Pipelines

The Pipelines app moves content through a one-way chain of stages inside a single space. Content stays editable in the Preview stage and locked in every later stage. Editors review the version that deploys. Each stage has its own access token, which the matching frontend environment uses.

A space has one pipeline with at least two stages. The first stage, Preview, is the default stage. A story’s ID changes from stage to stage, so track a story across stages by its UUID.

The Pipelines app stages content, not frontend code. For separate development, staging, and production environments of a frontend, use multiple spaces.

Features

• Define the stages content passes through.
• Edit content in Preview and freeze it in every later stage.
• Give each stage its own preview URL for the Visual Editor.
• Set the stage each stage syncs from.
• Issue an access token per stage.
• Deploy content from the source stage through the context menu in the Content section.
• Coordinate a deployment with the Releases app.

Setup

1. Open Settings → Pipelines, enter a name for each stage, and add it.
2. Configure each stage:
   • Preview URL: the environment the Visual Editor opens when previewing content in this stage. The preview URL overrides the default environment and is empty by default.
   • Source of sync: the stage this stage receives content from.
3. Generate the access token of each stage under Settings → Access Tokens, and use it in the frontend environment of that stage.

To deploy, open the Content section, select the target stage in the context menu below the space name, and choose Deploy from source. Repeat the deployment whenever the source stage changes.

To deploy a release, select it in the deployment dialog. Unfinished releases stay in Preview, while upcoming releases move on to later stages.

Example workflow

Editors create content in Preview. When the content is ready, the marketing lead deploys it to Staging, which locks the content and triggers the deployment of the staging preview environment. The marketing lead then shares a preview link with stakeholders.

After approval, the marketing lead deploys the content from Staging to Production, which makes it public. If stakeholders request changes, the editors revise the content in Preview and the process starts again.

Further resources

Pipelines in the app directory