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Difference between approval and production stages

Workflow stages can be either approval stages, where reviewers decide to approve or reject, or production stages, used for internal work steps. This article explains the difference.

Approval stages​

An approval stage is for people who are judging work, not doing it. When you build one in the Admin Console workflow builder, its people panel asks "Who's involved in approvals of this stage?" — you add reviewers as individual members or groups, and for each one you choose whether they:

  • Can comment — can leave feedback but not decide the outcome
  • Can approve — counts toward the stage's decision

Only reviewers with Can approve can submit a decision. Each approver picks one of three decisions on a proof: Approve, Approved with changes, or Needs rework. The stage closes once its decision mode is satisfied (everyone must approve, one approval is enough, specific people must approve, or a minimum threshold of approvals), and the resulting outcome is always the worst decision recorded — a single "Needs rework" overrides every "Approve" on the stage.

Production stages​

A production stage is for people doing the actual work — editing, designing, mixing, and so on. Its people panel asks "Who is doing the work in this stage?" and the people you add are called assignees rather than reviewers. There's no comment/approve split for production assignees, and there's no decision mode — instead you choose who or what advances the stage once the work is done ("Advance by"):

  • Assignee can mark complete — any assigned person can advance the stage
  • All assignees must confirm — every assignee has to individually mark their part complete before the stage closes
  • Specific person — a named person (e.g. a project manager or creative director) advances it
  • Via API / script — an external tool or script calls the API to advance the stage; it cannot be advanced from inside the app at all

A production stage always completes with an "approved" outcome when it's marked complete — assignees are doing the work, not rating it, so there's no "Approved with changes" or "Needs rework" for a production stage in the normal flow. (Someone with the "Manage workflow" permission can still force-complete a stage with one of those outcomes as an override, but that's an administrative action, not part of the everyday flow.)

Mixing stage types in one workflow​

Most real workflows combine both stage types: production stages do the work, approval stages sign off on it. For example, a video asset workflow might look like:

  1. Rough Cut (production) — editor cuts the first pass
  2. Director Review (approval) — director approves or requests changes
  3. Grade & Audio (production) — colorist/mixer finishes the work
  4. Legal & Compliance (approval) — legal signs off
  5. Delivery Approval (approval) — final sign-off before delivery

Or a manuscript workflow might run three production stages back to back (Structural Edit → Copy Edit → Proofread) before a single approval stage (Author Sign-off). Stages connect to each other by chaining on the previous stage's outcome — an approval stage chains on things like "is approved" or "needs rework", while a production stage chains on "is completed" or "is skipped". Setting up those chain conditions is covered in the workflow-building articles; this article is about recognizing the two stage types as you use a workflow that's already built.