What you can do
Maya is ready to put a sale headline on the homepage hero. Legal is not ready for the live site to move the moment she clicks publish. Approvals are the pause between those two moments.
She submits the hero. Priya and Jordan open that exact copy, not whatever Maya saves while they are reading. When both have approved, someone who can publish sends that copy live. The draft Maya kept editing stays in the composer. It does not sneak onto the site.
Three jobs this is for:
- A second pair of eyes on Production. Brand, legal, or a partner has to see the hero before a token fetches it. Staging can stay open, so QA still publishes without waiting.
- A record of what was agreed. The request keeps the headline, the layout, the note Maya wrote, and who approved. History later shows the version that came from that request.
- The same gate for a person and for an agent. After you connect MCP, an agent submits, approves, and publishes only as the signed-in person. It cannot skip the list. The walkthrough for naming a widget is on Widgets from an agent. A shared collection is on Collections from an agent.
Nothing here replaces Publishing. Approvals decide when that publish is allowed. With the switch off, Publish Now and Publish New Version work exactly as that page describes.
How an approval thinks
There are two copies, and they stop being the same the moment Maya submits.
The draft is what the composer saves. She can keep changing it. A Staging or Production token never reads it.
The request is a frozen copy of that draft at submit time: the hero, every embedded collection inside it, and every shared collection it reaches. Approvers review the request. Publishing the request builds the live snapshot from the request, not from the draft she edited afterwards.
Here is the case that surprises people. Maya submits "Summer sale, 20% off." While Priya is reading, Maya changes the draft to "Summer sale, 30% off" and hits save. Priya still sees 20%. If the request is published, the live site gets 20%. The 30% stays in the composer until someone submits again.
Staging and Production are separate. Production can require two approvers while Staging requires none. Development, and any environment you named yourself, has no Publish tab and no approval. Those environments stream the live draft — see Development Integration.
An approver is a person on that environment's list, and still an active member of the team. It is not a user group. Maya can be on the list herself. Her own approval counts. With a minimum of two, she still needs someone else.
The count is worked out when you look, not stored on the request. If Jordan leaves the team, or you take him off the list, an approval he already gave stops counting. If you raise the minimum from one to two, a request that was ready to publish goes back to waiting. Extra approvals beyond the minimum are fine. They do not have to be cleared.
Put the sale hero through Production
This is the short path. Each step has its own page when you want every lever. The hero must already be a draft in Production. If it still lives only in Development, promote it first. Promote copies the draft. It does not publish, and it does not ask for approval.
- On the environment home, open the Approval Settings card and choose Production settings. Turn on Collections and widgets require approvals. Set Minimum required approvers to 2. Add Priya and Jordan. Save. The setup page is Setting up approvals.
- Open the hero in Production and go to the Publish tab. Publish Now now reads Submit for approval. Confirm Submit for approval to Production. How the freeze, the note, and shared collections work is Submitting for approval.
- Priya and Jordan each open the Approval Requests card, then the hero. Preview is the frozen copy. Compare with live is that copy next to what Production serves today. Each clicks Approve.
- The request shows a green Approved pill and, next to it, Publish — for someone in Post Publish To Production. That click is the publish. The live snapshot is the submitted hero, not the later draft.
That is a safe stop. The sale headline is what a Production token fetches. Maya's newer draft is still only a draft. Come back to History, compare, and restore if you need to see the version this request created.
Nobody is emailed. Priya and Jordan find the hero on Approval Requests. If they are not looking, it waits.
Who does what
| Person | What they can do | What they need |
|---|---|---|
| Someone setting the rules | Turns approvals on or off, sets the minimum, and chooses approvers. View-only people can read the screen and not change it. | Manage Approval Settings In Production or In Staging, under User Group To Manage Approvals. View is the matching View Approval Settings group. |
| Maya, submitting | Submits the hero or a shared collection, writes the note, and can withdraw her own request. | The same group as publishing: Post Publish To Production or Post Publish To Staging, under Utility Functions. The Publish tab itself still needs View Published Resource in that environment. |
| Priya, approving | Sees the queue, previews the frozen copy, approves or rejects once. She does not get a Publish button unless she can also publish. | Her name on that environment's approver list, and an active membership on the team. No approval user group. |
| Someone publishing | Publishes an approved request. Can also withdraw a request they did not submit. Cannot approve unless they are on the list. | Post Publish To Production or Post Publish To Staging. |
Managing the team does not put you on the list. A person in Manage User Groups can hand out the settings groups and the publish groups. They approve only after someone adds them under Approval Settings.
What to read next
- Setting up approvals — The toggle, the minimum, the approver list, and why turning it off does not forget the people.
- Submitting for approval — The dialog, what is frozen, shared versus embedded, and why republish is turned off.
- Reviewing and publishing — The queue, the preview, approve, reject, withdraw, and the Publish button beside the Approved pill.
- Publishing — What a snapshot is when approvals are off, and still what an approved request becomes when you publish it.
- Collections — Shared versus embedded, before you decide whether the product card needs its own request.
How this fits
A widget is the page. A collection is a block on that page. Publishing is how either one becomes a snapshot a token fetches. Approvals sit in front of that snapshot for Staging, for Production, or for both.
Promote still only copies a draft into the next environment. It never asks for approval, and it never goes live. Copy To is still only for environments you named yourself. Both are on Widgets.