Working with draft items

Creating a draft of an item allows you to work on changes to that item without changing the published version of the item. Draft items can either be stand-alone items, or form part of a workflow. Once the changes are completed, you can choose to either publish the item, or discard the changes by cancelling the draft.

Note: Draft items are only displayed in the Authoring Portlet and are not rendered within the published Web site.

Working with draft items not using a workflow

You can directly create a draft of any non-workflowed items.

Creating a draft item

To create a new draft item:

open a non-workflowed published item in edit mode and click Save as Draft. This will create a draft copy of the published item without removing the published item from the live site.
open a non-workflowed published item and click Change to Draft. This will change the state of the item from "published" to "draft" and the item will no longer be visible on the live site. You cannot change an item to draft if it is being referenced by any other items.

Saving a draft item

Once the draft has been created:

to save the draft item, click Save, Save and Close or Save and Read.
to publish the draft item, click Save and publish.

Once saved, your draft item will be displayed along side other items in your item views but will be displayed with a status of draft. If you have created a draft of a previously published item, both the draft and published versions of your item will appear in your item views. You can edit and save drafts multiple times before publishing your changes.

Publishing a draft item

Any changes made to a draft item will not appear in the live site until you publish the draft item. When your draft is ready to publish you can either:

select an item in a view and click Publish item.
open an item in read-mode and click Publish item.
open an item in edit-mode and click Save and publish.

Canceling a draft: Cancelling a draft is essentially the same as deleting a draft as all the changes made to the item are discarded. To cancel a draft open a draft item and click Cancel draft. You need editor access or above to cancel a draft of items not using a workflow.

Working with draft items in a workflow

Within a workflow, items have a status of draft until they enter a workflow stage where a publish action is executed.

You use the following buttons to work with items during a workflow.

Table 1. Stages
Stage:	Details:	User types:
Next Stage	Used to approve an item and send it to the next stage in a workflow.	Editor, Manager, Administrator
Approve Workflow	This is used to approve an item and send it to the next stage in a workflow when joint approval is set.	Approver, Administrator
Decline	Used when an item is rejected during a workflow. Executes any actions defined in the reject stage, and then sends the item back to the first stage of a workflow.	Approver, Administrator
Cancel Draft	This removes a draft item from a workflow altogether. This displays only after an item has been published and a new draft has been created.	Manager, Administrator
Previous Stage	The previous stage button returns an item to the stage previous to the current stage. This button is only available for administrators and managers, or on workflow stages that have been configured to enable approvers access to the previous stage button. When an item is moved to the previous stage, the entry workflow actions on the previous stage are executed, but the exit workflow actions on the current stage are not.	Approver, Manager, Administrator

Disabling multiple drafts:

When creating a workflow you can choose to disable the creation of multiple drafts for any item using that workflow. This allows you to assign a workflow to items where you only want to manage one change at a time.

Managing drafts

There are various ways you can manage your draft items:

If viewing a published item with only one draft item, you can view the draft item by clicking Go to draft.
When viewing a draft item, you can open the published version of an item by clicking Go to published.
If a published item has more than one draft, the Manage Drafts button is displayed on both the published and draft versions of an item. You click Manage Drafts to view a list of drafts for the current item. All drafts are displayed, but you can only read, edit and cancel drafts that you have sufficient access to.