Improved filtering options in Creative Boards

You can now filter your Boards based on the unique attributes of the creative assets you upload. Find the right briefs based on the style, theme, motivation, hook and other metadata of uploaded creative assets.

This feature not only helps you find the right briefs faster, but also allows you to build individual views for specific asset types.

Email notifications in Focal

Keeping your team up-to-date on new creative feedback just became easier. Users can now get notified over email when:

• Mentioned in a creative comment
• Someone replies to your comment
• You are assigned to a brief

To enable email notifications, navigate to the in-app notification popup at the bottom left, then click on settings. In this view, you can control which actions to get notified of in the app and over email.

Introducing Instant Sync

We’re excited to launch the biggest update to Focal this year - Instant Sync with Google Drive. This makes it possible to connect a folder in Focal with a Folder in Google Drive and once connected, Focal automatically replicates the sub-folder hierarchy and all image and videos assets within it across the two environments.

Instant Sync significantly reduces the time spent manually uploading and downloading files. This will help you streamline your workflow and also makes it easier than ever to migrate new content to Focal.

How Instant Sync works

You can choose between importing folders and their assets from Drive to Focal, or exporting folders from Focal to Google Drive. Once the connection is set up, Focal will automatically replicate the folder structure on the other side, and add all image and video files there. As long as the two folders are connected, Focal will automatically track any new additions within that folder structure, and start the transfer for those items.

Example Use Cases

1. AI-tagging existing content in Google Drive. If you're current Google Drive structure feels like a complete mess and it is hard to find existing content, this feature can help. Once assets are transferred to Focal using the Instant Sync, we use AI to generate tags and descriptions, making it easy to search for anything in the assets, including in-asset copy, objects, locations, moods etc.

2. Auto-archiving content in Google Drive. Instant Sync makes it very easy to backup all new content in Google Drive, while also replicating the folder structure created by automations in Focal. This allows your entire organization to have access to newly produced assets, without the manual work from your team.

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Improved milestone tracking in your creative briefs

Focal now allows you to add checklists to individual briefs in Creative Boards. This is a great way to keep track of smaller tasks and milestones in the creative process. For each item you add to the list, you can assign an owner and a deadline, and they can be checked of once completed. To set this up, add a new column to the creative board and choose between list (items specified separately for each brief) or checklist (the same items across all briefs) as the column type.

When viewing this column in the Grid or Kanban view, we will display how many items are checked off, and allow you to expand the full list of items in the board view directly.

Introducing Unique Creative IDs

We're excited to introduce a powerful new feature in Focal: Unique Creative IDs. This feature allows you to set up custom logic to assign unique IDs to each new creative concept, enhancing your workflow and asset management.

Key Benefits:

• Improved Asset Management: Keep asset names short while tracking the performance and attributes of each creative concept through unique identifiers.
• Easier search and referencing: Easily reference and locate specific assets in the library using unique IDs.
• Better collaboration: Simplify communication within teams by using unique IDs to refer to assets.

How It Works:

1. Configuration: Navigate to Settings -> Unique ID to configure the ID logic. You can create IDs based on various parameters, such as a timestamp for when the ID was created (e.g. YY-MM) and a running number that resets annually.
2. Automatic Assignment: Once configured, the unique IDs can be automatically assigned when:
   • New rows are added to Creative Boards
   • New assets are uploaded
   • An automation runs
3. Integration and Flexibility:
   • Add the ID column to your creative boards to see IDs automatically generated and displayed.
   • The IDs are added as metadata at the asset level.
   • Use the same Creative ID across different boards without worrying about duplicates.
   • Agencies can create multiple IDs within the same space and assign them to specific boards as needed.

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Fully Revamped Asset Search

In this update, we're excited to announce a number of significant upgrades to the search functionality in Focal. Here’s what’s new.

1. Improved keyword search across names, tags and descriptions‍

When you search by a keyword in the Asset Library, Focal now scans through asset names, tags, descriptions and other asset metadata automatically, showing you all matches sorted by relevance.

2. Advanced filtering options

You can now use both AND/OR filters to combine multiple search terms in a way that suits your needs. Whether you’re looking for assets that meet all your criteria or any of them, the advanced filtering options make it easy.

3. Negative filters

Need to exclude certain keywords or metadata from your search? Our new negative filtering feature allows you to do just that. Just use the the "doesn't contain" and "does not equal" search options to exclude specific parts of your Asset Library.

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These updates will give you more flexibility when searching for assets, while also offering a quicker way of searching than before.

Instant links to your Youtube Videos

Today, we are rolling out some new improvements to the Youtube export feature.

After adding Youtube url as an external data field in settings -> media columns, Focal is automatically populating this column as you export videos to Youtube. We have made some changes to how we fetch and store this data, so you should notice the links populating in real time.

