Releases

A publication is a document an app publishes for people outside your organization, such as a report or a book of tables and text. A release is one build of it, frozen: every section, row and text exactly as it was when it was built. A person approves a release, a person publishes it, and the public page shows only that release.

Why it works this way

• What you approve is what goes public. A release never changes after it’s built. Its Hash is a fingerprint of everything it froze. The same data always gives the same hash, and any change gives a different one.
• Publishing checks again. When someone chooses Publish, CapZero builds the release again from the live data. If anything in it changed since the build, publishing is refused, with a list of what changed. So a change made after the approval never reaches the public by accident.
• Only public fields leave. The app decides which columns and text are public. Everything else, such as people’s names and email addresses, stays out of the public page, its search and its downloads.
• Releases are kept. A release’s number and hash never change. While the publication is live, earlier published releases stay readable at their own addresses.

How it relates to what you do

Publications are in the app’s sidebar, under Publications. You see them only if you build or approve releases. Each publication’s page shows its State, its Public page, its Published release and its Releases, newest first.

A release moves through these states:

State	What it means	What happens next
Building	CapZero is freezing each section. The page shows its progress.	It becomes Built or Failed on its own.
Failed	The build stopped. The page says why.	A builder fixes the cause and chooses Build a new release.
Built	Frozen, with its hash and a count of what each section holds.	A builder checks the sections and chooses Request approval.
Waiting for approval	Someone asked for approval.	A person who may approve opens the approval and answers it.
Approved	A person approved exactly what this release froze.	A person who may approve chooses Publish.
Rejected	The approver said no, with a note.	A builder fixes what the note asks and builds a new release.
Published	Its public page is live.	It stays live until someone chooses Take down.
Taken down	Its public page and downloads are gone.	Publish again on the release puts it back at the same address.

Two kinds of people work on a release:

• Builders build releases and ask for approval. They can’t approve or publish.
• Approvers approve, publish and take down. They’re always people, with two-step verification, and never the person who asked for the approval. An agent is never an approver. See Approvals with MFA.

The app decides who is a builder and who is an approver. Your administrator gives people those roles.

The public page

Anyone with the address can read a published release, without signing in. The page shows the release’s number, its publication date and its hash. Readers can:

• search the release with Search this release;
• download each table’s figures with Download CSV;
• download the whole release with Download PDF. It appears a minute or two after publishing, once the PDF is ready: reload the page to see it.

When a publication is taken down, its address shows This page isn’t published, and every download of it is gone at once. Publishing a release again puts it back at the same address.

When publishing is refused

If something in the release changed after it was built, Publish shows Not published: the data changed since release followed by its number, and lists what changed. The list names the section and the record, for example a row that was revised, added or removed, or a text that was rewritten.

Nothing went public. The release can’t be fixed, because releases never change. Build a new release, have it approved, and publish that one.

Related

• Approvals with MFA
• Release and Publication in the glossary