Review statuses and publishing rules

Ref: C06 · Track: Knowledge Base Admin · Time to complete: ~3 min

Why this matters

Knowing which of your 300 articles is in draft, which is waiting on Claire's review, and which has pending edits live — that's what the review workflow gives you. Done well, it's a Kanban board for content.

The four article statuses

Draft

Unpublished, being worked on. Only authors/editors/admins see it. Nothing visible on the help center.

Awaiting review

Author says "I'm done, please review". A reviewer has been assigned (or should be). Still invisible to customers.

Ready to publish

Reviewer approves. Can now be published — manually, or automatically on a schedule (see C07).

Published

Live on the help center. Visible to whoever the permissions allow.

Articles can also be Archived — a separate state outside the review workflow (see C09).

The green dot

Any published article can be edited after publishing. When you edit, save, but don't re-publish the changes, the article shows a green dot in the book view. That dot means "there are unpublished edits sitting on a live article".

To make pending edits go live: 1. Open the article. 2. Review your changes. 3. Click Publish.

The dot disappears. The customer now sees the new content.

Assigning a reviewer

When an author moves an article to Awaiting review:

1. In the article editor, set Reviewer in the right sidebar.
2. The reviewer sees it in their "Articles for me to review" view.
3. They either approve (moves to Ready to publish) or send it back to Draft with comments.

Your team's workflow may involve multiple reviewers (e.g. legal then product). Zendesk supports one reviewer per article at a time — chain reviews by sending the article back with @mention comments.

Who can do what

Your admin sets who can do what. If someone complains they can't publish, it's usually a role issue.

Keeping the queue moving

Common queue problems and fixes:

• Reviewer never reviews. Use the book view to filter "Status = Awaiting review" and see the backlog. @mention the reviewer weekly.
• Too many drafts, never shipped. Archive old drafts you'll never finish. A stale draft is just noise.
• Green dots everywhere. Schedule a weekly "publish all the green dots" review — or enable auto-publish on save if your team's tolerance for mistakes is high.

Gotchas

• Unsaved edits vs unpublished saved edits. The green dot shows saved-but-not-published. Unsaved edits are only in your browser and will be lost if you close the tab.
• Publishing a reviewer's edits without re-reviewing. If the reviewer made changes, those get published along with the original. Double-check the diff.
• Archiving ≠ unpublishing. Unpublishing reverts to Draft. Archiving puts it in a separate pile (see C09).

Quick check — have you got this?

• You edit a published article and save. It shows a green dot. Can customers see your changes?
• An article is "Awaiting review" but nobody's been assigned. What happens?
• You want to pull a published article off the site temporarily. Archive or Unpublish?

Related articles

• C05 — The book — managing all your content
• C07 — Scheduled publishing for product launches
• C09 — Archived articles and article history
• C19 — Using your sandbox to experiment safely