- which include the full text of the item, or compact- which will only present the title and a few additional details. The layout can be changed by either choosing a different mode in the stories menu, and adding items in that chosen mode; Or by clicking on a specific item, and changing its layout mode in the editing menu for that item.
• Group together duplicate articles by turning on the "group similar items) 

Automatic News Reports

Automatic news reports broken down by sections can be created by building a template and scheduling it.

When building a template for news reports, the best practice is creating a series of projects filtered by keywords/topics of your choice, along with a News source filter. 

Once your projects are created, create a new template, and choose the time frame you want for the template. If you're creating a daily report, it is recommended to choose "yesterday", or "today and yesterday".

Now, create headings for your reports sections, and add any images or regular text you wish to include. 

Under each heading, add a leading stories widget, filtered by the project you created for that section, and choose the layout (full, regular, or compact) and sorting (relevance or date) you wish to apply. If you want, you can remove the reach data from your news items by toggling off "include reach".

If you've already added the leading stories widget and wish to edit it's filters or layout, simply click on the widget and adjust it's settings, on the right hand menu.

Want to track specific news sources? Follow the same method, choosing and filtering the source/s you want for each group of leading stories. 

Once you've completing building your template, you're ready to schedule it as a recurring published or draft report! For more information on working with templates, check out our dedicated help article.