Our clients often come to Drupal with expectations about the features of a content management system (CMS). In many cases, Drupal handles the features they expect. However, not all editorial tools are a part of Drupal Core, and Drupal has addressed these tools with various contributed modules. As a result, Drupal’s editorial space generally lacks a consistent workflow and interface.

Workbench incorporates contributed modules and has some new features of its own:

• Hierarchical permission inheritance by “Sections” not just content types
• Extensible workflow states
• Single repository for media management
• Modify live content without publishing changes immediately

Workbench provides a unified interface for managing content. In effect, Workbench hides Drupal from you and makes content management about your institution and your website, not about Drupal.

Resources

View slides from the presentation.

Intended audience

People who maintain sites for large organizations and decentralize control of content will learn how Workbench can improve their control over sections of the site and who is responsible for each section.

People who maintain any site who want a simplified user experience for managing content will see how Workbench provides a user interface that is consistent and easy to access.

Questions answered by this session

Question 1: How do you control content access beyond content type settings?
Question 2: How do you find the content that relates to each user and that user’s job (which is not necessarily the same as the hierarchy of the site)?
Question 3: Can you simplify Drupal’s use for content authors, editors, and publishers?
Question 4: Can you find that file you just uploaded and re-use it?
Question 5: What framework exists that allows you to extend functionality for your content authors yet still providing a unified user experience?