Workflows in Sanity Studio

See where your work stands, complete the tasks a workflow is waiting on, find work assigned to you, and understand a held publish.

A workflow is the process your team already follows, written down so Studio can show you where each piece of content stands and what it needs next. This page covers what you see and do as an editor once a developer has installed the Workflows plugin.

Two surfaces carry the whole experience. The document editor shows the workflows a single document is in. The Workflows tool shows work across every document.

Open the document and look at the workflow strip above the form. It lists the workflows available for that document type, each as its own button labeled Start followed by the workflow’s name. Select one to start it.

A workflow that needs information up front opens a start dialog first. Fill in every field the dialog marks required, then confirm. Some workflows are configured to start on their own the moment you create a document, so a new document may already be in one before you do anything.

Open a document accepted by a deployed workflow. The plugin brings the workflow into the document editor in three places:

• Workflow strip: start an available workflow and see the current stage above the document form.
• Workflows view: work through the stage’s activities, editable fields, and actions.
• Document badges: see the active workflow and whether the document belongs to a draft or Content Release.

Each workflow run appears as a card with its workflow title and current stage on one line. Select the header to expand or collapse it. To see what has happened, open the card’s overflow menu and select Workflow history. The + beside Active Workflows starts another workflow on the document.

The Workflows view lists the work the current stage is waiting on. Complete a to-do, fill in the fields the stage asks for, and fire an action when the work is done. Nothing advances because you pressed a button: the action records what happened, and the workflow moves when the conditions for moving are met.

Assign a task to a person to put it in their personal task list. Send it to a project role to offer it to people with that role. Once a person is assigned, the task no longer appears in other role members’ lists. Removing the last person makes it available to the selected roles again.

In the assignment picker, select a person under Assign to or a role under Send to role group. Your name appears first. Search by name, email, or role. The count beside each role shows how many people are eligible for it; your workflow may allow people with other roles to qualify too.

In the document’s For me view, Tasks assigned to you contains your personal work. Tasks sent to your roles contains unassigned work routed to a project role you hold. Personal task badges and counts exclude these role-routed offers. Open a task to see the actions and assignment changes its workflow permits.

Activity rows show an inline calendar only for a declared dueDate or dueDatetime. Due dates turn caution once overdue, including while editable. Plain date and datetime fields remain titled in the activity detail dialog and continue to match the Workflows tool’s Date filter.

An editable to-do list shows a remove control only in the view that owns that list, such as its activity dialog or field dialog. Assignment-only and read-only views do not offer removal. Removing a row saves right away, with no confirmation dialog. If a list has missing or duplicate row keys, Studio refuses the change rather than editing or deleting the wrong row.

Studio tells a refused operation apart from a failed write. A gate refusal, or a field outside its edit window, shows caution feedback. A write that fails shows critical feedback. If a commit succeeds but a later effect fails, the message says the change was saved and names the follow-up work that did not finish.

The Workflows tool has two views. Overview tracks workflow runs across documents. For me lists individual tasks assigned to you or routed to your roles. Open Definitions from the title row’s More menu to inspect the deployed workflow catalog.

Overview at /workflows/overview lists open runs across definitions. Select Add filter to filter by Assignee, Stage, Needs attention, or Release. To narrow the table to one workflow, select it from the All workflows menu. Select Closed runs to inspect completed or aborted work. The address preserves the view with workflow, filters, scope=closed, and, when one workflow is selected, display=board.

The Tasks column and board cards group people by the current stage’s tasks. Overlapping faces share one task; a gap starts another. A dashed person means no person holds the task. A group marker on that person means the task is routed to roles. Hover a group to see the tasks, their holders or role routes, and each task’s deadline.

Attention marks explain why a run needs action. A calendar shows how overdue one task is, or how many tasks are overdue when there are several. Hover it to open the stage-tasks panel when a person’s task is late. A filled critical disc marks a blocked run, and names the task or automation that failed or never finished. A board card can show both marks when both apply.

Runs load page by page, instead of stopping at a fixed 200-run cap. While more pages are still loading, a count is a minimum. It becomes a total once loading finishes. New, changed, and deleted runs update the shared list without restarting pagination.

Select one workflow and switch to Board to arrange its open runs by stage. Select a table row or board card to open the run’s detail panel. The header names the workflow and current stage. The panel shows Workflow subject, Workflow, History, and Manage. Select Expand for a larger view of the same run. The expanded view includes previous and next controls and a position count.

With a workflow row or board card selected, press Up Arrow or Down Arrow to open the previous or next workflow. Drag the edge of a docked panel to resize it.

When the board is wider than the window, use the navigator to jump to a stage. Select Endings to show the ending stages. For keyboard navigation, focus the navigator, use Left Arrow or Right Arrow to choose a stage, then press Enter or Space.

For me shows one row per task, including failed tasks that need attention. A workflow with two tasks appears in two rows. Tasks assigned to you lists your personal assignments. Tasks sent to your roles lists tasks offered to your role groups that have not been assigned to a person. Empty sections are hidden.

The tables show Workflow subject, Task, Opened, Workflow, Due, and Assignee, plus an attention indicator. Opened measures time since the task entered its current stage. Assignee shows all people and roles named on the task. Hover Due for the exact deadline; a date-only deadline has no implied time of day.

Select a task row to open its work panel. Review its status and fields under Details of this task, then select an available action under Your actions. The available actions depend on your workflow. Use the document link to open the content the task is about.

Select Expand to give the same task more room. The expanded view includes previous and next task controls and a position count. Back to the panel returns to the same task. On a selected table row, Down Arrow and Up Arrow step through tasks in displayed order. To inspect the whole run’s history, open the run from Overview.

Definitions at /workflows/definitions lists deployed workflows and their open-run counts. Open /workflows/definitions/<name> for one definition’s facts, stage diagram, and setup issues. Select View runs there to return to Overview with that workflow selected in board view.

Replace bookmarks for /workflows/all-documents, /workflows/instance/<id>, /workflows/overview/<workflow>, and /workflows/overview/<workflow>/definition. Use Overview with the workflow, filters, display=board, or run search parameters, or use /workflows/definitions/<name>. Retired routes return to Overview. A link that still contains scope=concluded now opens Open runs, the opposite set from the one it saved, and nothing on screen flags it as stale. Re-save that link with scope=closed.

When a workflow guard denies publishing, unpublishing, or deleting a document, the plugin disables that Studio action and explains the hold.

A hold is not an error, and there is nothing to retry. The document is waiting on the workflow, so the way past it is to finish the work the current stage is asking for. The message on the disabled action names what is holding it.

Canceling ends the run. It does not delete the document or erase what happened, and your reason stays in the run’s history. Open the run card’s overflow menu and select Cancel workflow, or use Manage in the run’s detail panel. Enter a reason, then select Cancel workflow to confirm. Select Keep workflow to leave it running. A canceled run keeps the Aborted status label.

• Workflows: what a workflow is made of, and the words the rest of these pages use.
• Add Workflows to Sanity Studio: the setup a developer does before any of this appears.