The 1-2-3 Guide to Manny, The Channel Manager Dashboard

Welcome to Manny, the Helium Channel Managers' window into their channels. This guide provides the basic ins and outs of how to use the Channel Manager Dashboard and what to look for.

You must be logged into Helium in order to log into Manny. Once you're logged in, open another browser tab and go to this URL:

http://manny.helium.com/cgi-bin/manny.pl

Be sure to save this link as a favorite in your browser so you can access it easily in the future.

If you're having trouble logging in, Manny might be unavailable due to updates. Manny pauses daily (typically at 11:50am GMT) for about one and one half hours to collect the latest information and statistics. If you’re having trouble logging in, please wait an hour or two and then try again. If you still cannot access Manny, please report it to your Root Channel Manager.

Here are two important points to remember about Manny: (A) While it works in Chrome and Internet Explorer, Manny is optimized for the Firefox browser, and (B) Manny displays the previous day's statistics—the data is 24 hours old.

What's on the Front Page
Once in the Dashboard, you’ll have access to two main areas: My Channels and My Metrics.

1. My Channels provides access to all the channels you manage. For your channel and/or sub-channel(s), you’ll see the channel name, channel ID number, the date of the last title added to the channel and the date of the last article added to the channel.

 2. The metrics chart at the bottom of the page shows the number of suggested titles, rates and grades you have done over the past year. Use this area to gauge your own activity. Squares that are highlighted in pink show a lack of activity, while those highlighted in grey show satisfactory activity, and those that are grey show exceptional activity. Challenge yourself to changing squares from pink to yellow or grey.

Digging Deeper into Manny
From the My Channels section, clicking on a channel name will bring you into an overview of the channel’s activity, also known as the Channel Dashboard.

Channel Managers and the Channel Tree
At the top of the Channel Dashboard screen, you’ll see the names of the Channel Managers who have access to this channel. Click on the names of the other Channel Managers to pop up a new window with their About Me page. (Click on your own name to pop up a window with your My Helium page.)

To the right of the Channel Managers’ names is the Channel Tree, which shows where your channel fits in Helium’s taxonomy. The channel you’re working on is highlighted in red at the bottom of the list. (You can click on the underlined sub-channel name to back up another level and get to detailed reports of those channels.) To the right of the Channel Tree are the Channel ID numbers.

If you want to get back to the front page, just click on “Channel Manager Dashboard” at the top of the page or click the back button on your browser.

Stats Summary
The Stats Summary is the main area of the Channel Dashboard you’ll be concerned with. Here you’ll find lots of juicy information about your channel. There are nine sections, eight of which you can dive into by clicking the underlined links. Here’s a breakdown.

Titles in Channel
Click on this link to see a list of all the titles in this channel, along with the number of articles written to the title, the date the last article in that title was created, and the most recent date the article was updated. (Articles that are new, edited or successfully leapfrogged are all considered “updated”.) You can sort by any of the columns by clicking the column header.

What to look for: Look for titles with only one or two articles that might need beefing up. Drive writers to these titles. Keep an eye on larger titles that might need splitting. Look for titles that may need editing.

Writers Last 30 Days
Who’s been writing in your channel? You’ll see a list of names (linked to the writer’s About Me page) and Articles Site Wide (how many other articles this writer has contributed), Articles This Channel (how many pieces has this writer contributed in the last 30 days – including Marketplace and leapfrogs), Date Joined and Latest Article.

What to look for: Find active writers to let them know of other titles of interest. Find new members and welcome them to Helium. Find writers with low numbers and woo them back to your channel.

Articles in channel
This is a static number of the total articles in your channel.

Empty Titles
These titles have no active articles. Columns at the right show when the title was created and when it was updated (in case it had a fix in the meantime). Remember, information in Manny is updated once a day.

What to look for: Focus on getting these titles filled by notifying interested members and posting in forums and Groups. All leaf channel pages have an RSS feed for empty titles, which can be found on Helium. If a title is badly written or out-of-date, add it to a list that you can send up to your Root or Senior Channel Manager for bulk removal.

