Editorial workflow and moderation

Drupal provides tools to create custom workflows, and Drupal CMS includes an editorial workflow for CMS content. (Workflows are not yet available for pages built with Canvas, Drupal’s visual page builder.) By combining workflows with roles, you control exactly who can draft, review, and publish content.

Workflow states

Drupal CMS includes an editorial workflow named Basic with three states:

• Draft: the initial state for new content, not visible to site visitors.
• Published: approved content, visible to site visitors.
• Unpublished: content that was previously published but is no longer.

Three transitions move content between them: Create new draft, Publish, and Unpublish.

To modify the existing workflow, or to create a new one that applies to some content types, go to Configuration → Workflows/admin/config/workflow/workflows. To add a review step, edit the Basic workflow/admin/config/workflow/workflows/manage/basic_editorial: add a state such as Needs review, add a transition from Draft to it, and allow Publish to start from it.

Roles and permissions

By default, Drupal CMS includes the Administrator and Content editor roles, both of which have permission to publish content. To let some people write without publishing, create a new role that can only create drafts, or submit content for review once you add a review state. Grant only the relevant permissions in the Content moderation section of People → Permissions/admin/people/permissions#module-content_moderation.

Where to go next

• Content modeling covers roles and permissions as part of planning your content model.
• How Drupal CMS structures content places moderation among the other publishing tools.