Think of an organization which has a vast and distributed team responsible for the content on the website. A couple of content creators, editors, content planner, one reviewer and final editor-in-chief. All involved in the process from drafting to publishing. More the data added, more the complexity in maintaining the workflow and uniformity. 

The team decides to use the Workbench Moderation. But what does the module do?

The Workbench is a suite of modules allowing the site builders to build the workflow in a way that best suits the content administrators on their site, with an easier workflow. The Workbench suite provides authors, editors, and publishers with a unified interface for managing content relevant to them. It allows people to focus on content, rather than on learning Drupal.

Workbench is a suite of modules which provide easier content management for content administrators.

By enabling the module, it saves a lot of time for a non-technical admin and content editor. Content handling and publishing becomes smoother. 

Workbench Moderation. How Does it Work?

Rather than providing a set of fixed workflow, Workbench Moderation adds arbitrary moderation states to the core's "unpublished" and "published" states. This affects the behavior of node revisions and when nodes are published.

This module lets the site admins define the stages from content drafting to publishing. The admin can also define the transition between the stages. In the following image, we can see a simple workflow.

 

Here the admin defines the stages and the transition between them. As a transition has three attributes:

• a label (this is the machine name to edit),
• a start state and
• an end state.

These transitions are then exposed as permission and according to the permissions, they can transit one node from state to end state. Now we will see the configuration. 

Configuring the module

To configure the module, First of all, you have to install and enable the workbench moderation module. You can download it from Drupal.org.

Or you can also install it using the Drush command.

$ Drush dl workbench_moderation
$ Drush en workbench_moderation

As you have successfully installed the module now to configure it you have to go

Admin > Structure > Views > View > Content

Click on the content: “Node operations bulk form” and in the available actions click on “only selected actions” instead of all actions.

Select 'Apply' to apply the changes and save the changes. 
 
Now it is the time to add the moderation state. Go to Admin > Structure > Workbench-moderation > States > Add new state / Edit an existing state. 

Now add the transitions between the moderations.
So to do this go to Admin > Structure > Workbench-moderation > Transitions > Add

At this page add the “transition from” to “transition to” and name the label for the transition. Save it. 
 
Now go to Admin > Structure > Types > Manage > Article > Moderation > Enable Moderation > Save. 

After the enabling of the moderation, your screen will look like the image below.

This implies your article has been saved as a draft and requesting the review.

After the review, publish it then the content will be view.

A suite of modules, workbench provides an easier way for the content administrator. It adds the arbitrary moderation states to the Drupal core while also providing a node state for node revision for their published status. This allows the developers to develop the workflow that best suits the content administrators on their website.