These days, static or outdated web site content can give the impression that a business is stagnant or behind the times, and thus organizations are increasingly feeling the pressure to frequently author web page content, update existing content, and share documentation with online visitors.
The increasing pressure for organizations to publish a continuous stream of fresh web content has increased the number of web content contributors within the organization, and in turn has fueled the need for organizations to develop and adopt a content workflow system within a content management system such as Drupal. The main challenge to address is how to provide an environment for many authors to contribute content without endangering existing content or application security, while also enforcing brand standards and quality control. Often there are multiple gatekeepers, and dozens of content authors. Here is a short list of gatekeeper and author responsibilities:
Editor/Gatekeeper
- Censorship: Is there offensive or otherwise damaging content?
- Readability: Are there grammar, formatting, spelling or other writing issues?
- Accuracy: Is the content accurate? Are there statistics and/or facts that need to be double checked?
- Branding: Are the company fonts, colors, and image being used correctly? Do the content, tone, and technical terms reflect the company's language standards?
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Copyright: Does the company have permission to publish all of the content, images, and external documents? Are all sources cited?
Author
- Responsible for providing accurate information that reflects the company's message.
- Must meet deadlines while also guaranteeing information accuracy and professional demeanor.
- Shouldn't rock the boat: Be sure that the content is acceptable by the team and gauge whether it will be well received by the audience. Shock and awe is never a good thing.
- Should produce content with a significant shelf life. The best information will be useful for an extended amount of time. Leave out the company picnics. They will not be remembered in a week.
With these two roles in mind, let's take a look at a couple of popular options for providing a software solution using the Drupal 7 content management system.
Drupal 7 core alone does not currently have an escalation process for the publishing of content. A node of content (web page) is either published or not published. However, several popular Drupal contributed module implementations offer this functionality.
Workbench Module for Drupal 7
Workbench provides a host of features for managing the content workflow process and is modular in design. There are several modules that you can choose to enable or disable to provide customization for different workflow variations. This approach is code heavy but comprehensive. It is also easily expanded upon by writing a new custom module.
The Workbench Suite has a great demo video, documentation, and links to add-on workbench modules. I certainly have come to appreciate the high quality code, documentation and well-thought-out structure of the Workbench modules. These modules are tailored in a classic Drupal style and are easy to configure, navigate, and adopt. The flexibility of Workbench is impressive. It can easily dish out the most simple of workflows or be customized to provide complex workflows to meet almost any situation.
Workflow Module for Drupal
Workflow is the most mature of the three modules mentioned and provides a simple workflow solution for escalating content to a published state. It includes draft, review, and published states for content types of choice.
The fields to escalate content are made available on the edit page for the node (content), and the module comes with a simple configuration screen for administration. It is helpful to build Views that list content in different publishing states for customization.
Maestro for Drupal 7
Maestro is the "supercharged" workflow for Drupal 7, and it's usually used for major publishing web sites. There is a rather intense video that demonstrates the basic workflow for a piece of content that travels from a draft state to being published. The system can be configured to be as complicated as any advanced publisher could imagine, or it can be configured very simply.
The unique feature for Maestro is the graphical user interface workflow designer. This provides an intuitive way to graphically build a workflow using an interactive flowchart. The design of this interface works surprisingly well and takes care of almost all of the necessary configuration. However, be prepared to learn a very new, foreign-feeling user interface and remember to right-click for options.
Regardless of the implementation, its important to recognize the need for an organized workflow. The following checklist is recommended to ensure you have all of the most handy necessities:
- Revisions: Must be able to record, revert, and compare versions of the content. Drupal core comes with a revisions functionality, but some of the workflow type modules take it a step further.
- Notes: There should be a notes field that the author and editor can use to leave notes for each other about the content.
- Schedule: Being able to have content expire and un-publish itself can be very helpful.
- Approval queue: The approval queue for the editor needs to be easy to use. If it is a challenge to use, good luck on getting it to be adopted.
- Multiple review steps: It is very helpful to have options to set up a multiple step review/approval process before content becomes live. For example, maybe three or more department managers would need to approve the content before it's published.
Overall, developing a good content management workflow will help improve efficiency by providing structured communication and organized content, and it will ultimately improve online content accuracy by providing a means for more people within the organization to participate.