A CMS implementation typically fails not because the CMS itself, but because it doesn’t support the roles and permissions that the organization needs for its workflow.
Most CMSs ship with only a handful of limited user types, and if those roles don’t fit your organizational needs, there is always going to be deficiencies in your workflow.
User Roles
It’s important to properly define roles within your content management workflow very early in the process, including . This way you can identify the roles and responsibilities you’ll need the CMS to support and anticipate how those might evolve as the organization grows.
- Identify user types and roles early in the process
- This will allow you to understand what roles and permissions your CMS should support
- Take time to consider how these individuals will need to interact with the CMS
- Before selecting a CMS, you should have a clearly defined roles and permissions
User Types
While no two organizations are the same, there are user types that are consistent across most content management workflows. When evaluating roles within your own organization, it’s helpful to start with these, identify which of them that you’ll need, where roles might overlap would be combined, and whether new roles need to be established to improve the content management process.
Content Creators
- Also know as authors
- Anyone who is responsible for writing articles and blog posts, injecting content into the system, or updating previously written content.
- The responsibilities and permissions required by this group are going to depend largely on their role within your organization:
- Do you have authors that are outside of your organization, such as freelancers or contractors?
- Are all of your authors in the same department or will they come from multiple departments?
- Should your authors’ access be restricted to only their content or should they be allowed to access other authors’ content as well?
You may find that in asking these types of questions that you have multiple author types that require different degrees of permissions within the CMS.
Editors
- Anyone who reviews, edits, approves, or marks up content for revisions.
- Depending on the workflow
- Editors publish content
- Editors push content to another layer of approval before publishing
- The editorial process is frequently the bottleneck in publishing workflows
- Evaluate the needs and permissions of this position carefully in an attempt to prevent that from happening
- Communication between editors and content creators is important
- Understanding what tools and types are required to properly communicate will help define the necessary capabilities within your CMS
Publishers
- Anyone who has the ability to publish content to the live site
- Not every workflow needs publishers, this group is among the most overlooked group in terms of properly anticipating the needs and permissions required to make them effective
- The roles of publishers will vary widely from organization to organization
- Smaller workflows, this role is often shared by other users
- Larger workflows, this role is a dedicated team member
- If publishers are required in your workflow you’ll need to think how this group is going to operate:
- Will publishers act as project managers in your workflow?
- Will publishers oversee the progress of individual projects from start to finish?
- Will they act more as traffic managers making sure that content is always on time and routing content from step to step?
- Will publishers act more as content assemblers, routing approved content to the proper location and template structure within your site?
The only thing that is consistent with any of these approaches is that publishers are responsible for having the final say for when content moves from draft status to live content.
Other User Types
- Asset Manager – responsible for collecting and managing digital assets and documents that support your content
- Legal Advisor – your approval process may require legal approval
- Brand Manager – your approval process may require marketing approval
- Continuity Manager – if your organization has a concerning about disaster recovery
- Translator – if your content is re-purposed in other languages
These managers and/or advisers act in a manner similar capacity as editors, but often require a very narrow set of permissions.
Evaluate CMS Based on User Requirements
Without understanding an organization’s needs, there’s no way to accurately predict exactly what user types and permissions will be required:
- Know the user types and permissions they’ll need
- Evaluate CMSs – do they have the user control required
- Is the default group sufficient
- Do I need more granular control over user types