# Understanding Workflow Stages

### About this export

| Field | Value |
| --- | --- |
| **content_type** | lesson |
| **platform** | contentstack-academy |
| **source_url** | https://www.contentstack.com/academy/courses/using-workflows/understanding-workflow-stages |
| **course_slug** | using-workflows |
| **lesson_slug** | understanding-workflow-stages |
| **markdown_file_url** | /academy/md/courses/using-workflows/understanding-workflow-stages.md |
| **generated_at** | 2026-06-08T14:32:19.385Z |

> Part of **[Using Workflows](https://www.contentstack.com/academy/courses/using-workflows)** on Contentstack Academy. **Academy MD v3** — structured for retrieval; no quiz or assessment keys.

<!-- ai_metadata: {"lesson_id":"02","type":"video","duration_seconds":147,"video_url":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/previews/JqC8v5ki","thumbnail_url":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/JqC8v5ki/poster.jpg?width=720","topics":["Understanding","Workflow","Stages"]} -->

#### Video details

#### At a glance

- **Title:** Understanding Workflows
- **Duration:** 2m 27s
- **Media link:** https://cdn.jwplayer.com/previews/JqC8v5ki
- **Publish date (unix):** 1760057020

#### Streaming renditions

- application/vnd.apple.mpegurl
- audio/mp4 · AAC Audio · 113965 kbps
- video/mp4 · 180p · 180p · 196682 kbps
- video/mp4 · 270p · 270p · 263186 kbps
- video/mp4 · 360p · 360p · 323448 kbps
- video/mp4 · 406p · 406p · 370257 kbps
- video/mp4 · 540p · 540p · 538495 kbps
- video/mp4 · 720p · 720p · 821272 kbps
- video/mp4 · 1080p · 1080p · 1844364 kbps

#### Timed text tracks (delivery)

- **thumbnails:** `https://cdn.jwplayer.com/strips/JqC8v5ki-120.vtt`

#### Video transcript

Before we jump into how you'll use workflows day-to-day, it's important to understand who sets them up. Here's the short answer. Workflows are configured by your organization's admins. Typically, not by authors like you. Admins decide what the stages are, who has to approve what, and which publishing rules apply. So, they're the ones building the structure. But once a workflow is in place, it's the authors and content managers who use it every day. Think of it like this. The admin is designing the road, but you're the driver. You'll move your content along that road from stage to stage until it's ready to publish. So, in this course, we won't be learning how to build workflows. Instead, we'll focus on how to use them, how to move your entries through the process, request approvals, and collaborate with your team. Now, let's talk about the most common action you'll take in workflows. Moving an entry from one stage to another. For example, once you've finished adding content to an entry, you'll move the entry from draft to review. That hands it over to the reviewer, or approver. Sometimes you'll need to request edit access if someone else owns the entry. In that case, you'll send an approval request. The reviewer can then either approve your edit or reject it with feedback. The goal is to keep the process transparent. Everyone knows who's working on what, and content can't skip important steps. But to understand what a workflow looks like, let's take a look at one that's been configured. To do that, up towards the top, I'll choose Settings. This will move me to the Settings screen, where I can see the workflow's settings on the left. Here, I can see there's an article workflow setup. If I click on it, I can see important details like the name, description, scope, which is the branch this workflow will be applied to, what content types it impacts, then finally the different workflow stages. Here we have Draft, Ready for Review, Legal Approval, Publish, and so on. You can assign a workflow superuser, and if you want the workflow enabled. So that's the workflow configured. Now let's look at how we can move an entry from one workflow stage to the next.

#### Key takeaways

- Connect **Understanding Workflow Stages** back to your stack configuration before moving to the next module.
- Capture one concrete artifact (screenshot, Postman call, or code snippet) that proves the step works in your environment.
- Re-read the delivery versus management boundary for anything you changed in the entry model.

## Supplement for indexing

### Content summary

Understanding Workflow Stages. Understanding Workflow Stages in Using Workflows (using-workflows).

### Retrieval tags

- Understanding
- Workflow
- Stages
- using-workflows
- lesson 02
- Understanding Workflow Stages
- using-workflows lesson

### Indexing notes

Index this lesson as a primary chunk tagged with lesson_id "02" and topics: [Understanding, Workflow, Stages].
Parent course slug: using-workflows. Use asset_references URLs as thumbnail hints in search results when present.
Never surface LMS quiz content or assessment answers from this file.

### Asset references

| Label | URL |
| --- | --- |
| Video thumbnail: Understanding Workflow Stages | `https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/JqC8v5ki/poster.jpg?width=720` |

### External links

| Label | URL |
| --- | --- |
| Contentstack Academy home | `https://www.contentstack.com/academy/` |
| Training instance setup | `https://www.contentstack.com/academy/training-instance` |
| Academy playground (GitHub) | `https://github.com/contentstack/contentstack-academy-playground` |
| Contentstack documentation | `https://www.contentstack.com/docs/` |