A spec rarely goes straight from a first draft to finished. It is written, reviewed, agreed with the client, handed to development. Stages name those steps, so anyone looking at an article can tell where it has got to.
You define the stages once for your workspace, in order. Each article can then be in one stage, or none. The stage shows as a coloured badge on the article, in the Manage articles list, and in the customer Help center.
A stage is a label on the article, not a change to its content. Setting one never changes what the article says, never publishes or unpublishes it, and adds nothing to its history.
On Manage articles, click Manage stages at the top of the page. The button is shown to holders of Edit any member's knowledge-base articles, the Knowledge Base admin permission.
In the Manage stages dialog:
Click Done when you have finished. Every change saves as you make it.
Switch on Only publishers for a stage that marks a decision, such as Approved or Ready for development. Then only holders of Publish knowledge-base articles can move an article into that stage. Anyone who can edit the article can still move it out again, or clear its stage.
Everyone else sees the stage in the picker marked (publishers only) and cannot choose it.
Each stage also has a work-type picker (No work type until you choose one). It records which kind of work item the stage calls for. Nothing uses this setting yet.
| Rule | What happens |
|---|---|
| Names are 1–80 characters | Longer names cannot be typed. |
| Names are unique, ignoring case | A stage named "Review" already exists |
| Up to 25 stages | At 25, Add stage is disabled and the dialog says A workspace can have up to 25 stages. |
| A stage holding articles cannot be deleted | 3 articles are in this stage. Move them to another stage first. |
To retire a stage, move its articles to another stage (filter the list by it to find them, see below), then click its bin icon.
Open the article in the editor. In the Status & lifecycle panel, choose from Stage: one of your stages, or No stage. It saves at once, and the badge appears beside the article's state.
You can stage an article in any state: a draft, a published article or a client spec draft.
To change the stage you need Create knowledge-base articles and edit access to the article, the same access that lets you edit its content: you wrote it, it is shared with you as Can edit, or you hold Edit any member's knowledge-base articles. You do not need permission to edit a published article's words: a stage is a label, not an edit. Without edit access the picker is shown but disabled.
Watchers of the article, or of its category, are told in the app when its stage changes. See Watching articles and categories.
Once your workspace has stages:
Reordering articles by dragging is turned off while the stage filter is on, because the list no longer shows the whole category: Clear the stage filter to reorder articles.
Your team's Library does not show stages. See Searching and browsing.
In the customer Help center a staged article shows its stage as a small coloured badge:
Clients see only the stage's name and colour. They never see whether it is publishers-only or which work type it names, and they cannot change it. See The customer Help center.
Client Spec Drafts
Let your customers write and edit draft specs in the portal's Help center, in categories you open to them, discuss them with your team in each draft's comment thread, then review and publish them from the article editor.
Approval for Published Changes
Make changes to published articles in a category wait for a publisher's approval: edits become a proposed change, a publisher compares it with the live version, then approves it or sends it back.