Facebook Launches Business Manager Tool

10 Famous Facebook Flops

Facebook officially launched its new Business Manager tool, which gives advertisers and marketers one interface to manage ad accounts, pages, apps, payment methods, and permissions. Facebook tested Business Manager with select companies over the last month and expects to roll it out to everyone within the next few weeks, the company said in an announcement.

Business Manager aims to streamline workflows. Users can view which external partners -- such as agencies or Preferred Marketing Developers (PMDs) -- have access to a business's pages and set individual permissions for them and for in-house team members.

If you handle advertising for your own company, Business Manager will show you the pages, ad accounts, and apps linked to your brand. You'll also see the people on your team and their permissions, in addition to external partners such as agencies and PMDs with access to your pages, apps, and ad accounts.

[Know what Facebook tracks, stores, and shares. Read Facebook Friend Tracking: 3 Facts.]

If you work for an ad agency, you'll see the pages, ad accounts, and apps to which your client has granted you access. You'll also see the people on your teams who can access them.

"Business Manager is built to help advertisers work better and faster," Facebook said in the announcement. "With one click, admins can add new people to ad accounts and Pages, greatly reducing the time it takes to set up and manage marketing efforts. For employees and external partners, Business Manager makes it easy to find the things they're working on."

The new tool more clearly separates a user's personal and professional use of Facebook. You can access Business Manager by logging in with your Facebook credentials to view ad accounts and pages you're working on without needing to be friends with other people from work or asking for personal email addresses to gain access.

Your other Facebook content and information is safe, too: Coworkers in Business Manager won't see your personal profile picture or personal posts and photos. They'll see only the pages and ad accounts you have permission to work on and the email address you chose to use in the business.

Business Manager also gives you more control over who can access your business account information. You can add and delete ad accounts linked to your company, and grant and revoke permission to employees and external partners.

There are 10 roles you can assign team members within Business Manager, depending on the permissions they require. These roles range from a business admin -- who manages all aspects of the business settings, including modifying or deleting the account and adding or removing new people -- to a page analyst, who cannot post on the Page, but can view insights.

If you're a large agency or a business interested in Business Manager, contact your Facebook sales representative to get started. If you don't have a sales rep, submit your email address in the field at the bottom of https://business.facebook.com/ to be notified when the tool is available to you.

Can the trendy tech strategy of DevOps really bring peace between developers and IT operations -- and deliver faster, more reliable app creation and delivery? Also in the DevOps Challenge issue of InformationWeek: Execs charting digital business strategies can't afford to take Internet connectivity for granted.