Get 4TB of space FREE for artists, creators & designers on Playbook
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A while back I promised you that I would show you how I use Playbook in my business with my clients. I did not forget about you, I promise! And today is that day.
We're gonna dive into my Playbook account & a demo folder so I can show you what kind of files you can put into Playbook, how to share them, how to customize them, how it works, the folder system (because it's all a little bit different than what you're expecting) and how I use it alongside Dropbox and, of course, my... device.
But before I dive into my account, if we haven't met before, my name is Katelyn and I’m a Squarespace educator now, but I started as a graphic designer, …turned web designer, …turned freelancer, …turned solopreneur, turned educator. So I've morphed a lot over the years & I have a lot to share, because I go down a lot of rabbit holes, –including on tech like this!
When you find something this good, you have to talk about it! And no, before you ask, I'm not an affiliate. Today’s video is not sponsored!
Let's dive into my account and I'll show you all of the secrets.
screenshot of my demo folder in Playbook
Peek inside my Playbook account
This is a demo folder in my account. You can see in my navigation here, I've got several other folders or “boards,” as Playbook calls them.
That sounds a little bit like Pinterest or Trello, right? It's the same concept; the board itself is the container for the files inside. Inside each board you have whatever assets or files. It's vertical hierarchy over here in the sidebar menu, similar to Dropbox’s web app.
The section across the top in this board, is a sub board, and inside are loose items or files in that “sub-board” or sub-folder.
You can display these boards &/or subboards as Kanban view based on workflow, statuses, ratings, topics, etc. and you can set the view you want default for everybody else or just use it yourself. There’s also a timeline view based on when files were added and of course the traditional folder view if you prefer the “old school” display, but that's how Dropbox, Google Drive, and everything else works, so for this demo we’ll use the masonry style layout that’s the Playbook defauly because this way is more visual & kind of the whole point.
How to Use Playbook Like a Pro:
Sharing, Publishing & More
screenshot of labeled sections in my Playbook's Demo folder
Hidden away in this little ••• ellipsis menu at the right side of the action bar that sits under the folder’s title, you have an option to Add Board Description which gives you an area to describe whatever is in this folder or type out some brief instructions for how/where to access/download/open the files below. And that works for subfolders, within folders too which is a really neat function.
You can also use that same action bar to expand the file size preview in the masonry grid, and of course, you can search, share, publish, and open the activity feed for this folder too.
If you click Publish from that action bar, just note that is actually different from just making a standard sharable folder link; it actually creates a somewhat customizable page AND ‘publishes to web’ whatever is inside the folder at the level you enabled it. This is only available on the Pro plan, which I’m not on so I’ve tried it once but don’t find that I need it enough to upgrade my plan to have it access. I think you can “publish” one folder for free, at a time, without being on the Pro plan.
To share folders or subfolders with someone who’s not using Playbook with you (without using the Publish feature), use the Share icon from the action bar.
I'm on the Artist & Designer plan, and with that plan –as of posting– you get up to 4TB (4,000GB) of space for FREE. 🤯
That’s almost DOUBLE what I pay Dropbox for!! So, when I realized that I was literally like, “Holy shit. Holy shit. Holy shit.”
You have to apply for it & get approved, as I think this is supposed to be for artists, creators, designers, and people that are creative minded that have generally larger files. I suspect it’s just a promotion to help spread the word & they want to gift it to people who would actually use it, love it & probably share it naturally –like I am 😆– just because it’s badass. I don’t have any idea how long this offer will last, so if you’re at all interested, go ahead & apply for it before they inevitably stop handing out giant amounts of free space.
So in my account, I have vacation photos, videos, and other files, and I use it for easily sharing my biz headshots & logos, deliverables for client projects & 1:1 coaching sessions, etc.
How I use Playbook with Clients
Once I dump all the files in here, I just click share from the top level of the folder with all their shit in it, and then just turn on the toggle from within the Share menu. Then you get a traditional public view link, just like you would with Dropbox, Google Drive, or whatever else. That’s the link that you would actually give to your clients.
This type of sharing doesn't count toward/as the 1 “Published” folder you can have on the A&D plan, FYI.
Turn on/off file activity notifications
One of the things I’ve heard from some of my Club members is that they have done this with a client and they started getting a bazillion notifications for every single file that was uploaded. –Not great! This has happened to me once (& only once!) when I used it with a client too.
Up at the top right of any Playbook folder, you do have a bell icon that will show your notifications inbox, but that’s just the account-wide feed –not where you disable or enable notifications for the folder.
