A website might have one marketing team behind it, but publishing often involves people across the organisation.
Subject specialists check accuracy. Brand teams review tone. Department leads approve changes. Someone needs to decide when the content is ready to go live.
Without a clear process, those decisions end up scattered across emails, messages and meetings. Editors spend time chasing approvals, reviewers lose track of requests, and publishing depends on whoever remembers the next step.
Umbraco provides user and permission controls to help teams manage access. When publishing needs a more structured approval process, Umbraco Workflow adds another layer.
The key is understanding which problem you need to solve: controlling access, coordinating approvals, or both.
Start with Umbraco’s users and permissions
Before adding approval stages, establish who should be able to do what.
Umbraco uses backoffice users and user groups to manage access to the CMS. Permissions can distinguish between activities such as editing, publishing and deleting content. Access can also be scoped to relevant areas of the content and media trees.
For example, you might give a departmental team access to maintain its own pages while reserving publishing responsibilities for a central content team.
These controls help people work within their responsibilities and reduce the chance of accidental changes elsewhere. See Umbraco’s user management documentation.
However, access controls alone do not define every step in an approval process.
Knowing who can publish a page is different from knowing whose review it needs before publication.
What is Umbraco Workflow?
Umbraco Workflow is an official add-on that extends the CMS with configurable, multi-stage content approvals.
It allows teams to assign approval groups to stages in the publishing process. Editors can submit changes for review, and reviewers can approve or reject them within the workflow.
That creates an explicit route from draft to publication, with responsibilities attached to each stage. Umbraco’s Workflow documentation explains the approval model.
For a team managing sensitive or frequently changing content, that structure can make publishing easier to coordinate.
How do permissions and Workflow differ?
The two work together, but serve different purposes.
| Requirement | Where to start |
|---|---|
| Limit who can access CMS sections | User groups and permissions |
| Restrict editing to relevant content areas | Content access settings and permissions |
| Separate editing and publishing responsibilities | Publishing permissions |
| Require several stages of approval | Umbraco Workflow |
| Give reviewers a shared view of pending approvals | Workflow tasks and dashboards |
| Assign recurring content reviews | Workflow content review configuration |
Start by checking the permissions you already have. A team struggling with overly broad access may need a better user-group structure before it needs a more elaborate approval process.
What could an approval process look like?
Consider a hypothetical organisation with several departments contributing to one website.
A service page might follow this route:
- A departmental editor prepares the changes. They update the content and explain what has changed.
- A subject specialist checks accuracy. They confirm that the information reflects the service being offered.
- A central content reviewer checks the page. They review clarity, presentation and consistency.
- The approved content proceeds to publication. The final behaviour follows the configured workflow and scheduling settings.
This is an example process, rather than a recommended template for every page.
A routine news item might need one reviewer. A significant policy change might require several. The process should reflect the consequences of publishing incorrect information.
Workflow supports approval configuration around content items and Document Types, allowing different types of content to follow different routes. See Umbraco’s content approval settings.
How can Workflow make publishing faster?
Approvals add work, so speed depends on how the process is designed.
Workflow can reduce the coordination surrounding that work. Tasks, dashboards and notifications give people a shared view of what needs attention. Workflow history helps teams understand the decisions already made. Explore Umbraco Workflow’s publishing features.
The potential benefit is less time spent asking:
- Who is reviewing this?
- Has anyone approved the latest change?
- What is blocking publication?
- What needs to happen next?
To realise that benefit, reviewers still need clear expectations and time allocated to respond.
A well-configured system can make a queue visible. Your organisation needs to make sure someone is responsible for moving it forward.
When are approval processes worth it?
Several teams contribute to the website
Distributed editing can keep information closer to the people who understand it.
A shared approval process can help preserve that contribution while giving the organisation consistent oversight before publication.
This is particularly useful when departmental editors publish occasionally and need support from a central content team.
Content needs specialist review
Some pages need input from someone beyond the author.
That might include service information, organisational policies, product details or content with significant reputational consequences.
Workflow can make those review responsibilities explicit. The reviewers still need to apply the appropriate expertise and organisational standards.
Approvals regularly get lost
If publishing depends on email chains, informal messages or one person remembering every request, the coordination process may have become a bottleneck.
A structured workflow gives the team a common place to manage progress and identify outstanding decisions.
You need a clearer record of decisions
When questions arise after publication, it helps to understand how the content reached that point.
Workflow history can support accountability and internal review. Agree what records your organisation needs and check that the configuration meets those requirements.
When might you not need Workflow?
A small team with straightforward content and a clear publishing owner may work effectively with carefully configured permissions and a simple editorial process.
Before adding an approval system, ask whether the actual problem is unclear ownership, insufficient training or inconsistent content standards.
Those issues need attention whatever software you use.
Workflow becomes more valuable when coordinating reviews is a recurring operational problem. Adding multiple approval stages to every change can create unnecessary delays.
Keep content accurate after publication
Approval before launch is only part of content governance.
Pages can become outdated as services, teams and policies change. Someone needs responsibility for checking that published information remains useful.
Umbraco Workflow includes content review settings for assigning review groups, defining review periods and configuring notifications. Reviews can be configured for particular content items or Document Types. See Umbraco’s content review documentation.
For example, an organisation could review service information more frequently than evergreen editorial content.
Set review intervals that your team can realistically maintain, and make ownership clear.
How do you avoid creating a bottleneck?
Start with the smallest process that meets the need.
Give each stage a distinct purpose. If two reviewers are checking exactly the same thing, consider whether both stages are necessary.
Agree cover for holidays and absences. Define how urgent changes will be handled, who can authorise exceptions and how those decisions will be recorded.
Also review whether authors should be able to approve their own changes. Workflow has configuration options affecting author participation, so separation of responsibilities needs to be deliberately set up and tested. See Umbraco’s approval configuration guidance.
Pilot the process with one team or content area before extending it across the website.
What should you check before implementation?
A useful assessment should cover:
- Your CMS version: confirm the compatible Workflow version and upgrade requirements.
- Existing permissions: review user groups, publishing rights and administrative access.
- Content responsibilities: identify authors, reviewers, approvers and cover arrangements.
- Approval routes: decide which content needs which checks.
- Licensing: confirm which required features need a paid licence.
- Notifications and training: ensure reviewers receive requests and understand how to act on them.
- Success measures: track approval turnaround, overdue tasks and avoidable publishing errors.
The licence is one part of the investment. Allow time for configuration, testing, training and refining the process.
How Absurd can help
At Absurd, we start with how your team creates and maintains content.
We can help review your existing Umbraco permissions, identify where publishing gets delayed and assess whether Workflow fits the process you need.
As an Umbraco Gold Partner, we bring together platform development and experience design to help teams manage their websites with greater confidence.