We've made your content strategy workflow even easier in Social Media Management. Users with a Content Creator role can create posts in Publish and assign the content to users with approval and publishing permissions. This workflow is a great way to make sure that your posts get an editorial review before going live.
Users with the permissions of a Content Creator or higher can create posts in the Publish module. Only Editor users or higher can directly publish their content though. That means a Content Creator in Social Media Management must always submit their new content for approval to at least one Editor, Team Lead, or Admin user.
Note:
Users with Editor, Team Lead, or Admin permissions are able to publish or schedule content directly by default, but they can also choose to send it for approval.
In this article:
Submitting content for approval
When submitting content for approval, there are four available options:
- Submitting to a single approver.
- Submitting to multiple approvers, and any of them can approve and publish the post on their own.
- Submitting to multiple approvers, and all, any, or in a specified order need to approve the post before it is published.
- Anyone with approval rights can approve and publish the post.
Here's how to send your content for approval:
- While creating a post in the Publish editor, scroll down in the left-hand section of the editor and click on the Approval section.
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Start by choosing an approver or multiple approvers for your post. If you have created an approval template, you will be able to select it from the dropdown.
Note:
If you opt for Anyone, please be aware the multi-step approval flow will not be available.
- As soon as you’ve added one approver, you will see the option to add another approval step. You will have the option to choose multiple approvers for each step and specify whether you require the approval of Any or All of your designated approvers to proceed to the next approval step.
- Click Send for Approval under the post preview.
Your post will now be in the Awaiting approval section in Publish. Only the designated approvers from your first approval step will be initially notified once a post is sent for approval. The approvers you selected for subsequent approval steps will receive notifications to approve once the preceding approvers have approved the post.
Completion is determined by either obtaining approval from all required approvers, or the step being skipped by an administrator or team leader. Both admins and team leaders can manually skip the current approval step at any time to continue to the next one.
The full approval flow for a post will be displayed in the Content list view in Publish when you hover over the post.
You will be able to check the post's approval steps, their status, and the status for each approver in the post editor. The current approval step will be expanded by default when opening the post, and the other steps can be expanded on demand.
Hovering over an approval will display a timestamp of the date and time it was approved.
Note:
Once an approval flow has begun, no one will be able to make changes to previous steps in the flow that have been completed. However, it is possible to change future steps or add new steps. If a change is needed to the current or past step, the flow should be restarted by reverting the post to draft, changing the flow, and resending for approval.
Tip:
Need to prompt an approver? In the Awaiting approval section of Publish, toggle the Assigned approvers filter to Need to approve now to quickly find posts by the current approver needed.
Approving content or asking for changes
As an approver, you'll receive an email for any content waiting to be approved by you.
You can only approve (and will only receive approval notifications for) posts that you have been assigned to you as an approver. Admin users and Team Leaders are an exception to this rule; they can skip approval steps and/or approve any content regardless of the assigned approvers.
If a post needs adjustments before it can be approved, you can click Ask for changes. This option lets you leave a note for the post creator about which changes are required. After the adjustments, the post can be resubmitted for approval.
You can review content as follows:
- The link in an approval email will take you straight to the content. Alternatively, you can always find content waiting for approval in the Awaiting approval section of Publish. Clicking on any of the content there will take you to the Publish editor.
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Review the post and decide if it needs changes or if it can be published.
- Click Ask for changes. The Approve & Publish Now or Approve & Schedule options will be available if you are the last approver in the flow.
If you have asked for changes, the status will be displayed next to the post author.
What if a post doesn't get approved on time?
If all assigned approvers have not yet approved the post by the time it reaches the scheduled date and time, the post will not be published. The post will remain in the Awaiting Approval section of Publish. Neither the creator nor the approver will receive a notification.
When the approver opens the post, they may notice an error in the Schedule module on the left-hand side.
To approve and publish the post, the approver will either need to select a new schedule date and time or unschedule it by clicking the X button. Unscheduling the post will allow the user to publish instantly.
Approving content in bulk
Content approvers can alsosave time viewing and approving each post individually by visiting Publish > Awaiting Approval and approving posts in bulk. Please visit our Bulk Actions in Publish article to learn more.