The Communications Planner is a planning board built into NeoArc Studio for the internal communications work that architects do: workshops, presentations, demos, town halls, design reviews, and stakeholder updates. The timeline-first design puts the question "what am I delivering next?" front and centre.
Two Views: Timeline and Board
Toggle between views with a single click. Both views share the same data, filters, and card detail panel.
Timeline View (Primary)
A horizontal timeline showing scheduled content across a 28-day window. Unscheduled cards sit in a sidebar on the left - drag them onto any day to assign a publishing date. Today is highlighted. Navigate forward and back by week.
Board View
A Kanban board with status columns: Idea, Preparing, Ready, and Delivered. Use this for batch management - how many ideas do I have? How many are stuck in preparing? Archived cards are hidden by default.
Content Cards
Each card represents a piece of planned or published content. Cards carry everything needed to manage the content lifecycle from idea to publication.
Status Lifecycle
Cards flow through five statuses: Idea (captured but not started), Preparing (drafting slides, building agenda, writing talking points), Ready (content complete, waiting to deliver), Delivered (workshop run, announcement sent, presentation given), and Archived (removed from active view).
Labels and Series
Organise cards with user-defined labels (e.g., security, governance, AI) and optional series names (e.g., "Architecture Documentation is Broken"). Filter the board or timeline by any combination.
Talking Points
Write talking points, key messages, or short announcement copy directly on the card. Use it as a prompt during delivery, or paste into an email or Slack when broadcasting.
Written Follow-Up
For workshop notes, post-event write-ups, or announcement pages, create a Content Foundry page directly from the card. Select a site, choose a directory, and the page is scaffolded with the card title. The card maintains a live link to the page.
Assignee Tracking
Assign cards to team members. Names are pre-populated from git identity when available and saved as a dropdown for quick selection on future cards. Filter the board or timeline by assignee to see who is responsible for what.
Multi-Channel Delivery
A single communication can reach its audience through multiple channels: a live workshop, a town hall slot, a follow-up Slack post, an intranet announcement. Each channel tracks its own delivered/pending status independently. When all channels are marked as delivered, the card automatically advances to Delivered.
Free-Form Channels
Add any delivery channel by name - town hall, architecture council, Slack, email, intranet, or a specific team meeting. The channel is saved as a preset for future cards. When the communication has been delivered, click Mark as Delivered and optionally record a URL.
Content Foundry Sites
Target a Content Foundry site directly to publish workshop notes, follow-up write-ups, or announcement pages. Select the site, choose a directory, and create the page from within the card detail panel. The content flows through the standard publishing pipeline.
Saved Presets
Channels are saved automatically as presets. The next time you create a card, your existing channels (town hall, architecture Slack, engineering-all email) appear in the dropdown for one-click addition.
Architecture Bindings and Staleness Detection
This is where the Communications Planner connects to the architectural intelligence of NeoArc Studio. Any card - a workshop, a slide deck, a Slack update - can be bound to architectural constructs: model entities, schemas, API endpoints, ADRs, database profiles. When those constructs change structurally, the communication is flagged as potentially stale so the workshop deck or announcement gets revisited before being delivered again.
Bind to Architecture
Search the Intent Graph for any construct and bind it to a card. The current structural hash (FNV-1a) is captured at binding time. Multiple bindings per card are supported.
Staleness Detection
When a bound construct changes structurally (property added, type changed, relationship modified), the binding is flagged as stale. Visual changes like repositioning or recolouring do not trigger false positives.
Task Board Integration
When a binding goes stale, a review card is automatically created on the Task Board. The card says: "You told people you are using MongoDB. The architecture has changed. Review this communication."
Acknowledge or Update
Review the stale binding and either acknowledge it (the communication is still accurate) or update the content. Acknowledging captures the new structural hash so the same change does not re-trigger.
Use Cases
The Communications Planner serves architects and architecture teams planning internal engagements: workshops, presentations, town halls, design reviews, and team updates.
Workshops and Design Reviews
Plan workshop series, architecture design reviews, and technical deep-dives. Keep slides, agendas, and takeaways linked to the architectural constructs they cover.
Decision Announcements
When the team makes a significant architectural decision (ADR), plan how to communicate it to engineering teams. Track which channels have been notified.
Town Halls and Demos
Schedule town hall slots, all-hands presentations, and demo sessions. Group a series of related sessions and track which audiences have been covered.
Breaking Change Notifications
When a breaking API change is planned, create a communications card to ensure all consuming teams are notified through appropriate channels before the change is merged.
Onboarding Content
Plan and maintain onboarding guides, architectural overviews, and getting-started documentation. Bind them to the constructs they describe so you know when they need updating.
Architecture Team Cadence
Give the architecture team a predictable rhythm of internal communication so important information reaches the right people at the right moment - not as an afterthought.
Persistence and Version Control
The Communications Planner stores data as JSON files in the .neoarc-studio directory. An index file holds lightweight card summaries, channel presets, and settings. Each card has its own file for scalability. All files are version-controlled in Git alongside the rest of the architecture, providing a full audit trail of what was communicated, when, and by whom.
