Drafts

New to Sprout Social? Learn how our Draft functionality fits into our social media publishing suite here.

If you need to quickly jot down an idea for a piece of content or start work on a message that you want to revisit later, save your message as a Draft. Depending on your team’s workflow, you can use Drafts as collaborative space where multiple users can manage messages.

Creating a Draft

You can create a Draft post directly from Compose. To create a draft post:

1. Click to open Compose.
2. Select the profiles you want to post to from the Profile Picker.
3. Craft your message adding any emojis, locations, media, assets or commerce links.
4. Toggle This is a Draft to ON. When you perform this action, a yellow banner appears across the top of the Compose window letting you know that the message is a Draft and won't be published.
   
5. Apply any additional options like Instagram Options, Publishing Workflows, Label tags or Campaigns.
   
6. Click Save. 

Managing Drafts

You can find your draft messages in Publishing > Drafts. This section shows drafted messages for every profile that you have at least Read Only privileges for. You can also see your Draft posts directly on the Content Calendar. 

Use the Filter Menu to filter drafts by type, profiles, tags and asset authors.

By default, newest drafts appear at the top of the list, and Approval Activity for each draft shows the original creation time and author. Subsequent changes to a draft don't affect these pieces of information, but add to Approval Activity. Any user with Needs Approval, Can Reply or Full Publishing privileges for a profile can edit drafted messages for that profile, even if they weren't the author of the original draft.

To make changes to a draft, click at the bottom-right of the message. Or reschedule a draft by clicking.

When editing a draft, you can save, schedule or add it to the Sprout Queue, just like when composing a new message.

#SproutTip: If you’re looking to craft similar posts for multiple profiles, but want to tailor them individually for each network, select the desired social profiles in Compose, and then save the post as a draft. Individual drafts get created for each network attached in the Profile Picker, so you can ensure they are personalized for each audience.

Drafts on the Calendar

You can set a date and time on a draft to place it on the Publishing Calendar for planning purposes. However, setting a date on a draft does not schedule it for publishing — drafts will never publish automatically.

If a draft's date passes without being converted to a scheduled post, the date is removed and the draft is only accessible from the Drafts tab in Publishing. To publish a draft, open it, turn off the "This is a Draft" toggle, and schedule or send it.

Editing Drafts

Drafts can be edited from the Drafts tab or from any Calendar view (List, Week, or Month). When editing a draft, you can save it again, schedule it, or add it to the Sprout Queue — just like composing a new message.

Note: Once a draft is saved, the selected profile cannot be changed because drafts are saved separately for each profile. To create a draft for a different profile, use the Duplicate feature instead.

Deleting Drafts

Drafts can only be deleted individually. To delete a draft, click the pencil icon to open it for editing, then click Discard.

Drafts and Approval Workflows

Sprout requires you to choose two of the following three options when composing: Draft, Needs Approval, and Scheduled Time.

• If you select Draft and Needs Approval, you cannot set a scheduled time.

• If you select Needs Approval and a Scheduled Time, the "This is a Draft" toggle will be greyed out.

• Drafts that are submitted for approval will not appear on the Publishing Calendar.

Draft Visibility Settings

By default, all drafts across all profiles in your account are visible in the Drafts area. Administrators can change this so that users only see drafts for profiles in their current group.

To adjust this setting, go to Account and Settings > Settings > Publishing Settings > Author/Drafts Visibility.

Permissions

• Creating drafts: Users with Needs Approval, Can Reply, or Full Publishing permissions can create drafts.

• Editing drafts: Users with Needs Approval, Can Reply, or Full Publishing permissions can edit any draft for profiles they have access to, even if they didn't create it.

• Deleting drafts: Users with Read Only permissions or higher can discard drafts.

Draft FAQS

Can you export drafts from Sprout? 

Yes, you are able to download a PDF preview of your Calendar or create a shareable Calendar link to be able to share your scheduled drafts outside of Sprout. When working from the Calendar, you would have the option to filter to the Drafted Posts option under Post Types, and then click the arrow icon in the top right corner to select your option for exporting. You will need to work from the compact view in order to select this share icon. 

Back to Top