What makes topic "draft"?

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We have a need to allow staff to create topics that are viewable by other staff before they are published for all forum members. 

My first thought was to create a new forum (e.g. "Review") that is a private form. We could then publish the topics in that forum for review, then move them to our main forum when we are ready. The drawback with this approach is that all of the feedback types, categories, and tags are forum specific. So we could not set those things prior to review (or we would have to reset them anyway after moving the topic to the main forum).

I created a test topic in my new "Review" forum, and I noticed that it was created in "DRAFT" mode. It also showed a "Publish" button as an available action. That sounds like the functionality we need ... but that functionality does not seem to be in our main forum. When I create a topic in our main forum, there is no "DRAFT" mode or "Publish" action.

My questions are:

(a) Why does my new "Review" forum allow "DRAFT" topics, but my main forum does not? I have reviewed all of the settings and they seem to be the same. It have not been able to find any differences that would be applicable.

(b) Are "DRAFT" topics viewable by other staff members? Or only by the original poster? 

(c) Do you have any other recommendation for how to accomplish the objective described above (staff-viewable topics that are then published for all members)?
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Sergey Stukov co-founder
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(a) Topics with type News - by default appears only to staff and has DRAFT status.
(b) For all staff members.
(c) So you can enable News type for your main forum here
https://earthsoft.userecho.com/settings/forum/2946...

Note that only staff members can create topics with News type, so for regular users all will be as usual.
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Sergey Stukov co-founder
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(a) Topics with type News - by default appears only to staff and has DRAFT status.
(b) For all staff members.
(c) So you can enable News type for your main forum here
https://earthsoft.userecho.com/settings/forum/2946...

Note that only staff members can create topics with News type, so for regular users all will be as usual.
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Mathew Weaver
Back when we first started using UserEcho, the default "News" feedback type was not working for us. Unfortunately, I do not remember exactly why it was not working. For some reason, we disabled the default "News" feedback type and created our own custom feedback type called "News" (feedback type 26080). We now have over 200 topics for our custom "News" feedback type, as well as many clients that are subscribed to our custom "News" feedback type. We have also built some custom webhooks that use our custom "News" feedback type.

We really need to have the DRAFT functionality, but I am hesitant to re-enable the default "News" feedback type because of the conflicts that it will create with our custom "News" feedback type. Is it possible for you to enable the DRAFT functionality on our custom "News" feedback type? That would be a big help to us.
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Vladimir Mullagaliyev co-founder
Quote from Mathew Weaver
Back when we first started using UserEcho, the default "News" feedback type was not working for us. Unfortunately, I do not remember exactly why it was not working. For some reason, we disabled the default "News" feedback type and created our own custom feedback type called "News" (feedback type 26080). We now have over 200 topics for our custom "News" feedback type, as well as many clients that are subscribed to our custom "News" feedback type. We have also built some custom webhooks that use our custom "News" feedback type.

We really need to have the DRAFT functionality, but I am hesitant to re-enable the default "News" feedback type because of the conflicts that it will create with our custom "News" feedback type. Is it possible for you to enable the DRAFT functionality on our custom "News" feedback type? That would be a big help to us.
Hi Mathew,
We've implement some changes. Now your custom "News" should have a "DRAFT" status while it will not published.
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Mathew Weaver
Quote from Vladimir Mullagaliyev
Hi Mathew,
We've implement some changes. Now your custom "News" should have a "DRAFT" status while it will not published.
Thank you for doing this. However, I'm not sure it will work how we want. It does not say "DRAFT"; instead it says "AWAITING MODERATION". But more importantly, we have reviewed our internal processes and we do not want draft/moderation on all of our News posts. So please undo whatever change you made that forces moderation on our News items. I tried to undo it in Settings, but could not find the appropriate setting.

We will use a different approach of posting our draft topics to our private Review forum first, then moving them to the main Forum when they are ready to be published.
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Vladimir Mullagaliyev co-founder
Quote from Mathew Weaver
Thank you for doing this. However, I'm not sure it will work how we want. It does not say "DRAFT"; instead it says "AWAITING MODERATION". But more importantly, we have reviewed our internal processes and we do not want draft/moderation on all of our News posts. So please undo whatever change you made that forces moderation on our News items. I tried to undo it in Settings, but could not find the appropriate setting.

We will use a different approach of posting our draft topics to our private Review forum first, then moving them to the main Forum when they are ready to be published.
We have canceled previous changes.
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Mathew Weaver
I just posted another comment here: http://feedback.userecho.com/topic/407799-explicit...

The method we are using to draft topics in a private forum and then move them to a public forum is mostly working. The issue we are having is that the date the topic is originally drafted is maintained after the topic is moved to the public forum, so sorting by "last updated" does not always put the topic at the top because other topics may have been created in the public forum after the topic was originally drafted in the private forum. We are hoping to find a way around this issue ... ideally a way that we can manually set the date on a topic. 
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Sergey Stukov co-founder
Quote from Mathew Weaver
I just posted another comment here: http://feedback.userecho.com/topic/407799-explicit...

The method we are using to draft topics in a private forum and then move them to a public forum is mostly working. The issue we are having is that the date the topic is originally drafted is maintained after the topic is moved to the public forum, so sorting by "last updated" does not always put the topic at the top because other topics may have been created in the public forum after the topic was originally drafted in the private forum. We are hoping to find a way around this issue ... ideally a way that we can manually set the date on a topic. 
What if the moving operation will update topic updated date to the NOW. Is it will be suitable for you?
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Mathew Weaver
Quote from Sergey Stukov
What if the moving operation will update topic updated date to the NOW. Is it will be suitable for you?
Yes, I think that would work for our needs.
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Vladimir Mullagaliyev co-founder
Quote from Mathew Weaver
Yes, I think that would work for our needs.
Should works now.