Joomla workflows, and whether you need them

Workflows live under Content, Workflows and are switched on per category in the Articles options. Off by default, and on many sites that is the right setting.

What it does

A workflow is a set of stages and the transitions between them. The built-in one has two stages, unpublished and published, which is what Joomla always did. The point of the feature is that you can add your own.

A stage is a state an article sits in. A transition is a move from one stage to another, and each transition can be restricted to a group and can carry an action, like actually publishing the article or sending a notification.

When it earns its place

• More than one person writes, and someone else has to approve before publication.
• Legal or compliance has to sign off, and you need to be able to show that they did.
• Translations have to keep step with the original.
• You need an audit trail of who moved what to where.

When it does not

One person writing and publishing their own articles gains nothing from a workflow except extra clicks. Two people who sit in the same room and talk to each other are usually faster without it.

The failure mode is predictable: a workflow gets built for how the organisation is supposed to work, everyone finds it slow, and within a month someone with Super User rights is publishing straight past it. That is worse than not having one, because now the audit trail is wrong.

If you build one

Start with the smallest thing that solves the actual problem, usually one review stage. Map who may make each transition before you touch the screen. And check that your editors can see what is waiting for them, because a review stage nobody notices is just a place articles go to die.