Welcome to our Acrolinx Sidebar quick start. Here you'll learn:
In short: You use the Sidebar to check the quality of your content wherever you create it. After the check, you get a score and suggestions for improvements.
When you use an Acrolinx Integration, you’ll sign in to Acrolinx and get the Sidebar in return. The Acrolinx Platform processes and reads your content when you run a check. Then, it feeds the Sidebar with the outcome of the check. You’ll get your results in colored cards.
Notice
Depending on your setup, your Sidebar might be integrated into various content-creation tools.
Look out for the little Acrolinx check mark , which will appear in blue or black. Depending on your environment, you might not see it straight away. It's usually included in toolbars and ribbon menus, but sometimes you'll find it listed under add-ons plugins.
Tip
If you can't find the Sidebar, look at the documentation specific to your Acrolinx Integration. There’s a "Where's my Sidebar?" article that will help you.
Click the icon to toggle the Sidebar!
When you open the Sidebar for the first time, you'll land on a start page where Acrolinx asks you for connection details. You'll need to connect to the Acrolinx Platform before you start checking. Your Acrolinx admin should’ve given you your Acrolinx URL and sign-in details.
And you're in!
In the Sidebar, you can select the style guide you want to check with. A style guide contains approved style guidance for a particular type of content. For example, you could have a style guide for blog posts and another one for technical documentation. Whoever administers Acrolinx at your company can set these up for you.
Before you start checking, make sure that you have the right style guide. Your Acrolinx admin might have already set a preferred style guide for you, so only change things here if you're sure you need to.
To change the style guide, follow these steps:
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Click the Options tab in the slide-out menu.
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To set the Acrolinx options, select an item in the Style guide dropdown. The rest of the settings will be configured for you.
Tip
If you can’t see any style guides in the dropdown, don’t panic. It might be that no style guides are assigned to you yet.
Now, you can start checking!
After you've chosen a style guide, you're ready to run a check.
To run a check, follow these steps:
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Click the CHECK button in the first tab at the top of the Sidebar.
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Unless your content is flawless, issues will probably show up. The Sidebar shows content issues with interactive colored cards.
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(Optional) You can decide which cards get displayed. To filter out one or more goals, open the filter menu in the top right corner of the Sidebar and click on a goal name. This will help you focus on the issue types that are most important to you. For example, click on the goal Tone to filter it out.
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Click through your Sidebar cards and decide which suggestions you want to accept. To learn more about the suggestions you see, visit The Sidebar Card Guide.
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Run another check to see how your content has improved.
Acrolinx gives you a Scorecard that scores your content based on the goals that you're checking for. You also get an overall Acrolinx Score. To view your Scorecard, click on your Acrolinx Score at the top right of the Sidebar or click Scorecard in the slide-out menu. Learn more about the Scorecard in Scorecard Essentials.