Overview

The starter's editorial workflow is designed around Sanity's native draft and published model, with additional structure and action customisations to make status and localisation clearer for teams.

It does not ship with a mandatory multi-step approval engine. Instead, it provides clear lifecycle states in Studio views, safer creation templates, and translation-aware actions.

Primary implementation touchpoints in the enterprise starter:

apps/sanity/structure/index.ts
packages/sanity-toolkit/studio/structure/publishStatusListItems.ts
apps/sanity/actions/index.ts
packages/sanity-toolkit/studio/actions/changePublishText.ts
apps/sanity/templates/newDocumentOptions.ts
apps/sanity/templates/singleLanguageTemplates.ts
apps/sanity/templates/multiLanguageTemplates.ts
apps/sanity/sanity.config.ts

Lifecycle model

Draft, modified, and published states

Studio list panes are generated with publishStatusListItems(...), which creates filtered views for:

Published (documents without a draft counterpart)
Modified (published documents with newer draft changes)
Draft (draft-only documents not yet published)

This gives editors a practical queue model without requiring custom workflow infrastructure.

Publish action labelling

The default publish action is modified so already-published documents show Update instead of Publish.

This is implemented via changePublishText(...) in the document actions pipeline and helps editors understand they are updating live content, not creating first publication.

Creation workflow

Site and language defaults

New document templates are adjusted so documents are created with the correct site and, where relevant, language.

For multilingual setups, static site+language templates are generated with human-friendly names (for example, language-labelled entries), while noisy template variants from upstream plugins are hidden from the creation menu.

newDocumentOptionsFn(...) filters out templates that should not be created manually, including internal metadata and duplicate translation template variants. This reduces operator error during content creation.

Translation workflow

The Studio enables @sanity/document-internationalization and adds translation-aware actions for translatable document types:

DeleteTranslationAction (with keyboard shortcut mod+alt+d)
DuplicateWithTranslationsAction

The default delete action is removed for translatable document types in the actions pipeline, so translation-safe actions are used instead of generic destructive behaviour.

How this supports enterprise operations

Editors can triage work quickly by status list (draft/modified/published).
Localisation teams get predictable creation flows across site and language dimensions.
Publication intent is clearer because action labels reflect first publish versus update.
Document action customisation stays centralised in one pipeline, making future governance rules easier to add.

Current boundaries and extension points

Not included by default

No mandatory approval chain (for example, legal sign-off stage gates) is wired by default.
No required reviewer assignment workflow is enforced in code.

Available extension point

handleAccessToActions(...) can be used to disable actions by role and allow publication only when workflow metadata reaches readyToPublish.

That helper is present in the toolkit but is not currently connected in apps/sanity/actions/index.ts, so treat it as an opt-in enhancement rather than active enforcement.

Practical rollout guidance

Start with the built-in draft/modified/published queues and translation actions.
Keep template curation strict so editors see only actionable creation options.
Add role-based publish restrictions through the actions pipeline only after role names and responsibilities are finalised.
Pair Studio-side workflow enhancements with Sanity project permissions for hard enforcement.

Editorial Workflow