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Organizations of all types need the ability for individuals and teams to be able to create new online content and modify existing content, submit those changes for approval, approve or disapprove that work, and ensure that all the participants in the workflow can see the status of each piece of content in the system and be promptly notified if they must act upon it, to keep the process flowing smoothly. Drupal 7 is ideally suited as a framework for building a website that can support such a workflow setup – with numerous pertinent modules that operate well together.

We will examine some key modules for building this sort of website, as well as how to configure them and set permissions for some basic types of roles invariably employed in such workflows. Our goal is to set up the system so that the mechanics of the workflow are as automated as possible, but with a minimum of complexity.

The Usual Suspects

There are innumerable core and contributed modules that can be employed for crafting an effective workflow, and they tend to be grouped into three categories corresponding to different strategies for implementing whatever type of workflow is desired: Revisioning, Workbench Moderation, and the venerable Workflow.

Choosing one strategy does not preclude using modules geared toward another strategy. Here we will be using the Workflow approach, but it is good to be aware of the Revisioning module – which allows permitted users to create, moderate, and publish content revisions – and Workbench Moderation – a popular alternative which permits moderation down to the revision level.

For any basic content editing and publication system, the following modules can be utilized in some combination: