Motivations

As an editor publishing amendments made to my flow, I want to understand what these changes are so that I don't publish any issues or mistakes (done ✅)

Overview

• Each flow in PlanX has 2 states: it can be either a draft (the collaborative editing environment where individual operations are saved in real time) or published (a stable snapshot at a point in time).
• In PlanX, it’s possible to nest a flow within another flow (this is referred to as an external portal). You can nest flows inside your flow from other team’s workspaces, even if you don’t have editing permissions for that nested flow.
• When publishing the main flow, a snapshot is taken of the draft content of the main flow plus the latest published version (not draft) of any nested flows. This means that nested flows must be published to publish the main flow, making it impossible for unpublished content to reach the public.

How it works

When checking for changes to publish, editors can see three separate routes in the Editor. This section explains what they show and what to use them for.

1. /draft
   • What it shows: view of the draft data of the main flow and the draft data of nested flows. This link is not representative of what your next published version will look like
   • Visible to: Currently only visible to platform admins
   • Use it for: Platform admins use it for testing content automations
2. /preview
   • What it shows: view of the draft data of the main flow and the latest published version of nested flows. This link is representative of what your next published version will look like
   • Visible to: All team editors
   • Use it for: Share this link with others who want to review and test content
3. /published
   • What it shows: view of the currently published version
   • Visible to: All team editors
   • Use it for: This is the content that users see when the service is online.
     • If you’ve setup a subdomain, this is simply planningservices.council.gov.uk/your-service
     • You can find this link in ‘service settings’ → ‘Status’ → ‘Your Public link’