we’ll discuss the concept of using a publishing workflow. We will describe ways companies have used and can use Subject Matter Expert (SME) and departmental authorship to keep website content current and accurate throughout the organization. We’ll cover how a Content Management System (CMS) enables effective authorship while helping businesses achieve proper governance and workflow policies. We will review pros and cons to managing content through publishing workflows and offer five tips to help organizations define an effective process to manage their website or intranet.

1. Sharing the
Responsibility:
Kentico Workflow

2. Agenda
• Intro to Distributed Authorship
• What’s the Process?
• Elements of a Workflow
• Basic and Advanced Workflows within Kentico CMS
• How to Be Successful
• Questions?

3. A BIT ABOUT
ASCEDIA

4. 17

5. SOME
CLIENT
EXPERIENCE

6. Distributed Authorship
The process of using
workflow models within CMS
to decentralize the creation
of content, giving Product
Managers and others
ownership of information on
the website

7. Where Is DA Best Used?
• Complex and technical information
• Product news
• Engineered products
• Product specifications
• Customer Service
• Localized content
• Intranets
• Blogs
• Extranets

8. Advantages
Sharing the process of content
generation leads to…
• Increased volume
• More accurate and relevant
• More engaged and authentic
• Improved speed of publishing
cycle

9. Why Do Initiatives Fail?
• Everyone thinks it’s easy
• Lacks leadership buy-in
• Authors are uninterested
• Lack of training
• No feedback loop
• The site breaks!!! (Again…)

10. Why Are We Talking About
This?
Because Initiatives Fail!!!
If successful we can:
• Eliminate common issues with content
generation
• Accelerate the process
• Spread the workload as knowledge is
decentralized
• Remove bottlenecks (webmasters are
normally IT resources)

11. The Usual Process
•

12. What Normally Happens
• Marketing begs for content
• Gets some random thoughts from random
people in the organization
• Pushes a document to the SME for
comment or correction
• Submits to Webmaster
• Waits for the Webmaster to place in queue
to publish (or it just gets forgotten)
This process takes time… and a lot of
energy!

13. This Is Where It Gets
Complicated…
• How do you share responsibilities
and yet maintain control?
• Many elements of a page are not
the expertise of content writers
• Content is not their primary
responsibility, yet it needs to be a
priority
• Communication needs to be open

14. Elements of the
process

15. Governance
Quality assurance methods to make
sure accurate, on-brand content is
published on a website
Maintain oversight of brand
Protects Organization Legally
Three common governance models
• Centralized
• Localized
• Federated

16. What Is Workflow?
Workflow is a sequence of steps that
define the life cycle of content creation.
Workflow allows you to ensure the quality
of content and design by setting up a
review and approval process.
In such a process, you can specify the
roles that different people have and the
places in the page life cycle where specific
people can work with pages.
Follows governance models and protocols

17. The Elements of a Page
• Layout
• Basic Content and Images
• Navigation
• Calls to action

18. Content
Content is anything
authors can place on a
page.
Normally it’s text,
images, documents and
data.
It’s not features or
functions.
SME SME /Marketing

19. Roles
Author
Editor (Reviewer)
Publisher
Webmaster
Administrator

20. Users
• Anyone with a role for input
into the system
• Authors and editors
• Webmasters and
administrators
• Based on the function they
will perform
• Assigned content and page
responsibilities
How this is organized depends
on you!

21. Permissions
Who and what Authors and Editors can touch
Granular:
• By Page
• By Content Type
• By Role
• Features and functions can be simplified or
not offered
Can extend outside the organization

22. Using Kentico
•

23. Kentico Dashboard

24. Content Types

25. Roles

27. Kentico Workflows
Basic:
Works through a direct process
Advanced:
Allows multi-step and Yes / No Branch
decisions

28. A Basic Process

29. An Advanced Process

30. Demo

31. Requirements
Content Provider Role
• Can only manage content, not properties
• No Publish
• Add/Modify “Demo-Article” Page Types
• Can’t edit ‘Intro Copy’ Field
Metadata Review:
• No Publish
• Edit Metadata
Publisher:
• Can publish

