Frequently Asked Questions

A workflow is a predefined path that content changes follow before being published. In Concrete CMS, it's a way to ensure that edits go through the right people—like reviewers or department leads—before hitting the live site. It's your content safety net, helping teams collaborate without losing control.

Let’s say a staff writer updates a public service announcement on your city’s website. Instead of publishing immediately, the update gets sent to a communications officer for review. Once approved, the change goes live. That’s a simple one-step approval workflow—and you can make it as simple or complex as your process needs.

In general terms, workflows fall into three categories:

  1. Sequential workflows – Tasks are completed one after another in a specific order.
  2. State machine workflows – Tasks change based on state transitions, offering more flexibility.
  3. Rules-driven workflows – Conditional logic determines the next step, ideal for complex decision trees.

Concrete CMS primarily uses a sequential approval workflow, but it's flexible enough to handle more advanced configurations.

Every workflow is built around three essentials:

  1. Tasks or actions – What needs to be done (e.g., approve, reject).
  2. Participants – Who’s responsible at each stage (e.g., editor, reviewer).
  3. Triggers or conditions – What kicks off the workflow or moves it to the next step.

In Concrete CMS, this is all wrapped in a clean interface where you can assign workflows to user groups and content areas.

"5 things workflow" isn’t a standard industry term, but in practice, a strong content workflow often includes:

  1. Drafting
  2. Review
  3. Approval
  4. Scheduling
  5. Publishing

Concrete CMS lets you structure these steps to match your team’s needs—with clear checkpoints and full version tracking along the way.

Advanced workflows in Concrete CMS allow you to create multi-stage approval processes for your content. You can define each stage, assign reviewers, and automate notifications to ensure content is reviewed and approved systematically before publication.