Editor s Approval

Editor's Approval

After an author has submitted a page, a user with editor rights is responsible for checking the page for content accuracy. The editor can either approve, or change and approve, or decline the page. The editor and author roles overlap; an editor can do everything an author can plus approve and decline content.

Before the editor approves the page, they can make changes to the page content and properties. In other words, a user who has editor rights to a channel can create and approve a new page without the page requiring a separate editor approval step. In the three-step CMS publishing workflow, the editor can modify the page content and properties but usually can't approve the page for publication.

When a user with editing rights logs on to a CMS site and switches to Edit mode, they have more options available in the Web Author console than an author. An Approval Assistant link is displayed in the console to the editors on all pages that are located in the channels where they have editing rights. In addition, the pages that have WaitingforEditorApproval status, or are saved by the editor, also have Approve and Decline options available in the console (Figure 6-4).

Figure 6-4. Web Author default console as displayed to a user with editing rights

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Page approval can be performed in one of two ways:

  • Using console commands: Pages can be approved or declined individually by using the Approve or Decline options in the Web Author console on each page.

  • Using the Approval Assistant: The Approval Assistant displays a list of all pages waiting for editor approval in the channels to which the currently logged-on user has editing rights (Figure 6-5). The pages are listed in a table using their display name. Other information displayed for each page includes the Location field, which shows the channel that contains the page; the page status; the page owner; and the last modified date and time. By default, the sorting order is by time, with the newer pages on the top of the list. You can change the sorting field and order by clicking the heading of the appropriate column, with the exception of the Status column.

    Figure 6-5. Approval Assistant

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NOTE: If there are no pages waiting for the editor's approval, the Approval Assistant window displays the message "There are no pages waiting for approval."


The Approval Assistant provides the ability to approve or decline multiple pages as well as to preview a page and navigate to the page. The ability to use the Approval Assistant for navigation between pages submitted for editor approval cannot be underestimated. Using the Approval Assistant may be the only way to browse to these pages. In Edit mode, URLs are not hierarchical, and it's not practical to either type them in or bookmark the page. Often, there are navigational aids within the page template that allow the editor to navigate between the pages in a given channel. However, if this is not the case, then the Approval Assistant provides an easy way to go to the pages awaiting approval.

To approve a page using the Approval Assistant, select the page by clicking the Select check box in the leftmost column, and then click the Approve button at the bottom of the list. To Decline a page, select the page and click the Decline button. You can approve or decline multiple pages by selecting these pages and then clicking the appropriate button. You can also use the Select All and Clear All links to select and deselect all pages in the list.

In addition to creating and editing content, editors can perform the following operations on the pages that are contained in the channel where they have editing rights:

  • Approve a page: When an editor approves a page, the page status usually changes to WaitingforModeratorApproval (Figure 6-6).

    Figure 6-6. Sample page approved by an editor

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    However, there is an exception to this rule when the page status changes directly to Published after the editor's approval. This happens when an author changes the content of existing, published pages. If the content of a published page has been edited by an author and submitted for an editor's approval, then when the editor approves the changes, the new version of the page is published on the live site. In this case, the moderator's approval stage of the publishing workflow is bypassed, because the moderator has already approved the publishing attributes, such as the schedule, for the original published page. These attributes have not been changed, so the moderator's approval is not required.

  • Decline a page: When an editor declines a page, the page status changes to EditorDeclined. The page author will have to check the page status in the Production Manager to find out if the page has been approved or declined; there is no notification mechanism available in CMS out of the box.

  • Edit a submitted page and modify the page properties: When an editor changes the page content and/or the page properties, the page has to be saved first. The page status is changed to Saved. Then the editor will need to approve it; it is not approved automatically. There are two ways of approving the page modified and owned by the editor:

    • The editor can resubmit the page; then the page status changes to WaitingforEditorApproval, and the page is listed in the Approval Assistant. The editor can then approve the page either by using the Approve or Decline console commands or by using the Approval Assistant.

    • The editor can approve the page they own directly from the console commands without resubmitting it.

  • Submit a page they don't own: If a page has been saved by somebody else but not yet submitted, an editor can submit this page.

  • Delete a page they don't own: An editor can delete pages in the channel that are owned by somebody else.

NOTE: It is possible to extend the publishing workflow to include, for example, an e-mail notification of publishing events, such as the page's being approved or declined. We will look into customizing the workflow in Chapter 31.


The editors' main responsibility is the quality of the content. Often, the editors are also responsible for setting up the page custom properties. We mentioned the custom properties in Chapter 5; now let's take a more detailed look at them.

These properties are not shown anywhere on the page. Custom properties for pages are defined in the corresponding page template by the template designers. The template contains the custom property name and type. A type defines how the property values are represented in the Web Author. A custom property may be represented as a drop-down list; the content creators may select the value from the list or use the default value provided by the template. Alternatively, the content creators may be asked to type the text for the property value or use the default value provided. A page can have multiple custom properties. Different pages can have the same custom properties.

Custom properties then can be used programmatically in the template code in a number of ways. For example, custom properties can be used to categorize content. Content authors and editors may select the predefined values for the custom properties when they add or edit content. If you want to use custom properties in this way, then these properties must be defined consistently throughout your site, as follows:

  • Each custom property must have the same name and the same type across all page templates.

  • If a custom property is represented as a drop-down list, it must have the same set of values.

Typically, the custom properties are used to generate META tags for the search engines, such as Keywords and Description META tags used by the internal and external search engines. Keywords and Description META tags, along with the full text of a page, are the primary sources of information that search engines use to index the page. META tags can be created at runtime; the page template includes code that programmatically retrieves the content stored in the custom properties and inserts it into the HTML <HEAD> container.

Keywords and Description META Tags

Keywords defined in the META tags on a page are added to the search engine index as the search keywords for this page, and description text is displayed after the link to your page in the search results page. When the search engine crawler comes to the page with the following META tags, it will use the string "BOTS Consulting is a management consulting firm" to describe the page, and will use the words listed within the content attribute in the second META tag as the search keywords for this page.

[View full width]

<META name="Description" content="BOTS Consulting is a management graphics/ccc.gif consulting firm"> <META name="Keywords" content=" BOTS, BOTS Consulting, consulting graphics/ccc.gif, consultancy, consultancies, consult, consulting firms, graphics/ccc.gif management consulting, consultants, consultant ">

For example, when the user searches for consulting firms, this page will be returned as a result of the search.


It is a good practice of Web design to provide Keywords and Description META tags for the search engines. It is advisable to provide values for Keywords and Description custom properties on your Web site pages so that the META tags can be generated.

The editor can modify the page properties that are set up by the page author; the editor's settings override the author's settings. For example, as shown in Figure 6-7, our sample page has custom properties for categorization and for the search engines, as follows:

  • A custom property called Industry is used for categorization. The use of this property allows us to mark pages on our site that relate to a specific industry; the value for the property is chosen from the list of values set up by the template designers. In our example, the default value is Manufacturing, but the value selected for the current page is Technology. The following META tags will be generated:

     <META name="Industry" value="Manufacturing"> 
  • Two custom properties called Keywords and Description are used for the search engines. The Keywords property contains the list of the keywords for this particular page; the Description property contains the text that provides a brief description of the page content. The following META tags will be generated:

     <META name = Keywords content="MCMS, content management"> <META name=Description value="MCMS 2002 technical overview"> 
Figure 6-7. Sample page custom properties

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Microsoft Content Management Server 2002. A Complete Guide
Microsoft Content Management Server 2002: A Complete Guide
ISBN: 0321194446
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 298

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