Dovetail Podcasts features an efficient way to create multiple episode drafts for your series, whether you’re just adding a few episodes or planning an entire season. It’s important to have drafts of your series on your series page to make it easier for you to plan episodes in advance, but it also helps our advertising operations team know how many episodes are coming up and lets them make forecasts.
Before you begin, you’ll need a couple of things in place first:
- Make sure you have an account for PRX Dovetail. If you don’t, it only takes a few moments to one up at PRX » Sign Up
- Your series should already be set up in Dovetail. If it is not, you can find the guide to setting up your series here.
Once those steps are complete and the series exists in Dovetail, your series is ready for you to set up some drafts. It’s important to have drafts in your series not only for ease of planning, but for series forecasts in Dovetail Inventory (but that’s for another guide!)
Step 1 - Using your username/email and password, log in at id.prx.org.
Step 2 - Select Dovetail Podcasts from the available options.
Step 3 - Select the Podcast you would like to create episodes drafts for, then select the 
icon on the right of the screen.
Pro-tip: Another way to access the episode planning page is to click on “settings” on the series page and scroll down the left side menu and click on “Plan Episodes”
The first section you’ll encounter is Plan Episodes
Step 4 - Enter the values that relate to your podcasts' release schedule
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Select the day of the week and which weeks in a month you plan to drop episodes.
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Enter the Start Date by clicking that field and select the date on the calendar pop-up.
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To add the limit of drafts produced, use the arrows or type a number in the Number of Episodes field.
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Alternately, you can pick an End Date by clicking a date on the pop-up calendar.
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Step 5 - Enter additional draft settings
- File Format
- You can choose to upload multiple audio files, upload a single file to segment later, or upload a video file. (To learn how to segment a single file, you can check out the guide on using the segmenting tool here.)
- Ad Breaks
- Entering a number or use the arrows in the field to indicate the number of midroll ads that typically appear in your episodes.
- Publish Time
- Establish a routine time for your episodes to publish by selecting the time of day in the dropdown menu. (Note: the time displayed will be in your local time zone.)
The settings selected in the Draft Settings section will determine what shows up on the calendar. Drafts can also be scheduled/removed at this stage by selecting or deselecting the date.
Step 6 - Once things are set up as you want, click “Create [x] Drafts” directly above the calendar, and the drafts will be created. Note: you cannot set a start date for episode drafts more than one year out from the current date. However, you can set up a schedule of created drafts by selecting dates individually from the calendar up to two years in advance.
You’ll be able to find them under the main Episodes tab, listed on the left side under Draft or Scheduled Episodes.
Now that your drafts are set up, How to Publish an Episode will guide you through getting those drafts ready for the world.
If you have any other questions, you can always contact us at help@prx.org.