You don't need to live in RankMill to keep it moving. Three views tell you most of what you need to know: Needs attention, Working now and Activity. Check them in that order once a day. You'll see what is waiting on you, what is running and what went wrong.
Here is the routine, one view at a time.
Step 1: clear Needs attention
Needs attention lists everything across your team that is waiting on you. It covers every project, so you don't have to open each one. You'll find three kinds of thing there.
Answer questions on topics
A suggested topic can come with up to four questions. These are facts the agent could not find on its own, such as a price, a customer name, a date, or whether you support an integration. Your answers go to the writer as facts from the business.
Questions are not a gate. You can approve a topic and leave them blank. The writer will then write the post so the missing fact is not needed, instead of making one up. But a post that can use your real details is usually a better post. So if you know the answer, type it in. It only takes a moment, and answering is free.
This matters even more if your project fills its own calendar. With the publish cadence on, a topic on a slot is written once its questions are answered. If they are still open 24 hours before its slot, it is written anyway. If you have switched on Human in the loop for that project, there is no fallback. The topic waits for your answers, and if its slot passes with them still open, the day is given back.
Review suggested topics
Next, look at the topics waiting for review. For each one you have two choices.
- Approve it if the title and outline look right. The writer starts, and the write uses 10 credits.
- Decline it if it's not for you. Add a reason if you like. Every later topic hunt is told what you declined and why, so it stops suggesting the same thing.
Declining is better than ignoring. A project holds at most 20 posts that are not out yet, suggestions included, and no hunt runs while it is full. Clearing out topics you will never want makes room for ones you will.
There is another reason to decline with the publish cadence on. A suggested topic does not need approving to be placed on the calendar. So a topic you leave sitting can end up on a slot and get written. If you don't want it, decline it.
Place finished posts on the calendar
The last group is finished posts with no publish time yet. Give each one a time. You can set it from the post itself or from the calendar.
The calendar has a month view and a week view. You can filter it to one project, and you can drag a planned post onto another day. It also shows what has already been published and when each project is next hunting for topics.
Nothing here is final. Clearing a time takes the post off the calendar again.
Before you place a post, take a look at its key points. They sit above the post and list what it says, so you can check it without reading every paragraph. If something needs changing, open the post and tell the editor agent what to change, in your own words. Edit turns are free. For a one-word fix, you can just edit the post yourself.
Once Needs attention is empty, the part that needs you is done.
Step 2: glance at Working now
Working now is a panel you can open from anywhere in RankMill. It shows what the agents are doing for your team right now, grouped by project. It updates as runs start and finish, so you can just leave it open and watch.
You're looking for two things.
- Runs in progress. If you just approved some topics, you should see their writes here.
- Credits used this month. This sits at the foot of the panel.
Why the credit number is worth a glance
Writing is the only thing that spends credits. Each team gets 100 credits a month while RankMill is in early access, shared by everyone on the team. Writing a post uses 10, so the allowance covers 10 posts a month. It resets on the 1st, in UTC.
Everything else is free. That includes hunting topics, answering questions, edit turns, audits and their fixes, scheduling and publishing.
So if the number is higher than you expected, posts were written. That could be topics you approved, posts written from your own ideas, rewrites of finished posts, or imports you asked the agents to rewrite in your voice. It could also be topics written for calendar slots, or new suggestions approved automatically if your team has switched that setting on.
If your team needs a bigger allowance, you can ask us to raise it.
Step 3: check Activity for failed runs
Activity is the full history of every run your team has made. For each run it shows what kind it was, what it was working on, how long it took and, if it failed, why.
You don't need to read all of it. Use the filters to cut it down.
- Filter by status to see only the runs that failed.
- Filter by project if you only care about one site today.
- Filter by kind to see one type of run, such as writes.
Each project also has its own Activity view, already scoped to that project.
Reading why a run failed
When a run fails, Activity gives you a plain sentence saying why. That is what you get. RankMill hands each run off as one job and checks back until it is done. So there is no live log of what the agent was thinking, and RankMill does not pretend there is one. You see the state of each run and the reason it failed.
Read the reason, then decide what to do next.
What a failed write costs
A write that fails keeps its credits spent. The 10 credits it used don't come back.
But writing that same post again is free. So a failed write never costs you twice. If you spot one in Activity, go ahead and write the post again without worrying about your allowance.
Skip the check on quiet days
If you'd rather not open Activity just to find out nothing failed, set up Discord notifications. Give your team a Discord webhook and tick what you want to hear about: a post written, a post that failed, topics found, a post published, or any other run that failed.
You choose which projects send messages, and a project can have its own list instead of the team's. Notifications never carry the post body.
With failure alerts on, a message tells you when Activity is worth opening. On the other days, Needs attention and a quick look at Working now are all you need.