4.4 Drafts, Save and Publish & Sign
Ada distinguishes three kinds of change:
| Kind | Where | How it takes effect |
|---|---|---|
| Policy list items — labels, groups, classification rules, mail rules, watermark and capture rules, awareness messages | Edited in a drawer that slides in from the right | Save in the drawer writes the item into the draft. Closing the drawer with ✕ or Esc discards your edits. Nothing reaches clients until Publish & Sign. |
| Policy setting cards — Outlook e-mail enforcement, General Enforcement, Agent Rules, Logs, Awareness | Cards on the Rules page with a Save bar | The bar says You have unsaved settings changes until you click Save; then the values are in the draft. Publish to deploy. |
| Server settings — everything under Administration → Settings, Users, Backup schedules, Alerts | Their own pages | Saved on the page itself — most cards say Changes are saved immediately; Security, Alerts and Backup schedules have their own Save button. Not part of the signed policy; no Publish needed. |
Row actions in lists (the Enabled switch, ▲ ▼ reorder, delete) change the draft directly; there is no drawer Save for them.
Publish & Sign checks the draft first — empty or duplicate names, rules without conditions or with an invalid regular expression, groups without targets, references to deleted labels or groups — and stops with a message that takes you to the problem. If settings cards still have unsaved changes it asks whether to go back or publish without them. On success:
Publishing can be made to require your password (6.8, Actions that require your password). Every publish is written to the audit log with the changed items listed one by one (Policy published, Administrative Changes report).