The Link Assistant is the Fred module that helps you to quickly locate suitable articles for the shapes on the page you’re making up.

The Link Assistant allows you to, in one-click operation, select an entire article shape on the page and to display the list of suitable articles. The list of articles is filtered to match the needs of the shape, related to the body length and the number of article images.

Without Link Assistant it is not easy to quickly identify the best suitable article for a layout on the page.

But with Link Assistant it becomes very simple. Hold CTRL while clicking the Middle mouse's button over any shape of the article layout. This performs several actions: selects all the shapes of that article layout, estimates the body length and number of pictures required, and then automatically switches to the LinkAssist panel, and displays a list of suitable articles.

When you pick one article and drag it over it gets linked, the page saved and the listing updated.

Then CTRL+MIDDLE CLICK another shape, the listing gets updated with the articles suitable for that shape, you pick an article and drag it over to be linked. And you continue so for all other shapes on the page until the page is complete with articles. See also Useful shortcut keys.

It is reasonable to expect that you will never have a very long list of articles that are suitable for any selected shape and this automatic narrowing of content makes the feature quite easy to use.

Note

The Link Assistant works for the currently selected article layout on page. That means, if you have 6 article layouts on a page, you will need run the Link Assistant 6 times. If you look for more automation, then consider the Automated page make-up (APM).

See also

How to use the Link Assistant?