We have also added a copy button to this column (and all other link columns as well), making it easier to use the videos e.g. when setting up ads.

Default export settings

We now allow you to customize the settings on how videos are exported to Youtube. If you go into settings -> integrations, you now have more control over the privacy status (unlisted/private/public) and the description of the video.

A quicker overview of media column content

In Creative Boards, you now have the quick option to view assets in an expanded modal. This is useful if a brief that you are working on comes with a higher amount of media files, and you're looking for an easy overview or a collage of all of them at the same time.

The expanded media view option will become visible while hovering on top of the media column. Just like with the smaller asset thumbnails in the board view, the videos will also auto play upon hovering on the thumbnails in the expanded media view. You can also bulk select assets and make edits normally in the expanded view.

We're building Focal with a focus on performance creatives, which in most cases means a continuous flow of new assets going through the pipeline. Because of this, our philosophy has been to build a connection with the rest of your stack and the media channels these assets typically end up in.

Our most recent update makes this connection more tangible. We have added a new type of custom media column, called "External Data". This column type can be added to a space in settings -> media columns, where you add any other custom metadata for your assets. The difference between the External Data field and other Custom Columns, is that the external data is updated automatically based on how you either import or export assets.

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Breakdown of external metadata options

• Link to Google Drive file. The link to the asset in Google Drive. Once you have added this external data field in settings, it will be populated automatically if you have imported a file from Drive, or if you have exported asset to Drive. ‍
• Link to Google Drive folder. The link to the folder in Google Drive you have imported the asset from or exported it to. Populates automatically after import or export to Google Drive. ‍
• Link to Youtube file. The link to the file in Youtube. ‍
• Link to external file. This column type can contain multiple links. For example and asset that has been exported from Focal to both Google Drive and Youtube, the column will contain two links leading to those to destinations.

This week, we rolled out our integration with TikTok. Users can now select multiple creative assets in the library and export them directly to their TikTok media library in one go. This eliminates the need for individual file uploads and reduces the time and effort involved in managing large volumes of creative assets for the channel.

After selecting your creative assets in Focal and clicking export in the bubble menu, you will see TikTok as a new option in the menu. With this addition to the bulk export feature in Focal, brands can now streamline the asset delivery process across TikTok, Meta and Youtube. This allows you to spend more time on the actual creative strategy, and less on the operational tasks related to producing new creative assets.

Stay up-to-date on what happens in your Creative Boards

Staying up-to-date on things happening within your Creative Boards just became a lot easier. We've updated the in-app notifications (accessible from the bell icon on the top left) to include more actions than before.

Overview of in-app notifications

• Whenever someone mentions you, either in a creative comment or a general comment on a page, you will receive a notification
• If someone replies to a comment you added, this will also show up in your notification panel
• As the newest addition, we will now also notify you whenever you get added into a user column in a board

Say goodbye to the endless downloading and uploading of new assets

Ever since we added bulk exports to Meta earlier this year, we've received a lot of feedback on what seems to be the most painful channel to add new assets to - Youtube. To launch video ads in Google Ads, you need to start by uploading all your assets to Youtube, which in turn is a slow process where you need to fill out additional information for each of the videos uploaded.

Default upload settings

With this update, all users can now connect one or multiple Youtube accounts to Focal, and easily bulk export assets across these Youtube channels. Focal will automatically add the videos as unlisted, using the asset name as the title and leaving the description blank.

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Connecting your Breative Boards to the Asset Library

The biggest product update of the past week is an improved connection between your creative boards and asset library. Starting this week, a new column type called "Media Column" is available in all spaces. Once added, this column displays custom metadata for the assets added to the board.

This allows you to edit asset metadata for multiple assets at the same time. You will also be able to assign metadata in rows/briefs with no assets in them, and once the first assets are uploaded, the selected metadata will be added on each asset automatically.

How to set it up

1. If you're not using custom media columns yet, you can set up your taxonomy in Space Settings -> Media Columns. Anything data you add here can be used for filtering assets in the library.
2. Once you have your media columns defined, scroll to the right of your Creative Board and add a new column
3. Select "Media Column"
4. Before adding the column to the board, you will need to select which media column you want to use (you can pick from all selection columns you have set up in settings -> media columns) and the reference columns (which assets in the Creative Board you are assigning the data to)
5. Select "apply to new media" if you want to be able to assign data even before any assets are uploaded to the row/brief.

Fully automated asset naming

Focal's Automatic Naming Conventions allow you to build a naming structure combining asset metadata and custom columns. The Naming Convention feature was initially rolled out as part of Board automations, but can now also be enabled on Folder level. Build it once, and all new assets you upload to Focal will be automatically renamed accordingly. No more manual work or risk for errors.

