After a pull request merges, Autopilot suggests updates to your posts and help articles. Some wait for your team; others go out by themselves after a hold. Anyone on the team can review them in Autopilot, in the sidebar.
Find what to review
The sidebar's Autopilot shows how many posts and articles wait for review. Home shows the same number in Posts and articles to review, and lists them under Needs your attention → To review in Autopilot, each with Review, and with Stop and Publish now when it goes out by itself. Sample content isn't counted.
Autopilot has three tabs:
To review: the posts and articles with updates waiting for your team or going out by themselves. Posts are under Feedback, by board. Articles are under Help center, by collection; new articles and articles in no collection come right under Help center.
Reviewed: posts and articles whose updates were decided, each with who decided and when, such as "Approved by Maya · 2h".
Activity: every merged pull request, newest first. See "Follow a pull request" below.
Each row has a badge for what happens to it: Completing, In progress, Updated or New. Once reviewed, it says what became of it: Completed, In progress, Published, Drafted, Linked, Dismissed or Undone. A row that goes out by itself says when, like "Goes out tomorrow at 3:52 pm".
Click a row to open its review beside the list. On a wide screen, the first one to review opens by itself, and once you decide one, the next opens.
At the top of each review, a chip such as PR #412 stands for each pull request with an update on it, and Verify for a fix from Verify. Click a chip to see that pull request's part: why Autopilot suggests it, where it stands, Open on GitHub and Its activity, and what else the same pull request updates. From the chip you can also Dismiss its part, Write it again when it's out of date, or Undo it once it went out. A Verify chip links to Its history, the article's checks, in place of GitHub.
Review a post's update
A post's review shows:
What they asked: the post's text, who voted, and conversations in your Inbox linked to it.
What happens to the post, such as Open → Completed · emails up to 27 people, and why it waits for you, such as "Waits for you: Completing emails everyone on the post."
The comment that goes with it. A progress update's comment is required, and you can edit it. Completing a post has an optional box, Add a comment (optional): what you write is sent with the completion email and posted as the team's comment.
"Also from PR #412: …" when the same pull request also updates an article. If completing the post emails people, it suggests publishing the article first, so the email points people to docs that already say how.
Approve asks first and says what will happen, such as "1 post completed, up to 27 people emailed". Dismiss asks why, which is optional.
When several pull requests move the same post forward, they make one update: one status change and one comment, joined from each. To drop one pull request's part, use Dismiss in its chip.
Review an article's edits
An article's review shows the whole article as readers will see it:
What changed, folded away, says what the edit does.
Changes shows removed text struck out and added text highlighted. Article shows the new text alone. With several changes, the arrows step through them.
Edit before publishing opens the article in the editor with its waiting changes. What you save there waits with them, and Review, at the top of the editor, takes you back.
Approve and publish asks "Publish “title”?" and then publishes every edit waiting on the article at once.
Dismiss takes the waiting edits out of the article. Anything else in its unpublished changes stays.
Edits from several pull requests on the same article stack into its Unpublished changes, so you review and publish them once. They also show in the article's editor: publishing the changes there approves the edits, and discarding them dismisses the edits. If the article also has a teammate's unpublished edit, the review says so, and approving publishes that edit too.
If you edit the article while Autopilot's edits wait and Autopilot changed another part, your save keeps both. If it changed the same part, the editor shows the newest version beside your text, which stays as you typed it: copy what you need, then save. Restoring an older version from History would take the waiting edits out, so it asks first, with Restore and dismiss.
An edit that's out of date
An edit written on an earlier version of the article can't show what it changes. The review says so, with Write it again, which has Autopilot read that pull request again on the newest text, and Dismiss it. A Verify fix can only be dismissed.
A new article
A new article's draft shows all of its text as added. At the top, the review says where approving saves it, such as "A new article, in Billing, after “Invoices”", or "A new article, in no collection". To save it somewhere else, pick it under Collection before approving: No collection, or one of your collections, where it goes last. Approve as a draft saves it as a draft only your team sees, to publish from Docs. When Write drafts at once is on and Autopilot is sure enough, the draft is written by itself, where Autopilot placed it, and shows under Reviewed as Drafted.
An edit to a draft
Autopilot also fixes drafts that a later pull request makes wrong or incomplete, such as a new article's draft you approved but haven't published yet. The edit goes into the draft's text, and it never goes out by itself: it waits for your team, saying "Its article is a draft". Its review shows what it changes in the draft.
Approve keeps the edit in the draft, which only your team sees until it's published from Docs. It shows under Reviewed as Approved. Autopilot's email has no Approve for it, only Edit.
Edit the draft opens it in the editor.
Dismiss takes the edit's changes out of the draft. The rest of it stays.
When you publish the draft from Docs, the edits Autopilot suggested go live with it, and the Publish dialog says so, such as "It includes 1 edit Autopilot suggested; it goes live too." If another edit lands after you opened the draft, publishing is refused and the page shows it, so review it before publishing again. With unsaved typing in the editor, Publish says "Save your changes first".
Stop or publish what goes out by itself
An update that goes out by itself shows when, like "Goes out tomorrow at 3:52 pm", with:
Stop: it doesn't go out by itself, and waits for your team instead, saying who stopped it and when it would have gone out.
Publish now: it goes out at once. If it completes a post, it asks first and says how many people get the email, which can't be taken back.
Dismiss: it doesn't go out at all.
The same Stop and Publish now are on Home and in Autopilot's emails. When a new pull request adds to a post's update or an article's edits, the hold starts again for all of them.
Once it goes out, the review says so, such as "Published · by Autopilot, 5 minutes ago", and its chip says Applied by Autopilot (a post's update), Published by Autopilot (an article edit) or Linked by Autopilot. If Autopilot couldn't tell whether it went out, the review says "Couldn't tell whether it went out": check the post or article before doing it again.
See what happened and undo it
Once nothing on a post or article waits, its review says what happened: the outcome, who decided and when, such as "Completed · approved by Maya Chen, 2 minutes ago", how many people were emailed that it shipped, the team's comment, or why it was dismissed.
Undo asks first and says what it puts back:
A post's update: the post goes back to the status it had, and the comment is deleted. Emails already sent can't be taken back.
An article edit: its sections go back to what they said before it, in the published article and in any unpublished changes, or in a draft's text. Everything else stays.
A new article: the draft is deleted.
To undo one pull request's part of an article, use Undo in its chip. A post's update that went out as one is undone as a whole, from any of its chips, and the dialog says so first.
Follow a pull request
Activity lists every merged pull request with what it updates, such as "1 post to complete" or "2 articles to update". Pull requests with nothing users would notice are folded away under Nothing to do. Open one to see:
What changed for users, in a sentence or two.
Why Autopilot made this change, folded away.
Review changes: the posts and articles it updates, each opening its review.
Where its line is in the changelog, like "Its line in the changelog is in Next release."
If it ran with values your owners changed in Advanced tuning, the top of its page says "Ran with this project's tuning" and names them. See Autopilot's models and Advanced tuning.
A pull request Autopilot is still reading says Analysing. One that failed says why, with Analyse again. One paused because the project ran out of AI credits has Resume. One with nothing to do has Analyse anyway. When pull requests aren't read yet, To review says so, with see Activity.
Links Autopilot is very sure of are made by themselves (if Link posts by itself is on) and only show under Reviewed. The changelog line is never reviewed here: edit it in the Next release draft.