Sitecore Content Review Workflow — Subject Matter Expert Approval

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Content Curation Roles

In the organisation I am currently working for, there are multiple roles that are involved with curating content for the web site in Sitecore. They are:

• UX / CX Designer — suggests what type of page components to use
• Copyrighter — curate the writing of the content, with the correct tone of voice, and the associated branding surrounding the content required
• Marketing — overarching reviewer of the content being produced, and providing the requirement to target the audiences
• Legal — not necessarily involved day-to-day, but are required as part of the final review process for something that may have big impacts

We have implemented single sign-on with Role Based Access all configured in the chosen Identity Provider (e.g. Azure AD / Entra ID, SAML based identity provider). Each Role Based Access group is mapped against a Sitecore user group.

Sitecore Workflow

The normal Sitecore content workflow, as we all know, is usually as follows:

1. Content author curates content, sends it for approval
2. Content Reviewer, Approves or Rejects, and put in their comments as part of the workflow.
3. If the Reviewer rejects, it is then sent back to the original content author to amend according to feedback
4. Content Reviewer, sometimes may correct or amend the content to speed up the process to avoid holding up the work
5. Once content is approved, the content can then be published via the normal publishing method

Subject Matter Experts Content Approvers

During the time with a whole new web site rebuild, the content approval process had to involve a lot of business users, who are not trained in Sitecore, or who are also not familiar with the tone of voice that were directed by the marketing team.

We discovered that, at times, the Subject Matter Experts would alter the content directly in Sitecore. This can cause rework, and additional time needed to edit the content correctly. The Subject Matter Experts are much better off providing the appropriate feedback in the Comments, and Reject the content instead.

Restrict Write Access to all Content Fields

The solution is to restrict that specific group of users so that they only have read access to content fields. The system fields, which are located in the Standard Template in Sitecore, still require write access as the Workflow statuses, Workflow Comments, and other system fields are located inside the Standard Template.

A Sitecore Powershell Extension script can be used to universally apply this restriction to this particular user group. This stops them from changing the content and moving the components around in a page.

Run the above Sitecore Powershell Extensions script, and then reserialise as required.

Conclusion

This process should allow Subject Matters Expert to still collaborate, and be involved as part of the final content workflow approval process, without editing the content as they may not have the appropriate training from Marketing and Sitecore content team.