You will learn

• How to manage and reuse templates in the modern editor
• How to start a new email using Cici, a template, or a blank canvas
• How to set styles once so new content matches automatically
• How to work with rows and columns
• How to add and adjust content blocks like text, images, buttons, and dividers
• How to use built-in AI tools to rewrite, translate, and spell-check content
• How to personalize emails with merge tags and fallback text
• How to add translation links, surveys, and video
• How to track changes with version history

• How to collaborate with your team in real time
   

   

  Creating and managing templates:

Templates live in your Template Library, found under Manage > Templates. Use the type filter to switch between All types, Modern, and Legacy templates, so you can find and reuse designs no matter which editor they were originally built in.

To bring a legacy template into the modern editor, hover over it in your library, open the 3-dot menu, and select Clone. Workshop defaults the clone to the modern editor, though you can switch it back to legacy if needed. Choose Clone to duplicate it as-is, or Clone & edit to jump straight into the editor and start customizing.

Tip: Newly cloned templates stay in draft until you publish them. If a template isn't showing up in your library yet, check whether it still needs to be published.

Learn more: Creating, locating and managing templates

 

   Creating, editing and designing your email:

Creating a new email

From the Email index, click Create and choose Email, or use the main Create button. You'll choose between a regular email and an automated email, then choose your editor — modern is the default, but you can continue to the legacy editor if you prefer.

Once you're in the modern editor, you have three ways to get started: build with the Cici AI agent, start from scratch using the builder tools, or start from a template in your library. Your Settings tab (left panel) is also where you'll add your subject line, preview text, sender details, and recipients before sending.

Learn more: Creating an Email in the Modern Editor

Building with the Cici AI agent

Cici is Workshop's built-in AI agent for drafting emails. Describe what you want — a weekly newsletter, a CEO update, a policy change announcement — or choose one of the suggested prompts, and Cici generates a complete draft that follows your brand standards.

Once Cici finishes, keep refining with the "Ask Cici anything" prompt box, or switch to the builder tools to make manual adjustments.

Learn more: Generating an email with the Cici AI agent

Setting styles for consistency

The Styles panel (the paint palette icon) lets you set your defaults once — background and body color, content width, and settings for text, links, buttons, padding, and dividers — so anything you add afterward automatically matches. Each text type (Heading 1, Heading 2, paragraph, and so on) has its own settings, so you can differentiate your typography without adjusting every block individually.

Learn more: Setting style guidelines when editing your email

Applying styles to ad hoc changes

If you customize a block manually before setting your styles — or make a one-off change — that block won't automatically follow later updates to your Styles panel. Look for the paintbrush icon next to the Styles header; it appears only when something in your email doesn't match your saved styles. Use it to apply your styles to everything at once, or just to the items you select.

Tip: The paintbrush disappears once everything matches your styles. If you can't find it, there's nothing left to update.

Learn more: Applying Styles to existing or altered email content

Working with rows and columns

The Build panel has two tabs: Content and Rows. Drag in a row to choose your column layout, then use Row settings to control visibility (show a row to specific recipients only) and styling (background color, alignment, padding, corners, and mobile stacking).

Click into Column settings to adjust spacing between columns, drag the divider between columns to resize them individually, or add and remove columns as needed.

Learn more: Resizing Columns in an email

Adding and customizing content blocks

From the Content tab, drag in headings, paragraphs, images, buttons, dividers, spacers, surveys, video, and your brand kit logo. Each block has its own Visibility and Styles options, so you can control how it looks and who sees it.

For images, select from your Media Library, then adjust width, alignment, alt text, and linking. For buttons, set the destination, sizing, shape, border, and alignment. Ad hoc changes to any block will need to be reapplied through the paintbrush if you want them to match your saved styles.

Learn more: Creating and Editing Content in the Modern Editor

Using AI tools on your content

Highlight any text in a paragraph block to reveal the AI Tools menu. From there you can rewrite content, expand on an idea, change the tone, translate into more than 120 languages, shorten your copy, or run a spell check — all without leaving the editor.

Learn more: Using AI Tools to Modify, Spellcheck and Translate Content

Adding merge tags and fallback text

Merge tags let you pull recipient details, like first name, directly from your list into the email. Select the merge tag option from the text toolbar, choose your attribute, and set fallback text (like "friend") to display if that data is missing for a recipient.

Learn more: Adding merge tags to your emails

Adding anchor links

Highlight any text choose linking options to apply anchor links for recipients to easily navigate your email.

Learn more: Adding anchor links to your email

Adding and managing tables within a paragraph

using your text toolbar, you can add tables of varying sizes and adjust the size, colors and contents accordingly. 

Learn more: Adding tables to emails

Adding a translation link

Highlight any text and select the translation link option to create a link that opens a translated version of that content in a new window — a quick way to offer multilingual content without duplicating your whole email.

Learn more: Adding Language Translation Links to Your Email in the Modern Editor

Adding a survey

Drag in a Survey block to collect quick feedback — choose from a star rating, thumbs up/down, mood scale, or an open-ended suggestion box. Name the survey for reporting, and optionally enable anonymous responses if you don't want to track who submitted what.

Learn more: Including Surveys in Your Emails

Adding video content

The Video block now supports links from most video sources, not just YouTube and Vimeo, though thumbnails still generate automatically only for those two. You can replace the thumbnail manually, toggle the play button overlay, and adjust the button's theme and shape.

Learn more: Adding Video to your emails in the Modern Editor

Tracking changes with version history

The version history panel (the clock icon near Undo) shows every change made to an email, who made it, and when. Use Preview to review a past version, or Restore to roll back to it — handy if edits were made to the wrong email or something needs undoing.

Learn more: Real-time collaboration and version history

Collaborating in real time

Share an email with teammates from the Actions menu to set their access level. When you're both editing at the same time, you'll see presence avatars for who else is in the email, along with their live cursor as they make changes — similar to real-time collaboration in Google Docs.

Learn more: Real-time collaboration and version history