Content Status

In this article: 

To make managing and creating content easier, Gain allows you to see your content's status, depending on what state of the workflow it’s currently in. The colored circles in the calendar can identify the status.

Note: You can use each status to filter content in both the calendar and list view. Filters will remain on as you toggle between views or even if you log out of Gain and come back, so make sure to reset any filters once you’re done using them.

In this article, we'll go over all the stages your content will go through, from draft to published. 

Draft

Any time you create new content in Gain and save it, it will be saved as a Draft. Only contributors, publishers, admins, and the account owner can see drafts. 

  • All posts that have not been sent for approval or scheduled will have the draft status. If you have selected a publishing date, then the content will appear on the calendar under that date. If not, it will appear in the list view.
  • Gain allows you to save incomplete drafts (for example, an Instagram post without an image or video) and draft posts with errors (for example, a tweet over Twitter’s character limit). However, these errors must be fixed before the content can be scheduled, published, or sent for approval.

Once your drafted content is complete, you’ll typically want to do one of three things: 

Pending Approval

After you've sent content to someone (or a group of people) for approval, it will move to the Pending Approval status. 

  • Contributors, publishers, admins, and the account owner can see and update content in this state. Additionally, publishers and administrators can send content back to the draft status if they wish to cancel the approval process altogether. 
  • Approvers can only see content pending approval if it is pending approval from them – i.e., if they are the assigned approver(s). 

An approver has two options for what they can do with a piece of content:

  • Approve it - This will mark the content Approved (if there is only one approver) or send the content to the next person for approval (if there are multiple approval levels).
  • Request Changes - This will change the content's status to Requires Revision and alert the internal team to make the necessary fixes.

Requires Revision

After an approver requests changes on a piece of content, the content will have the Requires Revision status. With this status, the internal team can make the requested fixes to the content, ask questions for clarification, and then resend the content for approval, sending the content back to the same approver and marking the post with the pending approval status again. 

  • On the column labeled Status in the List view, you can see who requested the revisions and in which round of the Approval Workflow the content is currently in. 
  • In the Notification Center “🔔,” you can check if an approver has requested a change for the content you’ve been working on. Click on the Content ID # to access the content editor and see the revisions.


Note: You’ll receive email notifications whenever there are revisions too. See other ways you can be notified under the notification preferences “⚙️.” 

In the Approval section, below each approver's name, you can see any changes they've requested.

Another thing you can do during the revision process is to ask approvers for clarifications or follow-up questions. When you ask a question, Gain will send the content back for the person’s approval again and change the content status to Pending Approval.  

To ask a question, head to the Approval tab, and type your question in the box right below their name and then click Ask Question. 

Your client or colleague can see your question next time they log in to approve content. 

Approved

Once all approvers have approved the content in all approval rounds, it will have the Approved status.

  • Publishers and administrators can see and make final updates to content with this status. Approvers can see, but cannot edit, approved content.
  • If the option to auto-schedule is selected when the content is sent for approval, then Gain will automatically schedule the content, and it will go from Approved to the Scheduled status.
  • If the option to manually schedule is selected, then the content will remain with the approved status once approved, and it will be up to the internal team to manually schedule or publish the content. Gain will not publish content unless it has the scheduled status.

Ready for Next Round

Some teams may prefer to handle content with multiple approval rounds in a more manual way. When you create approval workflows with multiple rounds, each round will have an option that pauses the workflow after the round is approved. When this option is off, any content approved by users in a certain round will not go directly to users of the next round. 

Instead, the content will be marked as Ready for Next Round. With this status, it is up to the internal team to send the content for approval to the next round of approvers. 

Select option a) Continue Approval or b) Continue Process to send content to the next round. 

Scheduled 

When content is scheduled manually by a user or automatically by Gain, it will have the Scheduled status. 

  • Publishers and administrators can see and make updates to content with this status. Approvers can see, but can’t edit, approved content.

Important: Gain will only automatically publish posts when they have the scheduled status. Posts with another status will not auto-publish, even if they have a publication date set. For example, an approved post with a publication date will not auto-publish unless it is scheduled.

Pending Manual Publishing - MPUB (Instagram Only) 

Gain cannot directly publish some types of content, most notably Instagram posts. When this type of content is sent for publishing, it isn’t marked live immediately. Instead, push notifications are sent to a designated user who must publish the post(s) manually, and the post(s) are marked Pending Manual Publishing. Once the user manually publishes the post, they can manually mark the content, Live (or published).

All Instagram content with this status is ready to be published with the designated Manual Publisher with the Gain Notify app. The manual publisher must download the Gain Notify app to receive reminders and publish posts from their mobile devices. To learn about publishing options for Instagram click here.

Live

Published content is marked as Live when it is live on the corresponding social network. Live content can’t be edited or deleted by anyone; however, comments can be added to the content, and copies of the content can be made by duplicating it.

Note: You can manually mark your files as "Live" after they have been approved. This functionality is great if you have files with deadlines like blog articles or presentations that have been approved and published, or already completed. 

Deleted

Any content that has been deleted on Gain will have the Deleted status. As a default, Gain will not show you deleted content, but you can display it in the list or calendar by going to the filters area and selecting the deleted status. 

You can restore deleted content by clicking on Return to drafts. 


Posts with the deleted status can only be sent back to drafts by publishers, administrators, or account owners.

What’s next?

Now that you know how content moves from the draft status to published learn how to organize content in the calendar to optimize your workflow.

Did this answer your question? Thanks for the feedback There was a problem submitting your feedback. Please try again later.