Page lifecycle and approval policies
Understand the draft, in review, published and unpublished page states, and how a project's approval requirement decides who can publish.
Every page in a Doxbrix project has a status that decides whether readers can see it and who can change it next. This page explains each status, how pages move between them, and how the project's Approval requirement setting controls who can publish.
Read it before you set up review for a team, or when you need to know why a button in the editor says Publish on one project and Submit for review on another.
Page states at a glance
A page is always in exactly one state. Only published pages appear on the reader site.
| State | What it means | Visible to readers |
|---|---|---|
| Draft | The page is being written or was sent back for changes. Editors can change it freely. | No |
| In review | The author submitted the page. It waits in the review queue for an approver. | No |
| Published | The page is live on the reader site. In the editor, it is locked until someone selects Edit page. | Yes |
| Unpublished | An owner or admin took the page off the reader site. It can be resubmitted. | No |
The platform also defines an archived status for pages, but the editor has no control that archives a page, so you work with the four states above.
How pages move between states
Each transition has a rule:
- Draft to in review. An editor, admin or owner selects Submit for review. Only draft pages can be submitted; any other status returns the error Only draft pages can be submitted for review. If the project requires a page owner, the submit fails until you assign one.
- Draft to published. When the project uses No required approval, the same button reads Publish and the page goes live immediately without a review step.
- In review to published. An approver selects Approve & Publish and confirms. Only in-review pages can be approved.
- In review to draft. An approver selects Reject and must enter a reason. The page returns to draft, the reason is stored on the page, and the author is notified.
- Published to draft. An editor, admin or owner selects Edit page on a locked, published page. This takes the page off the reader site so it can be edited, and it records a Reverted to draft version.
- Published to unpublished. Only owners and admins can unpublish. No editor control exists for this; it is an API action (
POST /api/pages/{pageId}/unpublish). - Unpublished to in review. An editor, admin or owner selects Resubmit for Review, or Publish when the project needs no approval.
Approval requirement
The Approval requirement setting decides whether publishing needs a second person and which roles can approve. Owners and admins set it in project settings, under Approvals, with the description Publishing approval policy by section or project.
| Option | Draft button | Who can approve or reject |
|---|---|---|
| Project review | Submit for review | Owners and admins only |
| Section review | Submit for review | Editors, admins and owners |
| No required approval | Publish | Nobody needs to; editors publish directly |
Viewers can never submit, approve or reject. An author who is also an allowed approver can approve their own submission; if you need separation of duties, use Project review and keep authors in the editor role.
Related governance settings
The same settings section, Ownership & review, holds options that affect the lifecycle:
- Page owner mode: Optional or Required. With Required, a page without an owner cannot be submitted, and the editor shows Assign a page owner before submitting, this project requires every page to have an owner.
- Default reviewer mode: Project default, None, Page owner or Project owner. This sets who is assigned to review new pages.
- Review cadence (days): how often mature content should be re-reviewed. The default is 90.
- Stale-content threshold (days): when Docs Health flags a page as stale. The default is 180.
Pages that pass these thresholds appear in the Freshness section of the review queue.
Versions are recorded at each step
Doxbrix saves a snapshot of the page content at each workflow step, which is what powers Version history:
- Submitted for review when an author submits;
- Published v1, Published v2 and so on each time a page is approved or published directly;
- Changes requested when a reviewer rejects;
- Reverted to draft when a published page is opened for editing.
Publishing also refreshes the page in reader search and the Ask AI assistant, re-runs the project link check, and re-evaluates stale and low-quality issues in Docs Health.
Batches and sections
You can submit a whole section or space at once. Doxbrix groups the submitted drafts into a review batch. Reviewers can approve or reject the batch as a unit or handle each page individually, and the batch resolves when every page in it has been approved or rejected.
Scheduled publishing
The approve API accepts a future time instead of publishing immediately. A scheduled page stays In review with the chosen publish time recorded until it goes live. The editor does not currently expose a control for this, so treat scheduling as an API-only option.