Editorial Workflow

Note: The Editorial Workflow feature is available on select paid plans.

If your content editors need to work on multiple branches, you can utilize the Editorial Workflow feature. Instead of saving your content directly to a protected branch (e.g., main), a new branch is created. A draft pull request is generated, and all subsequent edits are made on this new branch. When your content is ready to be published, it can be merged back into the protected branch (e.g., main) via GitHub.

Setting Up

The Editorial Workflow can be enabled in TinaCloud.

To set up the Editorial Workflow, follow these steps:

1. Go to the "Configuration" tab of your project in the dashboard.
2. Toggle the "Enable" option.
3. Enter the names of the branches you want to protect.
4. After setting up the protected branches, refresh your page to ensure the changes take effect.

Accessing CMS and Saving to Protected Branches

After completing the setup, you can access the CMS, and a new branch switcher button will appear at the top. When you are on a protected branch and click "Save," a modal will prompt you to enter the name of the new branch you wish to save to.

Once you enter the new branch name, the following actions will occur:

• The new branch will be created.
• The content of the new branch will be indexed (this process may take a few minutes).
• The changes will be saved to the new branch.
• A draft pull request will be created.

Publishing Content

When you are ready to publish your content, merge the draft pull request into the protected branch (e.g., main) through GitHub. After the pull request is successfully merged, the updated content will be available on the protected branch.

Media in the Editorial Workflow

Media follows the same review process as your content. When you upload or delete an image while editing a protected branch, TinaCMS routes the change through a branch and pull request instead of writing to the protected branch directly.

When you upload or delete media on a protected branch, a prompt appears to create a new branch. Once you confirm:

• A new branch is created for the media change.
• The asset is saved to that branch, not to the protected branch.
• A pull request is created.
• You are switched onto the new branch so you can keep editing.

To publish the media change, merge its pull request into the protected branch, the same as you would for content.

Prefer to skip the workflow for a one-off change? Choose Save to protected branch in the prompt to write the media directly to the protected branch.

For how media storage and branching fit together, see Repo-based Media.

GitHub Pull Request links

In the branch list modal, you can click on the dropdown and click "View Pull Request" to view the pull request on GitHub. This will open a new tab in your browser. This link will only aprear of the pull request has been created with TinaCMS and not if it was created manually.

Preview links

You can setup preview links for your pull requests.

This will allow you to preview your content changes before merging them into the protected branch. To setup preview links, In your config file add a previewUrl function to the ui object. This function will receive the branch name as an argument and should return the preview url for that branch. For example:

// tina/config.{ts,tsx,js}

export default defineConfig({
  // ...
  ui: {
    // Eg. If you're deplying to Vercel, and your repo name is 'my-app', Vercel's preview URL would be based on the branch:
    previewUrl: (context) => {
      const repoName = 'my-app';
      // `https://<project-name>-git-<branch-name>.vercel.app`
      return { url: `https://my-app-git-${context.branch}` };
    },
  },
  //...
});

Now you will be able to click on the "View Preview" button in the branch list modal to preview your changes.