Quiescent Writers (30 days to 6 months)
Writers come and go, and here’s where you can track previously active writers in your channel. These writers have not contributed an article to your channel in the last 30 days to 6 months.

You’ll see:
1.   The writer’s name, linked to their About Me page
2.   Their total articles on the site
3.   Their total articles in your channel
4.   The date they joined Helium
5.   The date of their last article in your channel
6.   The date of their last article on Helium

What to look for: Gain a little insight before contacting a member. If they have not been on the site lately, perhaps they have gotten too busy. If they have not contributed to your channel but have contributed elsewhere on the site, perhaps you can point them to empty titles. Focus on people who have many articles in your channel or those who haven’t.

Ungraded Articles
Articles must be vetted and graded by Channel Managers. As a community leader and subject-matter expert in your channel, we need your expert opinion on just how good each article and writer is. By grading articles, you add another layer of data we can use to ensure the best writers rise to the top. From this screen, you can link through to each ungraded article in your channel.

The older articles appear at the top of the page, with the newer ones at the bottom. During a grading session, you can grade new and old articles, giving valuable feedback and praise to the new writers in your channel. Remember to contact the writer through the Article Tools on the site so that they know which article you are giving feedback for.

Once you click on a title, you’re brought to the Grade Articles screen. Here you can rate a title as one of five levels of quality.

• Premier: Top-notch quality. This must have been written by a professional writer
• Above Average: Solid article with few errors
• Average: A decent piece, but writer could improve style, information or grammar
• Needs Work: Article has potential, but needs a lot of improvement
• Delete: Dreadful article! How did this make it on Helium?

Please be careful with the delete grade. This is for the most extreme cases of bad quality. Once an article is graded for deletion, it will go to a trained NARS editor for a final review and decision.

New Titles Last Year
This section provides Channel Managers with perfect insight into what titles and what articles are entering your channels. Use this tool to determine if titles need to be edited and moved.

What to look for: Find out what titles are coming to your channel and determine if they need to be moved. Determine if there are a large number of a certain type or topic of titles that are going to your channel that shouldn’t, then escalate to a Senior Channel Manager for analysis by the Title Reviewer Team.

New Writers Last 30 Days
These are writers who have joined Helium in the last 30 days and written to your channel.

What to look for: Find new members and welcome them individually through the Helium Inbox. This will generate new writing energy. Those with many articles in your channel might appreciate other similar titles with no or few articles.

New Articles Last 60 Days
This tab displays a list of new articles written in the last 60 days along with the author's name and the article creation date. You can access the article by clicking on the article ID number provided in the first column. 

What to look for: Keep an eye on the authors in this list; you may want to tempt them to write to other empty titles in your channel. 

Stats History
Here’s a 19-month, month-to-month view of your channel’s performance by new articles, active writers, filled titles, new titles and total titles.

The only row that is cumulative is the number of titles in the channel – but as long as the numbers are going up each month on the other rows, that’s great! If you’re seeing an overall increase or drop off, chat with other Channel Managers to see if they’re seeing the same.

What to look for: Work with writers to increase your numbers via writer in-reach emails and posting titles to forums, Groups and Zones. Senior and Root Channel Managers can compare trendlines within their teams.

Overall Goals for Channel Managers and Manny
There is a wealth of information here and we ask all Channel Managers to focus much of their time and energy on the following areas:

1. Find prolific writers and determine if they need encouragement, mentorship or some extra help. You may even find some who shouldn’t be here, and we ask that you escalate those members to a Senior Channel Manager.

2. Find empty titles and those with one or two articles. Work on filling those via forums, Groups, Contact This Writer emails to writers or compile groups of 15 empty titles for contests.

3. Read through your titles to edit for style, spelling, etc.

4. Come up with new titles based on topics that are already represented.

5. Welcome new writers. Show them the ropes—give them a tour!

6. Encourage old writers to come back and write to your channel.

7. Find potential Channel Managers or EAB candidates.

8. Ensure your “Stats History” trend lines are going up, up, up!

Support
Questions, suggestions and bug reports should be escalated to Root and Senior Channel Managers, who can confirm and send them along to the Channel Manager Program Coordinator.