Understanding the difference between content approval and approval workflow will alleviate much confusion when you begin to use SharePoint. Content approval is a core SharePoint process which is used for publishing documents. This process provides the ability to limit the visibility of a document to approvers until the document is approved to be published. This will change the security of the document such that all users who have access to the list will be able to view it. Approval workflow is a workflow designed for approving documents. When the workflow is initiated, the document approval status is set to “Pending” and a task and an email is created for the specified users and groups to approve the document. Once the task is opened and completed, either “Approve” or “Reject”. The document approval status will change to “Approved” or “Rejected”. Approval workflow does not change visibility on the document. Fortunately, once a list or document library has the content approval feature enabled, the approval workflow will provide an option to link both processes, such that a document only be visible to approvers until the document is approved through the approval workflow. Once approved, the document will be approved and visible to all users.