To Follow or Unfollow activity on any board, go to the action bar under any folder’s title, look for your profile icon & the ••• ellipsis menu that’s on it. Not the one on the top right of the web page you’re on; that’s for your account settings & stuff like that.
If you click the folder-level profile icon, it opens a popup out to the right side which shows 3 tabs: conversation, share, and publish. Each of those tabs correspond to the first 3 buttons in the folder’s action bar.
Where to Follow or Unfollow any board’s activity feed
Under Conversation, near the top of that pop-out sidebar, you’ll have a button (that looks more like a label than a button) to enable or disable notifications for this folder. It’ll either say “You’re following” (ie: you will get notifications for activity on this folder), or “Follow this board” (ie: you’re NOT going to get notifications for activity in that folder). So basically, those label/buttons subscribe or unsubscribe you to updates for that file folder. If you have multiple sub-boards or sub-folders, you might also want to check this setting in those too!
At the bottom of the Share tab, you also have an option to embed the whole folder somewhere like your website, Notion or maybe ClickUp, etc. I’ve tried it & it definitely works, but I think the user-experience for the embed is still a bit clunky & access the download buttons from there is not easy to figure out. So I think sharing actually works better when you don’t embed it, but you can definitely try it out for yourself!
You can also click on the folder title to rename it and hit enter to save the change when you’re done.
Adding Content to Playbook: Colors, Web Links & more!
So that’s the basics of “how” to use Playbook, but what can you put in your Playbook folders?
I think this is the most exciting part of all of this! Over on the top right of any folder, there’s a bright coral button labeled ➕ Add. When you click that, you can either upload something or you can create a new sub-board.
But some of the types of ‘files’ you can upload are NOT traditional. Color codes, for example are not actually files, they’re just literally hex color codes that are rename-able and copy-able after you save them to your Playbook, which is so much fun for adding reference-able palettes for clients or team members!
If you add something to the wrong area, it’s all drag-and-drop, so you can drag it to a sub-board & drop it in, or drag it onto a file & nest it inside a group of similar files.
Another option is to add notes which you can literally type or paste into Playbook’s “note” file and format. I haven’t played with this much at all, but it’s a really nice feature to have and would be great for an offboarding checklist if you don't have/use anything else to walk clients through their “After-Publishing” checklist.
My favorite thing to add to Playbook, and why I love it so much, is the ability to add web links with custom thumbnails! This is my fav because I send my clients a lot of external files like Canva templates, links to video replays from our meetings that are sitting in Dropbox, and Loom videos. All of those things you can easily just paste in with the link, and give it a visual preview so my client can see what the file is at a glance.
After it uploads, it usually doesn't generate the thumbnail preview for you, so if you want to be a little “extra” you can create & add your own by going to the link, taking a screenshot yourself, and then adding that image in Playbook’s asset thumbnail setting.
how & where to add custom thumbnails to any asset
Here’s what that process looks like real quick:
To access the link itself, they’ll actually need to click on the Open Link in New Window button in the righthand sidebar after they’ve selected a file to preview, or they can hover over it in the main grid and click on the visible link on the bottom left of the file’s thumbnail/preview image.
This is a good thing to remind clients, because they’ll probably expect to just click on the picture and have it open a new tab, but it doesn't work quite like that.
You can also give any file a Status, I have several statuses that I use more like asset labels, so if it's a video I’ll give it a “status” of “⏯️ Videos” and if it's a resource I’ll give it a “status” of “📂 Resources”. You can decide what statuses to use.
You can also add files directly from Dropbox or Google Drive, and even Google Doc links very easily, along with Figma files & some other options that I’m sure will be expanded on as Playbook grows!
Another fun thing to add are videos! Whether they’re external videos (playable in YouTube, Loom, Vimeo, Wistia, etc. –some other player or host), or uploaded video files, both options work great! They will all play, or stream, from the Playbook window without having to open the video in another window or tab.
In Playbook’s own video player, it has all the normal features you’d expect like skip forward and backwards, the progress/timeline bar, volume, playback speed, picture in picture, and full screen options. Playbook has also updated their video player at the end of 2023, and it’s way, way better now.
A few ideas for using the videos feature in Playbook if you don’t have your own videos to share, you could upload recorded Zoom meeting videos, share helpful tutorials from experts like Henry of SEOSpace after their project’s over & site has launched, and even upload videos you’ve made in Canva of their scrolling website pages to share on social media when they’re ready to announce the new website!
