Approve changes

Approving changes is an add-on to Optimizely Content Management System (CMS), which lets you ensure that certain actions affecting the website structure or content are reviewed and approved before they are applied. The actions that you can approve are changes to access rights, language settings for fallback and replacement languages, expiration date, and the moving of pages and assets such as blocks, images, and media in the structure.

Moving a page does not trigger a change; it remains under the same parent page, when the page is moved only to change the sort order.

Approving changes is similar to approving content, which is a feature where the content must be reviewed and approved before it can be published. You cannot approve a change without approving content. Both features use the same approval sequences, meaning that the same reviewers approve changes to content and settings such as access rights, language settings, and so on.

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Note

The Optimizely Digital Experience Platform (DXP) contains many features to support you in your daily work. Depending on how your solution is set up, some features described in this documentation may not be available.

Set up an approve sequence that defines the reviewers. An administrator sets up the sequence and can specify any number of approval steps and any number of reviewers in each step. 

When an approval sequence is defined, the approval process is started when a user performs one of the actions that trigger the Change approvals. When the process is started, the change must be approved or declined (or the review request canceled) before any other change that requires approval can be done.

When one of the reviewers in a step approves the change, that step is considered completed, and the reviewers in the next step of the sequence are notified that they have a change to review. The change is immediately applied when all steps in the approval sequence are approved.

Example: One-step change approval

Tina was asked to change the order of the products in the Alloy top navigation menu. Because the navigation menu order is controlled by the order of the pages in the page tree, she moves the Alloy Track page in the page tree. The Alloy Track page has an approval sequence defined, so the page is not immediately moved, and Tina sees a message that the page move is awaiting approval. Alicia and Carlos are notified to approve that move when they log in. Carlos approves the move, and the page is moved immediately. The top navigation menu is updated on the website. If Carlos had declined, the page would have remained in its original position.

Set up an approval sequence

Approving changes uses the same approval sequences as approving content. This means that if you have set a content approval sequence for a content item, the same sequence and the same reviewers are used when a change action is performed on that content item. 

The approval sequence overview is opened from a page's or assets folder's More (...) menu:

When setting up an approval sequence, there is a language setting (globe icon). This setting only applies to Content approvals, where you can set up different reviewers for different languages. Change approvals do not consider this setting; appointed reviewers can approve changes in all languages.

As an editor or administrator, how does approving changes affect me?

If you have the access rights to change one of the settings controlled by the Approve change functionality, you can change settings or move pages and blocks the same way as without it. However, after changing the setting, you will see a notification message: Your changes have been saved and sent for approval. The changes will come into effect once they have been approved. The content item also has a notification bar to inform you that a change is in review.

When a change is made, and in review, you can no longer move the item or edit a setting that requires approval until the review request is approved, declined, or canceled. You can cancel the review and revert your change by selecting Cancel review request from the Options menu.

When the last of the appointed reviewers approve the change, the change automatically occurs.

As a reviewer, how do I approve or decline a change?

Depending on how the approval sequence is set up, you may not be allowed to approve or decline a change you have made yourself, even if you are one of the appointed reviewers.

1. When you log in to the Optimizely CMS user interface, you will see a notification if you have a change to approve:

   

2. Click a notification to go to the page.

3. Use the compare tool to see the differences on the page.

4. To approve or decline this change, click the Options menu and select Approve Content or Decline Content.

   

Approving changes does not check if the reviewer has the access rights to perform the proposed change. It only checks if the user who makes the change has the access rights. For example, if you remove the Everyone access rights to a page, approving changes checks that you have the right to do so, but the reviewer who approves the change does not have to have that right.

Email notifications for change approvals have not yet been implemented, so you are only notified in the user interface when you have a change to review.

Approve content and changes at the same time

When you have used Approve content and sent content for review, the content (that is, the specific version of the content) is locked for editing. You can still move the page/block and change the language settings. You cannot change the access rights or expiration date.

When you have used Approve changes and sent a change for review, you can still edit the content, but you cannot move the page/block or change language settings, access rights, or expiration date.