How to Restore a Discarded Quick Draft
Discarding a quick draft in the Supervisor review queue has never deleted it — the row and its body stay in place, along with the note explaining why it was set aside when one was written. Nothing in the queue used to say so, though, which made “Discard” feel final and clearing a queue of a few hundred drafts feel like throwing work away. The Supervisor History view makes that recoverability visible, and gives you a way to act on it.
Where to find it
Open Supervisor → History. This is the archive for review decisions, including quick drafts that were dismissed individually, rejected, or cleared in bulk.
The Review feed is now reserved for active review work: pending drafts that still need a decision, plus raw material under Handovers and drafts. Once a quick draft is discarded, it leaves that active feed and moves into History instead of appearing in a recovery list at the bottom of the queue.
In History, look for the discarded draft you want to recover. Each archived draft row shows the context you need to decide whether to bring it back, including:
- A one-line summary of the draft, such as its diff summary or a fallback label if it doesn’t have one
- The review note explaining why it was set aside, when there is one — a bulk clear writes one, but discarding a single draft from the queue does not
- A suppressed-repeat line, when later handovers matched the discarded draft, such as “4 conversations have asked this since you discarded it”
- A Restore button, when that draft can still be restored
That suppressed-repeat line is there so reviewers can spot a discard that may be worth restoring. If customers keep asking the same thing after the draft was discarded, Supervisor records those later matches on the archived row instead of creating duplicate review work. That suppression lasts 90 days from the discard: after the window closes the topic stops being held back, and the next conversation to ask it can be drafted fresh. So a high count here is worth acting on while the draft is still the thing standing in the way.
History keeps these rows because nothing was deleted. It is a record of past review decisions, not more work waiting for you, so discarded drafts don’t compete for attention with drafts that are still pending review.
Restoring a draft
Click Restore on any restorable draft in History. That draft:
- Moves back to pending, so it reappears in the main review queue
- Loses its old review note and reviewer — restoring clears the record of why it was discarded, since it’s headed back into review from scratch
- Reopens its group, if the group had been closed
That last point matters because a closed group is hidden from every list in the queue, so a restored draft on a closed group would come back to pending while its own group stayed invisible everywhere else. Restoring brings the group back with it.
Discarding a draft on its own does not close its group — the group is closed only when a Supervisor finding is dismissed, which clears the finding’s remaining drafts and resolves the group in the same step.
What can and can’t be restored
Only drafts in dismissed or rejected status can come back through History. A deployed draft — one that was already published — can’t be restored, because that draft is now live configuration. Offering it back as a draft and publishing it again would create a second copy of an article the tenant already has. If you need to change something about a deployed article, that’s an edit to the live article itself, not a restore.
Attempting to restore a draft that’s already been restored, or that’s deployed, is refused rather than silently ignored — you’ll see an error rather than a draft quietly staying put.
Why this exists
History is the safety net a bulk clear needs. Before you clear a large queue, it’s worth knowing that every row you clear lands there first, with the reason attached, and that restoring one is a single click. The tab lists the 100 most recent discards, newest decision first, and tells you when there are more than it is showing — so reach for a draft you want back before it falls past that page.