SIMPLIFYING EDITORIAL WORKFLOWS USING WORKBENCH Industry: Media & Entertainment Drupal Solution: Workbench
INTRODUCTION It s a regular day at the editorial office of ACME Media Company. The copyeditor looks frazzled. She has not managed to publish even one story online today. She and her assistants have been making frantic calls and sending urgent emails to the writers, all copied to the Editor. Back-and-forths between the team happen, which go something like this: But I sent one story two days ago, didn t you get it? Yes, but I asked for changes in it. And where are the high-res images? Oh, I didn t get that mail. After much jugglery, the copyeditor manages to get a story or two out for the day. One more day like this, and she will quit, she declares. Fifteen inhouse writers, many freelancers, and countless stringers on the team: should a copyeditor have to deal with this day in and day out? This is a familiar story at most media companies. As the action moves more and more to the online and mobile space, things are getting even more challenging for editorial teams. Content volume has exploded, and there are more content types to deal with: text, photos, graphics, audio and video. And if things were not complex enough, there are social media channels to be fed as well. Everything is being stretched: resources, time, patience. Is there a solution to this mess? The answer is in two words: Drupal Workbench. In the next few pages we explore how Workbench can solve these issues easily, effectively. Content volume has exploded, and there are more content types to deal with: text, photos, graphics, audio, video, and social WHAT IS WORKBENCH? Workbench is a set of modules built for Drupal 7 that have been integrated to create smooth workflows for websites that have several content managers. It provides an easy-to-use interface for people who don t know how to work in Drupal. Workbench is designed in such a way that the users can focus on the content, and not lose their way in the structure and complexities of the website. With Workbench, media companies can leverage the potential of a really powerful content management system, Drupal, and yet create a work environment which does not require the content team to learn to work in Drupal. Workbench also delivers the ability to control who can edit the content, or post it online. So online publishing stops being dependent on the technology and becomes more in line with the organizational hierarchy. Workbench also enables media companies to use its default workflows, or create customized ones that are in tune with its work styles.
EDITORIAL WORKFLOW CHALLENGES In many media companies, the CMS is inflexible to accommodate the on-ground processes, hierarchies and roles. So a twisted workflow comes into place which neither mirrors the on-ground roles, nor adheres to the best practices of online publishing Challenge 1: Inefficient Content Development Workflow It s not that media companies do not have content management systems. They do, and there are workflows in place too. But frequently, since the CMS is inflexible to accommodate the on-ground processes, hierarchies and roles, a twisted workflow comes into place which neither mirrors the on-ground roles, nor adheres to the best practices of online publishing. Instead of making things simpler, the CMS ends up creating far more issues than it addresses. Often CMSs are not extremely easy for use by all in the editorial team. Or workflows exist for the print process, and that has no easy, direct way to connect to online publishing. So the CMS ends up being that platform that is used only for the publishing or content upload process, not for the content development process itself. Should the core expertise of content creation be at the mercy of inefficiencies of multiple phone calls, opaque email exchanges and clunky spreadsheets? Workbench enables you to have a content development workflow for easy online publishing. A writer can write his story and make it available to his editor for review. The editor can then review it, make changes, and either send it back to the writer for clarifications, or make it ready for online publishing. The person in charge of uploading the story can be alerted for the availability of the approved story. Each team person has access to his own dashboard that gives him features that help him do his job well. Automatic alerts help him stay on top of what needs his attention. Everything is available in a single view, with no chance of any missed communication. Challenge 2: Bottlenecks in content upload Who should have the rights to upload the content? Should every author, editor have the rights? Or should only those with the right capabilities be given rights selectively? Since editorial heads need complete control to ensure quality, the onus of publishing content online falls on one or two highly reliable people on the team. With large volumes of content being created, this small and reliable team can swiftly become the bottleneck. Usually they are saddled with a lot of other responsibilities as well; this puts even more pressure on them. Stories get delayed for upload, or if they are uploaded on time, quality issues creep in. Online publishing requires a system of multi-level checks and approvals. This can easily be solved by identifying people who can handle quality checks at various points, so the pressure on the approvers comes down. Workbench enables this. You can create new roles for the team members, and assign rights to them to
ensure that the content is as per the defined standards. This speeds up the process considerably, while ensuring complete transparency on roles and responsibilities. Workbench lets you be as granular with roles and responsibilities as your process requires. With Workbench, editors will not have to look for shared folders, mail trails, or make calls to trace where stories are and what stage they are in Challenge 3: Searching for unpublished stories Editorial teams in media companies allot stories that their writers can start work on, well in advance. Many of these stories go on to get published, while many get lost in the mail trails, miscommunications and dated schedule sheets. What s worse is that many stories get done but do not get published for some reason or the other, and then are forgotten as the daily schedules take over. So when an editor remembers a story that was in progress or was completed, he often has to spend a while looking for it. If the writer who had been assigned the story has left the company, things become even tougher. Looking for such stories can be a painful process for editors. With Workbench, once a writer has done a draft, it can be made available in the central repository. And an alert will go to the sub-editor or editor who has to now review it. Once this process is made mandatory in a team, editors will not have to look for shared folders, mail trails, get subordinates to make calls to trace where stories are and what stage they are in. Challenge 4: Inability to create different editorial groups for different content needs A media company will have different properties with different teams managing them. Each team will have its own content development and review requirements, and thus need a slightly different approach than others. Often CMSs are implemented without much thought to these differences in requirements, and thus force everyone to behave in a certain way. This means teams cannot deliver efficiently. Workbench enables you to create different groups and departments, each of which can have its own review and rights mechanisms defined to suit its specific processes. WORKBENCH FEATURES 1. Centralised dashboard With the centralized dashboard, an editor can easily keep track of stories, authors and schedules all in one place. A writer can access his dashboard to see the status of his stories: has the editor reviewed the latest story filed, what changes are needed, are all the images and videos in place, and so on.
