In every digital workplace, there comes a time to gather and tell ghost stories, tales of spectral creation that whisper words never spoken by the living. We even support this through ghostwriting. In Igloo, you can access any of your drafts, add a member as an author, and publish that content as them. To your members, it will appear as though it was published by the assigned author, rather than by you. Spooky, no? 

Blogs, Calendars, Forums, Wikis, and Files all support ghostwriting, and it's used for a lot of different purposes by clients. Some digital workplaces have internal communications teams that publish announcements from their leadership teams, or collaborate around a post in draft mode before publishing it as their team lead. Others maintain a user account specifically as a publishing alias, like "The Marketing Team". Rather than logging on using this account, authors use the ghostwriting function to publish as it, creating a consistent author for specific topics. 

How to

To ghostwrite, start by creating a piece of content and saving it as a draft. From the Draft menu, you'll be able to add an author. Search for the person you'd like to publish as, and add them as an author. In order for them to be returned in that search, they'll need Write access or better to the Channel you're publishing in. Access still applies to ghosts, after all. Once they've been added as an author, you can finalize any changes that the post may need, and publish it. When publishing, you'll receive a dropdown to publish as any of the assigned authors. Select them, and hit publish. When your post goes live, it will be by the author you selected. 

Notifications

Notifications sent from a ghostwritten post will also be from the author you selected. That includes notifications that come through Subscriptions, as well as the Broadcast attached to the creation of the item. Broadcasts sent after publishing will be sent from the member that sends them. Ghostwriting only applies to the publishing process, and to actions relating to it. 

Auditing

One of the questions that always arises with costumes is how to tell who's beneath the mask. Regardless how your ghostwritten post may appear to members, the true author of the post is always visible in the Manage area of the Channel, which will show the full editorial trail, including which members were added as authors, who published the post, and who they published it as. In addition, members receive a notification when they are added as an author to anything, and another when an item is published under their names. These notifications are mandatory, and cannot be managed or adjusted from a member's subscription settings. Igloo supports costumes. We do not support disguises. 

Ghostwriting can seem scary at first, but it can be invaluable for workflows that involve a review process, and it's integral to the flow of moderated content. Using it to maintain consistent authorship can help you keep updates coming from the same source, and offer a reliable voice to get their updates from, regardless of any organizational changes. 

If you have other questions about publishing, workflows, or best practices, you can leave a comment here, or ask a question in the Community area.