Document Lifecycle
Draft, active, and archived — and who can see each.
Every document has a status that controls where it is in its life and, crucially, who can see it. Understanding the three states lets you draft in private, publish when you're ready, and retire what's no longer needed — without ever deleting knowledge.
The three statuses
- Draft — a work in progress. A draft is visible only to you, its author, so you can write and rework in peace before anyone else sees it.
- Active — published. An active document is visible to everyone with access to its space. This is the normal state for documentation your team relies on.
- Archived — set aside. An archived document is out of the everyday view but not deleted; it stays available to people who can view archived content, so nothing is lost.
New documents — blank or from a template — start as Draft. When it's ready, set it to Active to share it with your space.
Ownership vs. who can edit
Two different things are easy to confuse:
- Author (ownership) — the person who created the document. Authorship is what keeps a draft private to you until you publish it, and it's used for attribution.
- Edit access — controlled by the document's space, not by who authored it. Anyone with editor access to the space can edit any document in it; a viewer can edit none. So a teammate doesn't need to "own" a document to improve it — they just need edit access to its space.
See Space access for how edit rights are granted, and Verification & staleness for how a published document is kept trustworthy over time.
Moving and organizing
As your knowledge base grows, you'll reorganize. You can move a document to another space or section, or copy it. When a move would collide with an existing document's address, Docpipe offers a free alternative rather than overwriting anything.
Moving a document between spaces changes who can edit it, because edit access follows the destination space. Move a document into a more restricted space and fewer people will be able to change it.