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Combine asset metadata and custom media columns

Asset metadata (aspect ratio, video duration etc) is detected automatically upon upload, and custom columns can be used to add a variety of additional information about the creative assets (e.g. creative angle, visual hook, style).Build it once, and all new assets you upload to Focal will be automatically renamed accordingly.

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How to set it up

1. Start by navigating to Settings and Naming Conventions
2. Add a new naming convention and give it a name (you can have as many naming conventions in the space as you like)
3. Add new fields to build the structure you want. Once added, fields can be dragged into the correct order. You can select between different delimiter options that will separate the field values, and also choose how the fields will be formatted (e.g. 9-16 or 9x16)
4. You can mark field as "required", which will trigger a warning icon in the Asset Library grid view if specific values are missing for the assets
5. Once the Naming Convention is added in Space Settings, just navigate to the folder you want to use it in, and enable it by clicking on Naming Conventions in the top menu.

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Automatic updates

Once the naming convention is enabled for a folder and sub-folders, new assets being added are automatically renamed based on it. If you need to make a change to the naming convention afterwards, just navigate back to Space Settings, update the naming convention, and you'll see your asset names changing in real time in the folder.

Focal Automations

Using folders to organize your marketing material is by no means a new thing, but it is still the most common way of operating within most businesses we talk to. When it comes creative assets, this becomes increasingly important if you are ultimately archiving your assets in Google Drive, where the limited tagging capabilities typically force you to rely on an easy-to-understand folder hierarchy.

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Common use cases

Two use cases typically come up in our discussions: 

• Creating sub-folders for each new creative concept, which then contains all aspect ratios and resolutions of that concept
• Creating sub-folders for each creative sprint, organized for example by the month the concept was delivered

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Setting it up

Focal now allows you to automatically create new sub-folders based on the layout of your Creative Boards. How assets are grouped into folders depend on your automations, and specifically the "Add media to folder" automation.

In the settings for this automation, you can select between adding all new assets into the same folder, or to create a new sub-folder for each of the rows. If you select the latter, you also need to select the Creative Board column the folder name is taken from.

If the value for the column you choose to name the sub-folders are unique for each of the rows, you will have separate sub-folders created for each of the rows in the board. If the value of that column is the same for some of those rows (e.g. the sprint or the month), they will be grouped into the same sub-folder with that name.

Asset exports to Google Drive is now live for all users in Focal. If your company is using Google Drive as the primary tool for storing data, chances are that you have been looking for a good way of archiving existing assets in Google Drive.

With our updates to the Google Drive integration, this is now as easy as importing assets from Drive into Focal. To export assets into Google Drive, just bulk select one or multiple files in the Asset Library and select "Export to Google Drive" in the bottom menu. Just like when importing assets, this will allow you to select either your own or shared Drives as the export location.

Today, we're excited to roll out a feature that has been requested since the early days of Focal - bulk asset uploads to Meta.

To start using this feature, just select an asset in the Asset Library, and click on export in the bubble menu at the bottom, and select "Export to Meta". The first time you do this, it will require that you authenticate with your Meta account and select which Business Managers you are looking to use Focal with. Once that is done, you will see a list of all available ad accounts. You can choose to export the assets to one or multiple ad accounts.

For advertisers, this means saying goodbye to the endless downloading and uploading of assets before you can launch your ads, just bulk-select your approved files and export them directly into the ad account media libraries.

Good naming conventions help advertisers in a variety of different ways. It not only ensures that your files are easily discoverable, but also helps you identify which creative elements have the biggest impact on performance.

This is why we built Automated Naming Conventions – an easier way to stay organized, without the added admin work or risk of manual errors.

With Automated Naming Conventions, Focal transforms randomly named creative files into easily trackable assets.

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In our example, we’ve tagged the creative with custom metadata such as ID, name, version, style, angle, and hook, as well as metadata like aspect ratio, length, and file type, ensuring a granular level of detail for analysis and optimization.

For example, an asset initially uploaded to Focal as 'File123.mp4' will, upon approval, be automatically renamed to
​SA-2950_Convenience_Simple-tip_Week46_9x16_40s.mp4.

Implementing Automated Naming Conventions is simple. After you’ve added the ad creative elements you want to track to your Creative Board, you simply click on the ⚡️-icon and set the rules:

1. In which folder the assets are added to,
2. Which elements you want to use in your naming conventions, and
3. When the automation is triggered,

and the automation does the rest.

The feature is now live for all users on Focal. If you need assistance setting up automations, don't hesitate to send us a message.

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This update allows you to create nested structures in your Creative Boards. Rows can be dragged and dropped underneath each other to create a nested structure, which can then be easily collapsed or expanded to make the boards easier to read and manage.

When grouping boards by a certain column, the value of the parent row/item is used to determine which group the rows belongs to.

