Publish workflow

Problem Context

• The item may be an article, page, product, collection, site branch, release, campaign, locale, configuration, media asset, documentation page, or channel-specific listing.
• Publishing may affect staging, production, public web, selected domains, sales channels, locales, entries, dependencies, cached pages, search indexes, subscribers, social channels, or release bundles.
• The workflow may include draft, pending review, approved, scheduled, queued, validating, publishing, live, failed, missed, canceled, unpublished, retired, or rolled-back states.
• The product must distinguish low-risk save operations from visibility-changing publish operations.
• Users may need scheduled publication, scheduled unpublication, channel selection, permissions, branch approval, preview URLs, validation errors, and post-publish verification.

Selection Rules

• Choose publish workflow when the primary task is making edited material visible, live, scheduled, retired, or no longer visible in a selected destination.
• Use approval workflow when human approval is required before publication but the interface is primarily the decision route, not the live-target release surface.
• Use review queue when many items await editorial, moderation, or code review before individual publish decisions.
• Use draft state when the user is saving unfinished work without selecting target, schedule, preview, publish, or unpublish behavior.
• Use review before submit for final field checking before a publish or schedule action is created.
• Use confirmation page after publish succeeds to show live URL, affected target, time, reference, and next steps.
• Show staging versus production, selected domains, channels, locales, dependencies, and audience before any live-changing action.
• Validate required content, links, media, inventory, permissions, slug, translations, channel eligibility, schedule time, and dependency state before publish or schedule.
• Represent scheduled, rescheduled, canceled, missed, failed, live, unpublished, and rolled-back states distinctly.
• Provide a safe way to unpublish, retire, rollback, or open the live target when the platform supports it.

Required States

• Draft or edited but unpublished state
• Preview state with target URL or destination
• Validation pending state
• Validation blocked state
• Ready to publish state
• Target selection state for staging, production, domain, channel, locale, page, or release
• Publish now confirmation state
• Scheduled publish state
• Reschedule or cancel scheduled publish state
• Publishing in progress state
• Published live verification state
• Failed publish or missed schedule state
• Unpublish or retire state
• Rollback or restore previous live version state
• Permission denied to publish state
• Version conflict or newer live version state

Interaction Contract

• Saving a draft does not imply publication, and publishing cannot proceed until target, readiness, permissions, and validation requirements are resolved.
• The workflow shows the item version, target destination, affected scope, current live state, and side effects before a publish or schedule action.
• Preview opens the same version and target that will be published, or clearly labels where preview differs from production.
• Schedule actions store date, time, timezone, target, actor, item version, and validation result.
• Validation failures block publish or scheduling and point to the exact field, dependency, channel, locale, or permission that must be fixed.
• Publish, schedule, reschedule, cancel schedule, unpublish, retire, and rollback actions update the same release history and visible status.
• Conflicts with newer live content, unsaved edits, changed dependencies, or revoked permissions require refresh, compare, or retry paths before publication.
• After a successful action, the user can open the live target, copy the URL, see affected destinations, and inspect the audit trail.

Implementation Checklist

• Define item type, statuses, target destinations, affected dependencies, permission roles, preview behavior, validation rules, schedule semantics, rollback support, and audit requirements.
• Model save, submit for review, approve, schedule, publish, unpublish, retire, rollback, and confirm-live states separately.
• Show current status and target-selection controls for staging, production, domains, sales channels, locales, releases, pages, or item-only publishing.
• Run validation before publish and again before scheduled jobs execute when content can change between scheduling and launch.
• Expose schedule date, time, timezone, reschedule, cancel schedule, and missed or failed schedule recovery.
• Protect production publish, all-channel publish, dependency publish, unpublish, and rollback with appropriate review or confirmation steps.
• Write publish history with actor, item version, target, action, time, schedule, validation outcome, failure reason, and rollback reference.
• Test draft versus live distinction, staging-only publish, production publish, scheduled publish, scheduled unpublish, invalid content, permission denied, stale version, dependency change, failed publish, rollback, mobile, keyboard, screen reader status updates, and localization.

Common Generated-UI Mistakes

• Using Save, Submit, Schedule, and Publish interchangeably.
• Hiding whether the target is staging, production, one page, whole site, one channel, all channels, or a release bundle.
• Allowing scheduled publishing without validation or later failure reporting.
• Publishing stale draft content over a newer live version.
• Failing to show affected dependencies or locales.
• Treating approval as publication or publication as approval.
• Providing no way to unpublish, retire, rollback, or verify live output.
• Showing success before the live target, cache, search index, or channel actually updates.

Critique Questions

• What is live now, what is changing, and which version will publish?
• Which domain, environment, page, release, locale, sales channel, or audience will be affected?
• What validation checks must pass before publish or schedule?
• Is this saving a draft, submitting for review, scheduling, publishing now, unpublishing, or rolling back?
• Can users preview the exact target and verify the live result?
• What happens if the scheduled job fails, content changes before launch, or permissions are revoked?