SoftSolzDocs

Social Publishing

Connect your LinkedIn, Facebook Page and Instagram Business accounts once, then write a post and publish it to all of them together - now or on a schedule.

Overview

The Social Publishing service gives you:

Connect your accounts

  1. Social Publishing → Accounts. The page is called Connected accounts.
  2. Click Connect LinkedIn, Connect Facebook Page or Connect Instagram.
  3. Sign in to that network and approve access - exactly like connecting a Google or Microsoft login. You are returned to the Accounts page and a message confirms the account is connected.
Facebook and Instagram need a paid plan and a one-time access request. On the free plan their buttons are locked and say Available on a paid plan. On a paid plan, click Request Facebook Page access or Request Instagram access and paste your Facebook profile address. We email you once access is turned on, and the Connect button then works. LinkedIn needs neither.
Instagram publishing works with an Instagram Business account that is linked to a Facebook Page you manage. Connect Instagram signs you in with Facebook and picks up every Instagram Business account linked to your Pages.

A newly connected account can only be used by you (Only me). Use Share on its row to let colleagues post to it; only the person who connected it, or a super admin, can share it. The row also has a button to re-check the connection and one to disconnect it.

Your plan sets how many accounts you can connect: 1 on the free plan, 3 on Basic, 10 on Growth and unlimited on Business, with an overall maximum of 25 per workspace.

Compose a post

  1. Social Publishing → Compose.
  2. Write your post text, or use Write with AI. Optionally attach up to 4 images, one video or one document, or create an image with AI.
  3. Under Publish to, tick the accounts you want to post to.
  4. Under When, choose Now or Schedule.
  5. Click Publish now (or Schedule post). Save as draft keeps it for later without posting anything.
Instagram posts need a JPEG or PNG image. Without one the Publish button stays disabled and the composer says Instagram needs a JPEG or PNG image. Add one to publish. Add an image, or untick Instagram. Facebook posts only the first attachment.

The same text goes to every account you tick. To send different text to each account, a developer can do it through the API.

Publish & schedule

Choose Now to publish straight away, or Schedule to pick a future date and time - SoftSolz publishes it for you automatically. If a network is temporarily unavailable, delivery to that account is retried for you, up to 5 attempts. If it still fails, the post is marked failed and admins get a Social post failed notice, so you can reconnect the account and try again.

Track delivery

Social Publishing → Posts has four tabs:

TabWhat it shows
PostedPosts that went out. This is the tab you land on.
DraftsPosts you saved without publishing. Open one to edit it.
ScheduledPosts waiting for their time. You can still edit them.
HistoryEverything, including posts that failed.

Each post shows its status (draft, scheduled, publishing, completed, partially failed or failed) and how many accounts it reached, for example 1/1 sent. Click the eye icon on a post to open Post delivery: it lists each account's status (pending, publishing, published, failed, dead when every retry failed, or skipped) and View attempts shows each try. Use Try again on a post that failed, Share on a post that went out, and Delete all to clear the Posted or History tab.

Plan ahead with Topics

Social Publishing → Topics is where you plan content instead of writing one post at a time. A group bundles many topics that share the same accounts, style and cadence; loose topics are single ideas you keep on the side and schedule when you want.

Every topic knows which of your connected accounts its post goes to. You pick the accounts once for the whole group, and you can override them on a single topic if one post should go somewhere different.

Create a group

  1. Topics - name the group, then either let the AI research topics for your industry or paste your own list, one per line.
  2. Content - choose the accounts to post to, the tone, the post format (standard post, story, list, how-to, hot take, case study, question, announcement or tips), the model, and whether to generate an image for each post.
  3. Schedule - set the start date, the time of the first post, how many posts per day and the gap between them. Turn Publish automatically on to have each post go live on its slot, or leave it off to review every draft first.
  4. Review - Create & schedule researches the topics now and queues them. Save as draft just stores the setup: nothing is researched and no AI credits are used until you open the group and choose Research topics.

