Control the publishing process

Large organizations with geographically distributed editors often benefit from process support when creating, reviewing, publishing, and translating content. Optimizely Content Management System (CMS) is built for a distributed way of working, with various options for managing content creation and publishing depending on the size and setup of organizations.

Ways of controlling the publishing process:

The following features can be used to control the publishing process:

Content must be approved before it can be published

Content approvals are a way to ensure that content is reviewed and approved before publication. When an editor has finished working on a content item, the item is set to Ready for Review. One or more appointed reviewers must then approve the content item before publication. The reviewers are defined by an administrator in an approval sequence.
Changes must be approved before they are applied

Change approvals are a way to make sure that certain changes are reviewed and approved before they are applied. The changes applicable for review affect how your application looks to visitors, such as moving a page to another parent item in the structure (as that can affect menus) or changes to access rights, language settings, or expiration dates.
Restrict publishing access rights

Access rights let you control what editors can do where in the content structure. A typical example is restricting the right to publish content to editor groups. This means that the publish option is not available for editors. Instead, they use the Ready to Publish status option. You can then view the content under Tasks.
Use the Tasks tab

The simplest way to monitor content creation activities is to use tasks. The Tasks option lists changes to content filtered by content status.

You can use the following options for monitoring content creation and content approvals:
- Draft – List draft versions that you have created or changed.
- Rejected – Lists content items in the Rejected status that you created or changed. Items are set as Rejected when set to Ready for Review or Ready to Publish and then are declined. You can edit and update content in Rejected status before you set it to Ready to Publish or Ready for Review again.
- In Review – Lists content items on the application that are set as Ready for Review. See Content approvals.
- Ready to Publish – Lists content items on the application that are set as Ready to Publish and that you have publish rights to.
- Marked as Being Edited – Lists content items on the application that you have set as being edited. See Tools under Basic information properties.
- Recently Changed – Lists the last items that you or any other editor have changed for the application.
- Awaiting Review – Lists the content items you sent for review and are in content status In Review.
- Declined Reviews – List the content items you sent for review and are declined items in content status Rejected. When the item is updated, it is no longer displayed in this list.
- Approved Reviews – Lists the content items you have sent for review and are approved that is in content status Ready to Publish. When the item is published (or updated), it is no longer displayed in this list.
- Awaiting Your Review – Lists the content items of which you are one of the designated approvers.
- Approved by You – Lists the content items you have approved. When the item is published (or updated), it is no longer displayed in this list.

Clicking a content item in the filtered task list displays the item in the main area. Use the Versions gadget to see the version history for that particular content item. If you have publishing access rights, you can decide upon further publishing actions from the Versions gadget.