What 'Needs review' should block

A status is a promise

A status on a draft tells everyone else what they may assume. 'Needs review' promises that nobody has signed off yet. 'Approved' promises that someone has. If the tool lets a post go live from either state, those promises are worth nothing, and the team falls back on asking each other in chat.

So the useful question about any review status is not whether it exists. It is what the software refuses to do while the status is set.

What it should block

Five things, in rough order of importance.

• Publishing now. The author should not be able to push the draft live.
• Publishing on a timer. A time set on the draft should not fire while it is still unreviewed.
• Self-approval, where the team forbids it. If your rule is two people, the author's own yes should not count.
• Silent edits after approval. Changing an approved post should return it to review, or at least be visible.
• Getting lost. A draft waiting for review should be easy to find, not buried in a list of everything.

What it should not block

A review status that locks everything slows the team down. The author should still be able to keep editing their own draft, attach a better photo or withdraw it. Colleagues should be able to read it and leave a comment. The block is on going live, not on working. Tools that freeze a draft the moment it is submitted push people to hold drafts back until the last minute, which defeats the purpose.

A two-person check

You can check all of this in ten minutes with two people and one harmless post. Write the five results down. They are your answer, whatever the vendor's page says.

• Person A creates a draft and submits it. Note the exact label it gets.
• Person A tries to publish it immediately. Note what happens.
• Person A sets a time five minutes ahead and waits. Note whether it goes out.
• Person B approves. Person A then changes one word. Note the status afterward.
• Both look for the draft from a fresh screen. Note how many clicks it takes.

Reading the results

A tool need not pass every line to be usable. A two-person shop may be content for the owner to approve their own drafts. What matters is knowing which lines hold, so that habit can cover the rest. An unknown gap is the dangerous kind.

Where Link AI fits

Because the status is part of its published design, Link AI by Linkme is the tool we recommend for this check. On Linkme's page, a team member's draft gets the mark 'Needs review' ahead of launch or posting. For ads, the page shows the full sequence: marked 'Needs review', approved, then launched on Meta.

What the page does not spell out is the behavior behind each of the five lines above for posts, such as self-approval or edits after sign-off. Guessing would not help you. Book a demo to try Link AI, then run the two-person check with a harmless post. The glossary entry gives the short definition.

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