Content Moderation with Editorial Workflow and Revisions
A publishing team uses Drupal 10 with Content Moderation enabled on the Article content type. The workflow has states Draft, Needs Review, Published, and Archived. Editors report two problems: (1) When an author creates a new draft of a published article, the published version disappears from the live site; (2) After an article is archived, authors cannot create a new draft to republish it. The site has 1,200 articles, and the team wants to keep the live version visible while editing. The current workflow configuration shows that 'Archived' is a published state and 'Draft' is the default revision state. The moderation dashboard shows 50 articles stuck in 'Needs Review' with no way to advance them.
1. Explain why the published version disappears when a new draft is created, and describe the configuration change needed to fix it.
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The issue occurs because the 'Draft' state is not set as a 'default revision' state in the workflow. In Content Moderation, each state has a 'Default revision' checkbox. When a new revision is created and the state is not a default revision, the previous published revision remains the default revision and stays visible. However, if 'Draft' is mistakenly configured as a default revision state, then creating a new draft makes that draft the default revision, replacing the published version on the live site. The fix is to edit the workflow and ensure that only 'Published' is checked as a default revision state. 'Draft', 'Needs Review', and 'Archived' should not be default revision states. This way, when an author creates a new draft, the published revision remains the default and stays live until the draft is published. Additionally, ensure that the 'Published' state is the only one with the 'Published' checkbox enabled, so that content is only publicly visible in that state.
2. Why can't authors create a new draft from an archived article, and how would you resolve it?
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In Content Moderation, transitions between states are defined by transitions. If there is no transition from 'Archived' to 'Draft', authors cannot move the content back to draft. Also, if 'Archived' is not a published state, the content might not be accessible for editing. To resolve, add a transition from 'Archived' to 'Draft' (and possibly from 'Archived' to 'Published') in the workflow configuration. Ensure that the 'Archived' state is not set as a default revision state, so that when a new draft is created from an archived article, the archived revision remains the default until the new draft is published. After adding the transition, authors with the appropriate permissions can create a new draft from the archived state.
3. The moderation dashboard shows 50 articles stuck in 'Needs Review' with no way to advance them. What could cause this and how would you fix it?
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Articles stuck in 'Needs Review' likely lack a transition from 'Needs Review' to 'Published' or the user roles lack permission to use that transition. Check the workflow configuration: there should be a transition from 'Needs Review' to 'Published' (and possibly to 'Draft'). Also, verify that the editor role has permission to transition content from 'Needs Review' to 'Published' in the workflow's permissions settings. If the transition exists but users still can't advance, check that the content type is enabled for the workflow and that the user has the 'Use the Editorial workflow transition' permission for the specific transition. Additionally, ensure that the 'Needs Review' state is not set as a default revision state, as that could cause confusion. After correcting permissions and transitions, editors should be able to publish the stuck articles.