Potential use-cases

There are many situations where a nested structure might help out, but the most common use-cases we see are:

• Localizing assets. If you're producing localized versions of top performers, it might make sense to add the localized versions as sub-rows under the main version.
• Iterations. Use the first version as the parent item, and add all future iterations of that concept as sub-items to make it easy to keep track of all variations.
• Milestones. If you're using boards to track longer projects with multiple shorter milestones, this is also a good use of sub-items, as it makes it easy to add multiple timelines and owners.

We’ve continued to expand on our Slack functionality across the app. It is now possible to connect multiple Slack workspaces with your Focal Team Space. This opens the door for cross collaboration with with freelancers, agencies, and other partners seamlessly across the asset library and any connected pages.

Works for both Pages and Asset Library

To keep all the relevant stakeholders informed, you now have the flexibility to select which Slack channels receive notifications from specific Focal pages or within the Asset Library.

Connecting a Focal Page

To connect a Page to Slack, navigate to the Page you'd like to link, and click on the grey Slack icon located in the upper right corner.

​Connecting the Focal Asset Library​

The Asset Library can also be connected to Slack. Just find the Slack icon near the “Add Assets” button and continue from there.

In the Asset Library, the newly added Grid view offers a more structured alternative to the Gallery View. The Grid view displays your assets in rows, and allows you to control which metadata is displayed for the assets. Filtering and grouping works the same way as before, but there are a few benefits to using the Grid view over the Gallery view: 

• Better bulk editing capabilities: If you're using custom Media Columns for your assets, the Grid view will make it a lot easier to not only view this data, but also edit it. Try selecting multiple assets and make a change to a Media Column value for one of them, and you'll see the data change for the rest of them as well. You can also grab the bottom right corner of a cell to drag the value down and copy it across multiple rows.

• Customizable Columns: Choose the information that matters the most to you – you can add either Custom Metadata or Standard information. Edit your column preferences by clicking on the 'Customize Columns' button."

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After seeing customers spend a lot of time and manual work adding custom tags for colors, we decided to make searching and filtering by an assets most dominant colors a lot quicker.

Starting today, Focal is automatically indexing the top 5 colors of any image or video asset uploaded. This, in turn, allows you to use the color picker to filter out both images and videos, just click on the search bar in the Asset Library and select "Color". You can combine the filter with other filters or grouping.

Add Clarity to your Creatives with Custom Metadata

Make your assets easier to find by adding URLs, expiration dates, or custom tags. All the fields you've previously used in Databases are now available as Custom Metadata for any creative asset.

Here's how to add Custom Metadata

→ Navigate to your Asset Library

→ Double-click on your desired asset

→ Access Metadata by clicking on the small "i" icon

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We're proud to announce Focal has successfully completed the System and Organization Controls (SOC) 2 Type II examination in recognition of its commitment to information security. Developed by the American Institute of CPAs (AICPA), SOC 2 (System and Organization Controls) defines criteria for managing customer data based on five "trust service principles" — security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality, and privacy.

​An independent auditor, Insight Assurance, conducted the detailed examination. Through this process, Focal demonstrated its adherence to data security, availability, and confidentiality standards developed by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA).

How many times have you had to go back to your creative team for simple tasks, like needing a different aspect ratio of an already approved asset. Focal now allows you to do this yourself, just navigate to the media player by double-clicking on any asset, then click "Download" on the top right.

You'll see that in addition to the "Download Original" option, you also have a "Crop & Resize" option. The new option allows you to pick a resolution from a few pre-defined options, or you can enter a completely custom resolution. After that, you can also move around the frame on top of the asset, to get a preview of what your cropped asset will look like.

The "Crop & Resize" option works for both images and videos.

For all you Google Drive users out there, getting started with Focal has never been easier. The new Google Drive integration makes transferring over your files simple.

→ Navigate to the upper right corner, and click "+ Add assets"

→ Choose Google Drive

→ Select all the files you want and click import. You can import files from multiple folders at the same time.

When you click import, Focal will show you an overview of your import - including the total amount of files and size of the import.

The integration with Google Drive is one-time: Images and videos are copied to Focal once. If you want to bring more materials to Focal later, you can redo the integration. We now support images under 40MB and videos under 4GB.

The best way to track your creative pipeline

Focal's updated Creative Boards makes it easier for you and your team to prioritize creative work and track progress.

Try adding a new creative board using one of the public templates in our library. Here's a quick overview of what is new:

• Group your creative boards by any selection field, like status, language or style
• Set default values for new briefs added to the board
• Create side-by-side views of the same data, for example timeline and kanban views

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This week, we rolled out a long list of improvements to the Focal Asset Library, allowing you to quickly filter assets by e.g. aspect ratio, or format.

We also added support for custom tags, allowing you to add your own taxonomy and to tag assets in bulk. If it feels like your Google Drive folder system isn't doing the job anymore, this might be the solution you're are looking for!