Reading times help your team know exactly how long a document will take before they start marking steps as complete. No more guessing whether a process guide is a five-minute read or a thirty-minute deep dive - and when you're assigning training, you can plan around realistic time commitments instead of assumptions.
Waybook calculates Read Time automatically based on your document's text content every time you publish. If your document includes video or other media, you can override the estimate to reflect the actual time needed.
Setting and Overriding Read Time
Read Time is calculated automatically on publish - there's nothing to configure for most documents. But if a document includes embedded videos, walkthroughs, or interactive content, the auto-calculation won't account for that time. You can set a manual override, so your team gets a realistic estimate.
Open the document you want to adjust
Click Settings in the top right corner
Scroll to the Read Time field
Enter your custom estimate in minutes
Save your changes
💡 Waybook Tip:
For documents with embedded videos, add the video length to the Read Time estimate. This gives your team a realistic picture of what they're committing to.
Where Your Team Sees Read Time
Your team can see the Read Time for any document in the document information panel. It's displayed alongside details like the version number, document owner, and last publish date - giving them a quick sense of what they're about to read before they dive in.
Whether someone is working through assigned training or choosing what to read next, they can see at a glance whether they're looking at a quick refresher or a longer session.
Read Time in the Document Manager
When you're planning what to assign to your team, the document manager gives you a clear view of how long each document will take to complete. Add Read Time as a column to see estimates across all your documents at once.
Click Manage in your left sidebar to open the document manager
Click Columns in the top right
Toggle Read Time on under the General section
You can also filter documents by Read Time to find content that fits the time your team has available. Need to assign something your team can finish in a quick break? Filter for shorter reads. Planning a dedicated training session? Pull up longer documents.
🚀 Try It Now:
Add the Read Time column to your document manager and sort by time. It's a quick way to spot your longest documents - they might be good candidates for breaking into smaller, more focused pieces.
Questions about Read Time or need help setting up overrides? Our support team is here to help!