# Publish Workflow
### Overview
Automating the process of publishing posts from tracker entries offers numerous benefits, including increased efficiency, streamlined communication, and improved workflow management. By leveraging the latest features and functionalities available in your workflow management tool, you can create a seamless and efficient publishing process that enhances productivity and collaboration within your team. This guide will walk you through creating a workflow that will publish a post based on information entered into a tracker.
For the purpose of example, we will be creating a workflow centered around posting a weekly lunch menu.
**Scenario:**
Our HR team admin, Christiana, is tasked by her manager, Adela, to create a tracker with the weekly company lunch menus. These menus will need to be posted to select teams at the beginning of every week. However, before a lunch menu can be posted, Adela must review it to make sure all dietary requirements are met.
Christiana will create an [Approval](https://guides.mangoapps.com/user-guide/trackers/tracker-workflows/creating-a-tracker-workflow) workflow and a Publish workflow.
Christiana first creates a tracker with the following fields:
Date, Title, Content, To & CC Teams, From User, Template, Attachments, Publish Status
The following fields will be auto-created by the **Approval Workflow**:
Approval Status, Approved or Declined By, Approved or Declined Date
***
### Publish Workflow Template
To get started, click the **Workflows** dropdown menu in the upper right hand corner of your screen and select **Create New Workflows**. Select **Publish Workflow** from the pop-up menu.
From this menu, we will fill in our workflow conditions as follows:
**Trigger** - This condition sets the automated workflow into motion based on an event occurring within the tracker or at a selected time. From the drop down menu, select whether the event will be entry related or triggered at a scheduled time.
For our example, since the lunch menu needs to be posted every week on Monday, we will choose the option **At scheduled time** and choose to have the entries post on the date we have put in the **Date** column.
 **Condition** - This optional condition field will evaluate a condition after the trigger has been met but before the defined action is carried out.
For our example this option is required. Since Christiana will need her manager, Adela, to approve the content of the post before it is made, we will set a condition that the **Approval Status** field must contain the value "Approved".
If the entry has not been approved by the trigger date, the post will **NOT** be made and this entry will be skipped by the workflow.
 **Action** - This field designates the action that will occur if the entry fulfills the above Trigger and Condition. The action in this case is to publish a post to the selected team(s).
**Mappings** - The Publish workflow contains an additional menu for mapping columns for each part of the post-to-be. Click the **Change Setup** button to be taken to the mapping menu.
{% hint style="warning" %}
In order for columns to successfully map to the appropriate post section, the below listed column type restrictions **must** be followed:
**Title** - the chosen column **must be** the Text or Rich Text column type
**Content** - Text or Rich Text
**To & CC Teams** - Team Look Ahead
**From User** - User Look Ahead
**Template** - Dropdown. The options set up here **must match exactly** the templates available when [Creating a Post](https://guides.mangoapps.com/user-guide/posts/compose-a-post).
{% endhint %}
***
Once the core workflow is established, there's an option to further customize it by creating tailored messages for sending, updating a column, or executing a row action. These actions can be set to occur either when the post successfully publishes or if the system fails to publish.
For our example, we will have the following setup:
If the post published **successfully** the **Publish Status** column will update the value of the entry to **Published**.
If the publish **failed** due to a system error, a message will be sent to Adela, Christiana's manager.
***
With this information completed, click **Save**. The workflow will now be active for all future entries (but not retroactively).
{% hint style="danger" %}
If you are publishing a post to a team or workspace, make sure your **Post module is enabled** for the location, otherwise the publish workflow will **FAIL**.
{% endhint %}
***
### Preview Posts to be Published
To preview the post before it is published, select the entry and click the 3-Dot action menu. Click on the **Preview Post** option from the drop down menu.
If there is more than one entry that can be previewed, click the arrow on the side of the preview to scroll through to the next entry.
***
### Set Post Archival Date
The **Set Archival Date** option allows users to automatically archive a post after a chosen date, ensuring content remains fresh and time-sensitive communications are retired on schedule. This helps keep feeds uncluttered and ensures employees only see up-to-date information.
When creating or editing a post, the user can specify an **Archival Date** directly in the **publish workflow** or from a **tracker view**.
Once this date is reached, the post is automatically moved to the **archived state**.
Archived posts are no longer visible in active feeds but can still be accessed through the **Archived filter**.
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