Introduction and access to Whitehall publisher
Understand how Whitehall publisher works and how you access it.
We have 2 publishing environments - Production and Integration. You need sign in details and 2-step verification (2SV) for each environment.
Use:
- Production to publish content live to GOV.UK
- Integration to practise or to test content
Content on Integration is overwritten each night with what’s in Production, so anything you’ve saved in Integration will be lost.
Documents marked ‘access limited’ are not brought across from Production to Integration.
Your GOV.UK lead or managing editor can request an account for you to access GOV.UK publishing applications.
They can request a new account through the new user account request form.
If you have a ‘writer’ account you can create Whitehall content but you cannot publish it. When you get your account, you’ll have ‘writer’ permissions.
If you have ‘departmental editor’ permissions, you can create and publish Whitehall content and you can review (2i) content submitted by others.
If you have ‘managing editor’ permissions, you can also:
- unpublish Whitehall content
- withdraw and unwithdraw Whitehall content
- change your organisation page layout
- request training and accounts for new starters
- manage your organisation’s accounts
Most organisations are limited to 5 managing editors. If you’re a managing editor, you can get permission to become an organisation admin so you can manage your organisation’s accounts.
If you’re a managing editor with organisation admin permissions you can:
- view your organisation’s accounts and the applications they have access to
- unsuspend your organisation’s accounts
- reset 2-step verification for your organisation’s accounts
- manage permissions for ‘devolved’ applications (for example, Manuals Publisher)
You cannot manage access for Whitehall publisher. You must submit a request using the accounts request form instead.
How to get permission
Most managing editors already have this permission. If you do not, you can ask to get your permission changed through the accounts request form.
View your organisation’s accounts
You manage your users through the ‘Users’ tab in the Signon dashboard.
You can then search for a specific name or email address, or filter your users by their:
- account status - active, suspended, invited or locked
- 2-step verification (2SV) status - enabled, not set up or exempted
- role - normal user or organisation admin
- permissions
You can export a CSV of your users to see what permissions they have across all applications.
You cannot manage accounts in the agencies that your organisation looks after, unless you have the super organisation admin permission.
Unsuspend and unlock accounts
You need to select an individual user account to unsuspend or unlock their account.
On the user account page, there are 2 relevant links below the ‘Actions’ heading:
- ‘View account access log’
- ‘Unsuspend user’ or ‘Unlock account’
The account access log will show you the account history, for example if they’ve entered an invalid password or if they’ve successfully logged in.
The unsuspend link will take you to another screen. You need to untick the suspended box and save to unsuspend the user’s account.
The unlock account link will only appear when a user’s account is locked. Click it to unlock an account.
You can only unsuspend and unlock accounts in your department’s agencies if you’ve got the super organisation admin permission.
Reset 2-step verification (2SV) on accounts
Select an individual user account to reset their 2SV. Select ‘Reset 2-step verification’ under the ‘Actions’ heading.
The user will be prompted to set up 2SV again the next time they sign in.
Resend signup email
Select ‘Resend signup email’ under the ‘Actions’ heading. This will automatically resend the signup email.
Super organisation admin
Super organisation admin allows you to manage the accounts of your organisation and any that are related to your organisation.
You can do all the same things as the organisation admin but for all related organisations that are modelled under your organisation.
You can get the super organisation admin permission if you look after the people in your department’s agencies that have access to GOV.UK tools.
Request the super organisation admin permission using the accounts request form.
Whitehall publisher is where you can create and edit most government content on GOV.UK. If you have an account, you can sign in to the:
- Production version of Whitehall publisher - you will be able to publish content live to GOV.UK
- Integration version of Whitehall publisher - you can practise or test content, but you cannot publish it to GOV.UK
You may want to bookmark these two links.
Sign in
On the ‘Sign in’ page enter your email address and password. Once 2-step verification (2SV) is set up on your account, you’ll be asked to enter a unique code every 30 days. Go to the verification app in your phone to get the code. You will not receive the code in an email or text message.
If it’s your first time signing in, use the link in your invitation email to access your account, set a password and set up 2SV.
If you cannot sign in, contact GOV.UK.
Set up 2SV
You’ll need a mobile phone to install a verification app - for example, Google Authenticator or Windows Authenticator.
If you do not have a work phone, you can use your personal phone if your department allows it. If you do not have a mobile phone you can use, tell your GOV.UK lead or managing editor. If you’re not sure which verification app you should use, ask your IT department.
Set up 2SV for both your Production and Integration accounts. For each account, sign in and then select the ‘Set up 2-step verification’ link from the right-hand side of the dashboard. Follow the instructions to set up 2SV.
If you have any problems setting up 2SV, ask your GOV.UK lead or managing editor to send a support ticket to GDS.
If you’ve changed your phone or your 2SV has stopped working, ask your GOV.UK lead or managing editor to reset this for you.
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If you’re prompted to, enter the GOV.UK username and password.
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At ‘Sign in’ follow the ‘Forgot your passphrase?’ link.
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Enter the email address you registered with GOV.UK and click the button ‘Send me passphrase reset instructions’. You should receive the instructions by email. If you do not see them in your inbox, check your spam filter.
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If you have still not had a passphrase reset email, ask your managing editor to contact GDS using the accounts request form.
Unused accounts are automatically suspended after 45 days of inactivity.
Government Digital Service (GDS) will send a reminder to your email address 14 days, 7 days, 3 days and 1 day before suspension. The reminders give you an opportunity to sign in, which will reactivate your account and stop the suspension.
If your account has been suspended, your managing editor can get your account unsuspended.
On your publisher ‘Dashboard’ you’ll see:
- tabs to guide you to different types of content
- a selection of useful links to writing and publisher support resources
- your draft documents
- your organisation’s force-published documents
Use the tabs to access content about your own department. From the tabs you can:
- create a new document
- find and update an existing document using the various filters to narrow your search
- create or update a statistics announcement
- select ‘Featured documents’ for your organisation page
- manage ‘Corporate information’ on your organisation page
The ‘More’ tab reveals additional menu items to create or edit your organisation’s content. Sometimes you’ll need to ask GDS to carry out or approve this content. You’ll see a message if this is the case.
You cannot create or edit content that is not the responsibility of your organisation.
There are thousands of documents on GOV.UK. The filters on the left hand side of the Documents page in the backend help you to narrow the list to find only the document you want. You can use one filter or several at once.
You can filter by:
- the document’s title
- author
- organisation
- world location
- document type
- state (for example: draft, submitted, scheduled, published, force published)
- last updated date
- whether the document has broken links
- whether the document is overdue for a review
To clear a filter, click the ‘Reset all fields’ link underneath the ‘Search’ button.
Export your filtered results to a CSV file
If you’re an editor, you can export the results of a filtered backend search to a CSV file.
Once you’ve chosen the fields for your search, select the ‘Export as CSV’ link at the bottom of the list of documents on the right hand side. You’ll then be taken to a screen asking you to confirm the export.
The CSV file will be emailed to you within a few minutes. Larger files may take longer to generate. The file is sent as an email so generating reports does not overload the publishing system.
The CSV file contains a list of content in the following fields:
- public and admin URLs
- title
- lead organisation
- supporting organisation
- first published date
- first published on GOV.UK date
- which editor published the document
- when the document was last updated
- content type and sub-type
- state (draft, submitted, scheduled, published, force published etc)
- attachments
- specialist sectors
- collections
This tool can help you audit your content. For example, you could use it to find out which content has not been updated recently.