---
title: "Draft and approved states"
canonical: "https://support.appfire.com/space/CDALS/649823570/Draft%20and%20approved%20states"
format: markdown
---
> Macro (aura-html)

## Overview

Once the Comala Document Approval app is added to the page, the initial state of the document is considered to be draft content version.

This initial approval workflow state is, by default, the **Review **state.

![image](media://34a5281f-5aad-4d25-bc49-e72cd14473f8)

Any document that is in the **Rejected** state is also be considered as a draft version.

Content in the **Approved **state is considered the approved document version. If the content is updated when in the **Approved** state, the approval workflow transitions to the draft **Review** state.

> ℹ️ The Comala Document Approval workflow treats the approved version of content differently to draft (non-approved) content versions if the workflow drafts and visibility setting is set to **Administrators and Page editors.**

> ✅ Choose the three-dot menu in the approval state dialog box to view the [workflow events and activity](https://appfire.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/CDALS/pages/649823076) for the page.

## Draft content

Content in the **Review** or the **Rejected** state is considered to be draft content.

By default

- <span style="color: #000000">**View-only permission**</span> users cannot see draft document versions - documents in either the **Review** or **Rejected** state
- <span style="color: #000000">**View-only permission **</span><span style="color: #000000">users </span>only see the most recently approved version (if one has been created)

Users who have **edit** or **administrator permission** can see the document when it is in either of these two draft states.

If the content has previously been approved, a link to the last approved version is added to the draft state content byline.

![image](media://b9d61d1c-1401-48bf-a852-53a338312692)

This last approved version has a link back to the current draft version.

![image](media://9184511a-fec6-4f9c-af65-098e14ccb0b0)

The **Approved **breadcrumb displayed on this last approved version *does not provide access to the approval state dialog box*.

> 📝 The links to the draft or approved content are displayed in the content byline when both a draft and an approved version are available. However, the document is in one of the draft workflow approval states.

## Approved content

Users with view-only permission for the page can see only the latest approved content. The approval workflow content byline *is not displayed*.

![image](media://afd80eed-d56d-41c4-a5f4-110929f190d7)

This version is displayed to a user with **View-only** permission, regardless of the content's current approval workflow state.

If the document is currently in the **Approved **state, a user with edit or administrator permission can view the workflow content byline and be able to access the approval state dialog box.

![image](media://9d503726-d1b3-4084-b0e3-4b33a4b26ccf)

**View-only** users are directed by default to the last approved version of the content.

> ℹ️ If you require fully secure publishing of content, we recommend using **Comala Document Approval** and [Comala Publishing](https://appfire.atlassian.net/wiki/pages/createpage.action?spaceKey=AHP&title=Welcome%20to%20Comala%20Publishing) to publish content from a source space to a target space to get the full Confluence permissions to manage the content in the published target space.

## Related pages

- [https://appfire.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/APRVLCD/pages/612892820](https://appfire.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/APRVLCD/pages/612892820)
- [https://appfire.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/APRVLCD/pages/612892813](https://appfire.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/APRVLCD/pages/612892813)
- [https://appfire.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/CDALS/pages/649888138](https://appfire.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/CDALS/pages/649888138)
- [https://appfire.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/CDALS/pages/649592912](https://appfire.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/CDALS/pages/649592912)