2. Easily create content Workbench implemented with the Web Experience Management module enables editorial teams to create groups of users and gives you a variety of options to create content without needing to know HTML/CSS. Writers can embed videos, create survey forms and embed tweets easily.
3. Set moderation states Once a writer had written a story, he needs to have it reviewed by an editor. Till such time he is writing, the story is in the Draft mode. To get it reviewed, he simply changes the status of the story to Needs Review. The editor will immediately get an alert on her dashboard that the story is now ready for editing. If the editor desires, this notification can be sent over email or through SMS as well. You can also define new moderation states that reflect your workflow processes better. 4. Needs Review tab for editors The editors have a tab on their dashboard called Needs Review. This tab lists all the articles that now need review/editing. If the editor reviews a story and finds issues with it, she can change the moderation state to Draft. This sends an alert to the writer to modify the story as required. If the editor finds the article satisfactory after review and editing, she changes the state of the story to Published. This makes the story go live on the website.
5. Schedule unpublishing/publishing of articles Most CMSs give the option to publish an article immediately or on a later day. But what about articles that need to be online for only a limited period? Many editorial teams find it a huge drain on their resources to keep track of such articles. This is often the case with articles that are related to marketing offers and events. Workbench lets you define the date on which the story must be unpublished. So the onus of remembering to take the story off the website is not on a person, the system will do it automatically. 6. List of drafts in an article Workbench provides the list of drafts that are saved on the system. This gives writers and editors an easy way to always stay on top of stories assigned and their progress. They don t have to hunt high and low for stories.
7. Centralised list of files used in the articles Managing stories is just one part of the process. What about managing the images related to the stories? That itself can be a huge overhead for editorial teams. Drupal gives you a basic interface to quickly search and manage your files easily. You can easily integrate the platform with Digital Asset Management tools like Media Drive or Alfresco to manage the assets better. MAKING WORKBENCH WORK Workbench delivers excellent out-of-the-box functionality to create awesome workflows. However, each editorial team has its own processes and work needs. So it s important for a company to map out the users properly and create the right processes that can fit in a workflow. Also the teams have to commit to using Workbench as their key work environment. Let's look at a use case and understand how these users can use Workbench.
Scenario Tom is a new writer at W3P Media House. He is an excellent writer, but since he is new, the editor, Jameson doesn t want to give him publishing rights. Blogs are one of the most read sections on the website, and is frequently updated. Jameson assigns Tom to help sub-editor Clark in keeping this section updated. For the Articles section, Jameson wants to retain all publishing rights and only trusts Wally, his experienced writer to contribute to this section. Role Blog section creation rights Blog section publish rights Article section creation rights Article section publish rights Tom (New hire in content team) Wally (Experienced writer) Clark (Sub-editor) Jameson (Editor) Yes No No No Yes No Yes No Yes Yes No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Implementation Tom and Wally are the writers here and are responsible for creating most of the content. Jameson has publishing rights for all sections while Clark has publishing rights for the Blogs section. Here, we have two different content types, Blogs and Articles, and different people have different rights for each section. Tom writes a new blog, and changes the state to Needs Review. Clark gets an email notification announcing that a new blog post is up for review.
Clark logs in into his Workbench account, and clicks on the Needs Review tab to review approve the blog written by Tom. Clark changes the blog s state to Published, and it goes live. Explore how Workbench can solve your workflow challenges. Write to us at business@srijan.in Jameson can now check the various stages of revisions that have happened across the life of the blog. He can compare the various edits made across versions, and if required revert to a version that he finds better. Workbench makes this really simple to do. Or call (India) +91 11 43049401 (India) +91 124 421 0160 (India) +91 99112 64089 (US) +1-646-513-2808 (UK) +44-207-097-2504