An important aspect of your site is presenting accurate and comprehensible content. This is why a workflow process can be so useful and essential. Workflow allows for a system in which all content is reviewed and approved by content experts prior to being published.
Workflow can be applied to pages and files that are newly created, updated, or deleted. They can also be applied to individual pages with page permissions, to sections of the site tree, or to specific content types.
The Workflow Process
A common workflow process has the following steps:
- Content authors create and submit a page for approval.
- An email notification is sent out to the assigned reviewer(s) informing them that a new page has entered the workflow:
- The reviewer then approves and publishes the page or,
- The reviewer rejects the page leaving a comment for the author as feedback on further edits that need to be made. If the page is rejected, its status will go back to WIP, and the author will be notified of the reviewer's comment.
- Once the page is updated based on the feedback provided by the reviewer, the author can resubmit the page to the workflow to complete the review process.
You can also create deletion workflows, which ensure that no content is ever accidentally deleted.
Workflows are created in More > Workflow from the main menu. Existing workflows can be accessed from the left-hand menu under either the Content Approval stages or Content Deletion stages. Use the arrow to expand the workflow list for that category and select the workflow stage to get a detailed view of the settings for a specific workflow.
Before You Start
There are a couple of things to think about before you start building your workflow:
- Who needs to submit content for review? Think about which of your users will need to submit their content for review. This will determine how you select which roles will be able to skip a workflow, e.g., all OC Site Managers. See our article on user roles for more information on how OpenCities roles can work for you.
- Who can review content? Do you have a communications or website lead who needs to review each page? Make sure they have the correct role assigned to them, OC Site Manager as an example.
- What content types need to be reviewed? Perhaps all OC News Articles need to be reviewed by your communications lead, for example.
- How many stages of review does this workflow have? Think about how many people you need each page to go through before going live. Do you want the page to be reviewed by a department head, before being reviewed by your website lead?
These questions will give you a good introduction to how you can start thinking about your workflow, and will give you a solid starting point in creating them.