32. Permissions
Content Provider
• Add/Modify “Demo-Article” Page Types: Page
Type permission
• Can’t edit ‘Intro-Copy’: Field level permission
• No Publish: Workflow security

33. Workflow flow
Content Provider -> DSR -> Publisher

34. Workflow Module
• Steps: Document Lifecycle
• Scope: Section of content tree
• Pages: List of Pages applied to the workflow
• Emails: General settings
• Versions: List of changes made

35. Kentico Workflow
Recommendations
• Share access to Kentico to maximize
content publishing velocity
• Always have a separate review and
publish function
• Don’t overdevelop the workflow
process
• Document each workflow and its
purpose

36. How To Be
Successful
•

37. How To Be Successful
• Get leadership on board
• Plan for your content
• Train your users

38. Leadership Buy In
Tie to business goals of your Organization
Benefits to a successful program include:
• Google rank goes up
• Traffic will increase
• Leads will go up
• Lower customer service costs
• You will be participating in the purchase
cycle earlier with humans getting in later at
more qualified states

39. Planning
Plan for your content approach in the
strategy phase
• Content plan
• Author / editing plan
• Training plan

40. Content Planning
Content and author / editor planning is more than an inventory – but not
much more
Add these elements to the content inventory:
• Types of content to publish
• Who is best in organization to contribute
• Skill level on a scale of 1 to 5
• Who needs to approve content
You’ll start seeing patterns…

41. Training
All Users must be trained
• General Kentico Training
• Kentico Classes
• Website Maintenance
Training
• Webmaster and developers
must document the build

42. Teach Writing for the Web
• Write for your audience
• Write for the web
• Audiences scan information
• Limit page complexity
Recommended Reading:
https://www.nngroup.com/

43. Brand and Design
Considerations
Make it easy to maintain brand standards:
• Consider your design with your users in mind
• Consider both internal and external users
• Don’t over-design site
• Limit the reach of each author

44. SEO and Metadata
Still a marketing function!
Use keywords to help create:
• Titles (<= 55 chars)
• Descriptions (<= 160 chars)
• URL names
• Image file names and alt tags
• Page headers (H1)

45. Important Tips….
1. Start with a content plan – even on a retrofit!
2. Then plan for your organization and your content flow
• Consider your authors and their skill levels
• Marketing will need to edit, approve and maintain SEO and meta info
3. Lean towards simple
4. Choose content champions
5. Try it in small places at first
6. Have a published style guide
7. Provide training and ongoing help

46. Takeaways
• Kentico CMS is full featured and
powerful and can support any method
you choose
• Plan everything
• Get as granular as possible (without
driving you crazy)
• Get executive buy-in!

47. Questions?

48. Thank You!
Bob Sabinash
Director, Client Strategy at Ascedia
rsabinash@ascedia.com
414-292-3309

49. Governance Models
Centralized
Authors do not have CMS Access and
webmasters place all content in website.
Advantages
• Content will follow brand
• Search engine optimized
• Doesn’t need extensive training
Weaknesses
• Slow
• Sometimes inaccurate
• Sometimes hard to get participation

50. Governance Models
Localized
Authors have CMS access; publishing
and workflows go directly to website
Advantages
• Empowers users
• Creativity is enhanced
• All authors can publish most
anything
Weaknesses
• Lack control over authors
• Needs Author Training
• Could break the website

51. Governance Models
Federated
Authors have CMS access; workflows go
through editors to be published
Advantages
• Takes advantage of both Centralized and
Localized models
• Uses full power of CMS
Weaknesses
• Planning, training, and collaboration are
necessary for success

52. Roles
Recommendations
• Create roles according
to your organization and
policies.
• Try to simplify and
consolidate
• Apply this to the content
plan with potential
actors and associated
attributes for each

53. Users
Recommendations
• Identify content champions
as early as possible
• Associate users with content
they will edit as a
component of the Content
plan
• Assign skill levels to them to
help with permissions and
granular access and
function.

54. Permissions
Recommendations
• Review skill sets of users and set permissions
accordingly according to content plan.
• Limit WYSIWYG functions based on need
• Limit access to website and pages based
on need
• Do not give everyone administration access.