Import a plan you already have

  1. Social Publishing → Topics → Import plan.
  2. Drop in your file - CSV, Excel, Word, PDF, Markdown or plain text, up to 10 MB (5 MB on the free plan). Each row needs a topic; a short description and a planned date are used when they are there. Column names do not have to match anything. Up to 100 topics are read, and reading the file uses AI credits.
  3. Check what was read. Every topic, description, date and format is shown for you to correct, and you can drop any row that should not be there. A topic with no date is kept as an idea you can schedule later.
  4. Set the accounts and content for the whole plan, plus how many days before its date each post should be drafted.
  5. Import. The plan appears under Topics as a group you can open at any time to see progress.
The file is read once to pull out your topics and then discarded. It is not stored on your workspace.

What happens on the day

Each post is written ahead of its slot rather than at the last second, so there is a real draft to look at with a Review draft or View / Edit button beside the topic. If Publish automatically is on, that draft is scheduled and goes out at its time; if it is off, it waits for you. If a topic cannot be written - for example because the account it was pointed at has since been disconnected - it is marked failed with the reason and everyone with access is notified, so you can fix it and reschedule.

AI settings

Social Publishing → Settings holds the rules the AI follows when it writes for you: things it should always do and never do, the default model, your own tones, and the Knowledge Hub collections it may draw facts from.

Use the API

Developers can drive the same flow from a backend: list accounts, create a post, and publish or schedule it. See the Social Publishing developer guide and the full reference at developer.softsolz.uk/reference.

Test it step by step

This proves the whole round trip: connect an account, publish a post, and see it delivered. Doing it in the sandbox first means nothing reaches a real network.

  1. Install the service. Open Marketplace, find Social Publishing and click Install. You need to be an owner or admin to install services.
  2. Check your permissions. Admins have every Social Publishing permission by default. For anyone else, open Members & access → Roles and give their role the Social Publishing permissions to view, connect accounts, create posts and publish.
  3. Switch to the sandbox. Open the menu under your name at the bottom of the sidebar and choose Switch to Sandbox mode. In the sandbox, connecting an account creates a test account and publishing is simulated, so you do not need a real social account yet.
  4. Connect LinkedIn. Go to Social Publishing → Accounts and click Connect LinkedIn. A message says LinkedIn connected (in the sandbox: Sandbox account ready for testing), and a new row appears with the status active. Facebook and Instagram are not available in a free sandbox, so test with LinkedIn.
  5. Publish a post. Open Compose, type a short message, tick the account under Publish to, leave When on Now and click Publish now.
  6. Check it arrived. A message says Post sent and you land on Posts, on the Posted tab. The post shows as completed with 1/1 sent.
  7. Try a scheduled post. Compose another post, choose Schedule, pick a time a few minutes ahead and click Schedule post. It waits on the Scheduled tab, then moves to Posted once the time passes.
  8. Do it for real. Switch back to live (Switch to Live mode in the same menu), connect your real LinkedIn account, and publish a test post. This needs a real LinkedIn account, and the post really appears on LinkedIn, so delete it there afterwards if you only wanted a test.

For developers

Create a sandbox API key under Global API keys with the Compose and manage posts permission, then create a draft post. A draft is never sent to any network.

curl -X POST https://app.softsolz.uk/api/v1/services/social/posts \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer sk_test_your_key" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"body": "Testing our new posting setup."}'

A 201 reply with "status": "draft" means it worked. The Social Publishing developer guide shows how to add accounts to a post and publish it.

If something goes wrong

What you seeWhat it means
Connecting Facebook and Instagram is available on a paid plan.You are on the free plan, live or sandbox. Use LinkedIn, or choose a paid plan.
Facebook and Instagram access has not been enabled for this workspace yet.Your access request has not been approved yet. You will get an email when it is.
Your plan includes 1 connected account. Disconnect one or upgrade your plan to connect more.You have reached your plan's account limit. Disconnect an account you no longer use, or upgrade.
The account shows expired, or a delivery says the access token is expired or revokedThe network ended SoftSolz's access. Click Connect for that network again, then use Try again on the failed post.
You can only post to accounts that are connected by you or shared with you.A colleague connected that account and has not shared it with you. Ask them to use Share on the Accounts page.

Common changes & risks