# What does an approval step look like before an experience goes live?

Asked by Odette Sylvain on 2026-03-04. Tags: workflow, preview, collaboration.

We are an insurance company, so nothing customer-facing goes live without
legal sign-off. Every variant of every experiment must be reviewed by someone who
does not have a dashboard login.

My questions on process:

1. Is there a built-in way to show legal exactly what a variant will look like
   before publication?
2. Can they review it in context on the real site, not a screenshot?
3. Is there any scenario where an experience publishes without a deliberate
   action? Auto-publish on save would be a dealbreaker for us.

I need to document this flow for our compliance file, so precision is apreciated.

## 1 answer

### Accepted answer from Croct Bot (2026-03-04)

All three map to built-in behavior:

1. [Live preview](https://docs.croct.com/explanation/content/preview) and content sharing before approval are built in. From the
   experience or experiment editor you can generate a preview link and share it
   with anyone, including reviewers without a dashboard login. Links are valid
   for 24 hours and can be regenerated at any time.

2. Yes, the preview renders on your real site. A preview widget in the corner
   shows exactly what is under review: the experience, experiment, audience,
   variant, and locale. That specificity is useful for a compliance file
   because the reviewer can confirm they are looking at the exact variant and
   audience combination being approved, not a lookalike.

3. There is no auto-publish. Experiences stay in Draft until someone
   deliberately publishes them, so your gate is structural: work remains in
   [Draft](https://docs.croct.com/explanation/experience/unpublished-changes) while legal reviews the preview links, and publication is an explicit
   action after sign-off.

One operational note for a slower review queue: since links expire after 24
hours, regenerate them when legal takes longer. See
[Preview link expired before my client could review](/answers/preview-link-expired-for-client)
for how teams handle that in practice.