Scenario
Site owners need to ensure that content flows through a moderation process. The moderation of content necessitates that it be reviewed before publishing, reducing the risk of errors becoming public. Furthermore, and most importantly, it ensures that a single rogue is not able to publish content themselves - two people would need to collude and this is less likely.
Challenge
The challenge is not a technical one. The Content Moderation moderation module ships with Drupal and is well known. Notwithstanding this, it is common for GovCMS sites not to be configured with content workflows. It appears to be a problem with definition or knowledge.
Solution
Firstly the desired workflows need to be defined.
The most basic of workflows have the following steps:
- In draft (new revision)
- Needs Review,
- Published,
- Archived.
More advanced workflows will include an extra Needs Publish step in there where there is an extra oversight step required.
It is important to note that the workflow should not be thought of as being linear. For example, work can be pushed backwards at the Needs Review step. Further, work can move out of being archived to being published or in draft.
The definition of the workflow works in closely with the roles defined for the site and the need for oversight defined by the site owner. The definition of the states and transitions is one which needs to be reviewed during the discovery process on any project.
Outcome
The sensible configuration of content workflows will lead to higher quality and safer content for the site. The tricky aspect is more one of definition and education.
