Workbench

Workbench provides overall improvements for managing content that Drupal does not provide out of the box. Workbench gives us three important solutions:

•     a unified and simplified user interface for users who ONLY have to work with content. This decreases training and support time.
•     the ability to control who has access to edit any content based on an organization's structure not the web site structure
•     a customizable editorial workflow that integrates with the access control feature described above or works independently on its own

These features benefit the end users as well as Drupal Site Administrators and Technical Support.

For Drupal Developers and Site Builders, Workbench provides several additional benefits:

•     a modular architecture: only install and enable the modules you want
•     extensibility: we would love to see more integration with other Drupal modules (in fact we have our eyes on Scheduler and Workflow modules and improvements for Asset Management)

Related Modules

•     Workbench Access
•     Workbench Moderation
•     Workbench Files (deprecated)
•     Workbench Media

Workbench Modules

Workbench is separated into several modules. Workbench module is required by all of the other modules, and each module can function independently of the others except where noted. You need to download and install all of the modules to make use of all of the Workbench features.

Workbench Access

•     Workbench Access provide the hierarchical permissions across "Sections" of your web site. You can use menus, taxonomy, or create your own hierarchical structure for controlling access to a piece of content.
• Workbench Moderation
•     To provide editorial workflow, you want to install Workbench Moderation. It is a flexible system which provides default workflow states like Drafts, Needs Review, and Published. You can also change these states to suit your orgnizations needs.
• Workbench Files
•     This module has been deprecated in favor of Workbench Media module below.
• Workbench Media
•     The Media module has been integrated with Workbench too. The goal was to include a workflow for creating media just like you would any other content.

Each module comes with an extensive README.txt file. Be sure to read through them to learn all of the details.