You can also reorder or rearrange any of these files as you load them in, if you want, just by clicking and dragging them around in the grid. Wherever that coral insert marker line shows between files is where the dropped file will be moved. I tend to group my videos next to each other, images together, links together, etc.
I know, I'm just OCD. That arrangement doesn't really matter, probably, but I do it anyway.
example of this ‘file stacking’ or ‘nesting’ feature in Playbook
One other really neat thing I’ve noticed too, is that you can actually stack (or nest) files or file formats. For example if you’re sharing resized images you can stack the original image size & the web-ready version on top of each other, and it will show you on the actual asset preview in the main grid that there are multiple file formats INSIDE that asset.
That might be hard to visualize, so here’s an example of what that looks like. In this example, this is from our recent vacation to Nova Scotia; notice how each image preview says JPG and PEF.
That means BOTH files (2 different file types for one image) are nested or stacked to save visual space, and you can access both files individually from within, after you click to open the image preview in Playbook.
Have I switched to Playbook from Dropbox?
In a word– no. 😂 I love Dropbox for normal file storage. It integrates really well with my computer, works seamlessly in Finder so I never have to use the browser version, and it smartly keeps unused (older) files off my laptop to save precious storage space on my hard drive.
Playbook is just reserved for delivering assets to my clients, and sometimes storing large video files, etc. It works really well for delivering creative assets (files, links, images, designs, colors, videos, graphics, etc) because the user can SEE them as a file preview vs a literal file name in a long list.
So during the project, I’ll have all the files in Dropbox as I’m creating, editing & using them. When the project is over, I’ll export everything I’m “delivering” to my client & upload it to their Playbook folder for delivery. That way they can SEE what giving them & navigate it a bit easier.
How other people are using Playbook
Playbook has a new template gallery with layouts users have created which you can use for inspiration, including this Brand Guidelines system and several others, all of which you can copy to your account & then edit/customize to make it your own.
If you’re using it in a unique way that you love, share it in the comments below!
On the Client’s Side:
Navigating & Interacting with Shared Files
To preview what your client will see, grab that Share link and open a new private tab, paste it in, and load the page in a browser tab that doesn’t know you’re the logged in account owner.
Viewers can also leave comments without needing to log in or create a Playbook account, which is SUPER handy for us & for them! Any comments left in their public view will show up in the Conversation feed for that folder in our account, so we’ll see it too.
For them to add files to this folder, they do have to have an account, but a free one should work just fine.
They can download everything from the menu across the top of their preview page, search through everything and watch any videos without needing to big video files; they can just stream it straight from playbook!
They can also ‘react’ to files, and rate them, too.
SO it’s a very simple & clean interface for them! There's not a whole lot to do in here, which I really like, because it could help them focus & find their stuff a bit easier!
Playbook could be your next favorite (free) tool
So that’s a pretty cool system, right? Especially the part about HAVING 4,000 GIGABYTES OF FREE online storage. I've literally never heard of that anywhere else and it boggles my mind to figure out how they’re STILL offering this months & months after finding Playbook myself.
Anyway, I'm sure they're just trying to help get the word out so that people know Playbook exists. Until that program or that offer is over, definitely go to Playbook and see if you qualify for their Artist & Designer plan so you can grab your free space too!
To apply, go to their Pricing & Plans page, scroll below the pricing table & check the FAQs. One of them has the application link! They do have to approve you, so it’s not automatic, but it was super easy when I did it!
Playbook is a pretty phenomenal option, especially for sharing files with (maybe even) less tech-savvy people or service providers like myself who tend to share a lot of resources in various formats (links, videos, colors, docs, etc). It's also pretty cool to just be able to see all of your actual files, rather than looking at those folder icons or page icons & file names that we're used to.
So it really seems like is a marriage between Pinterest or Trello and Dropbox/Google Drive. As of posting, there’s NO app yet, so it only works in your web browser for now, but I’m pretty sure that’s on the road map!
Let me know in the comments if you are pretty psyched about this option, if you're gonna go check it out, if you think it's pretty cool, if you've tried it and you hate it. I'm super curious what you’re thinking about Playbook! Are you going to try to go for that artist and designer plan? Let me know in the comments!
–Oh, and if you want to know why I brought this up at all & what the hell I’m talking about when I said at the top “a while back I promised to explain this & I haven’t forgotten”, check out this post next where I talk about how I use Playbook in my client process (in the video, it’s the 10:50-ish timestamp). 😁
