Migrating from Pages to Boards

Focal Boards are a new, purpose-built replacement for the earlier Pages view, designed specifically to support structured, scalable creative project management. While Pages offered flexibility for drafting and documentation, Boards introduce a table-first format that turns your creative work into a structured workflow.

The biggest update in the Boards view, is that you are now able to share individual views with specific users. In the example above, "Marketing" is the name of the board, and "Agency ABC" is one of the views.

This allows you to e.g. combine all external stakeholders in one board, but still make sure that they can only see the rows/briefs assigned to them. This also makes it a lot easier to customize views specific to certain functions or roles within your team, to make sure they are as relevant as possible and don't contain unnecessary information for their work.

Along with the new Boards view, we have also released a major update to Automations, and now allow you to create a nested folder structure automatically and to use media columns as conditions.

If you're already using Creative Boards in the Pages view, you can easily migrate them over to Boards, and even combine multiple existing pages into one bigger board. Below are the steps for this migration:

Start by navigating to Settings - General, and enable the Boards feature at the bottom. While you're doing the migration, leave both views enabled to easily move between the two.

In the Boards view, add a new board and the columns you would like to move over from Pages. You don't need to add any tags or other data into the new board, but should set up the columns the same way you're using them in Pages in order to be able to migrate rows.

Once you have a new Board with the columns added, navigate into a page with a Board/database you would like to migrate. On top of the database, you'll see a newly added icon for migrating to Boards 2.0.

Note that you can do the migration doesn't break anything in the current page, and you can do it multiple times if necessary.

Once you click open the migration panel and select the new Board, you'll be able to map the columns in the old board to the new board. Focal will automatically detect columns with the exact same name and type, and allow you to manually select the others.

If you would like to skip some columns, just pick "Don't migrate" in the dropdown. Once you're done mapping the columns, click confirm to start the migration.

This will move the existing rows and data into the new board. This includes selection column options and existing creative assets (i.e. no duplicates will be created).

If you have multiple pages you would like to migrate, you'll need to go through this flow for each of them to fully migrate.

Once the migration is done, navigate to the new Board view, where you should now see all the migrated rows.

The last step is setting up the automations in the new board. Our recommendation is to create a new parent folder in the Asset Library, and then a new automation in the new board, which moves all existing assets into that folder.

The automations now allow you to create a nested folder structure, which means that you can have automatic sub-folders by view in the new board, all coming from one automation.

Once the new board is fully set up and you're ready to start using it, you can invite people to specific views only. This is a great way to work with multiple external stakeholders in one board.

If you open up the Sharing panel within a new board, you'll see that you can share access on two different levels, either to the full board or an individual view.

Space Owners and Members automatically get access to all public boards (through the "Everyone in this space" group), but space guests need to be added individually to each view.

When guests log in, they will see the name of the board, but only the views they are specifically added to underneath it.

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After these steps, you're ok to hide the old Pages view under settings, and continue with the Board view only from now on. Please don't hesitate to reach out with any questions or feedback on the new boards.