We are excited by this new feature because it empowers users to make the most of the new thumbnail preview functionality we released earlier in the month. With custom thumbnails you can upload your own thumbnails to provide a sneak preview of what’s inside the content card. This feature is very handy in two situations:
1) The automatically generated preview isn’t quite what you want . You would prefer to add your own thumbnail that better represents what’s inside the content card. For the design and brand minded users you can ensure that all thumbnails are onbrand and consistently designed. You could, for example, create your own style of thumbnails for text cards that contain embedded video.
2) The content card is linking to a file in your cloud storage system – eg GDrive, Sharepoint, Dropbox etc. Typically, these cards will generate a thumbnail that is either blank or is a thumbnail of a login page. So, in these cases you definitely want the flexibility to upload your own thumbnail.
How to create a custom thumbnail
It is a two step process.
First, you will need to create a JPEG or PNG file that contains the image of what you want to create a thumbnail for. There are many design applications that allow you to generate these file formats. We suggest the easiest way for non technical users is to simply do one of two approaches:
a) take a screenshot of something that contains the thumbnail image. eg. the front cover of a PDF, a web page etc
b) create a Powerpoint slide or Google Slide with the desired design and use the Export function to export the slide to a JPEG or PNG
Second, you simply hover your mouse over the content card in the Content page – and select “Custom thumbnail”. You will be prompted to upload the file – when you do – you will be able to move and/or resize the thumbnail area to best suit the thumbnail you want to create.
The video below provides a brief overview of the process and shows how easy it is to create and apply a custom thumbnail in approximately 30 seconds.