Previewing and Shipping Changes

In this tutorial you will learn how to preview your questionnaire, publish it, and request a sync to get your changes live. This is the workflow you follow every time you make changes in Strapi.

Prerequisites

• Completed the previous tutorials (or have any questionnaire saved in Strapi)
• Access to Strapi admin (staging or production)

1. Preview your draft in Strapi

Before anything else, verify your questionnaire works correctly as a draft.

1. Open your questionnaire in Strapi admin
2. Click the Preview button in the top-right area
3. A new tab opens showing the questionnaire in the staging app
4. Walk through the entire flow from start to finish
5. Test each branch — try different answers to verify rules fire correctly

Tip

The preview loads your draft directly from the Strapi API — no sync or deployment needed. This is the fastest way to iterate on changes.

2. Verify the flow

As you preview, check for:

• Question ordering — Do questions appear in the right sequence?
• Rules — When you answer in a way that should trigger a rule, does the flow jump correctly?
• Screen text — Are titles, descriptions, and button text correct?
• Required fields — Can you skip past questions that should be required?
• Quote page — Do customization options, tables, and FAQ render correctly?

If something is wrong, go back to Strapi, edit the questionnaire, save, and preview again. The preview always reflects the latest saved draft.

3. Publish the questionnaire

Once you are satisfied with the draft:

1. In Strapi, open your questionnaire
2. Click Publish

Caution

Publishing does not automatically update the app. It makes the data available for syncing. You still need to request a sync for customers to see the changes.

Draft vs Published

From Strapi v5, every entry has a Draft and a Published tab. The Draft is your working copy — edit and preview freely. The Published tab is read-only and is what syncs to the app. If they differ, the entry shows as “Modified” in the admin panel.

4. Request a content sync

Now that your content is published, you need Engineering to sync it into the codebase.

1. Create a ticket in Linear (our project management tool) in the Product team using the “Strapi content sync” template
2. Fill out:
   • Slug of the questionnaire to sync (the URL-safe name, e.g., pet-insurance — double-check the exact spelling)
   • Changes summary — be as detailed as possible about what you changed and why
3. Move the ticket status to “Refined”

This triggers an automated workflow that:

• Creates a Pull Request (a proposed code change) on GitHub
• Notifies the relevant engineering team on Slack
• Updates the Linear ticket status as it progresses

Follow the ticket for updates: In Review → On Staging → In Production.

Some changes need extra engineering work

A seemingly small CMS change may require additional development. For example, adding or removing a questionnaire question means Engineering needs to update the system that stores questionnaire data. Always provide details about what changed.

For full details on the sync request process, see Request a Content Sync.

5. Verify on staging

Once the sync PR is merged, your changes will be live on the staging environment. Open the staging app and verify the questionnaire works as expected with real data (not just preview mode).

6. Production release

After staging verification, Engineering will deploy the changes to production as part of the normal release process. Your Linear ticket will move to “In Production” when done.

The full workflow at a glance

flowchart TD
    A["Edit in Strapi CMS"] --> B["Preview as draft"]
    B --> C{"Looks good?"}
    C -->|No| A
    C -->|Yes| D["Publish in Strapi"]
    D --> E["Request sync via Linear"]
    E --> F["Engineering creates PR"]
    F --> G["Verify on staging"]
    G --> H["Deploy to production"]

What you learned

• Preview lets you test drafts without syncing or deploying
• Publish in Strapi makes data available for sync (but does not update the app)
• Request a Content Sync via Linear is how you get changes to customers
• Always preview thoroughly before publishing — it’s faster to fix things in draft than after syncing
• Provide detailed change summaries — Engineering needs context to handle syncs safely

Next steps

You now have the complete end-to-end workflow. Explore the How-to Guides for targeted instructions on specific tasks, or check the Reference for detailed specifications.

See also

• Request a Content Sync — detailed steps for the sync request process
• Preview a Questionnaire — draft/published workflow and cancellation previews
• Strapi Transform Pipeline — how data is reshaped between Strapi and the app (engineering context)