How can I implement an approval process that affects permissions during the creation of a new page?

[Matthias Lochmann]

Hello everyone,

We use Confluence for our internal wiki.

Now I have some criticisms against using Confluence, one main problem is that the content is visible as soon as a page is published...
I know, as long as you just press "save draft" there is no problem. But it's happened quickly that employees press "Publish" instead of "Save draft"...

But how do you ensure that the content is only available for e.g User Group "Emloyees" once the page has been approved by a manager, for example? How do you handle this use case?

Is there a way to grant access only to the creator / page owner in a first step by default? And after the approval process of the content, he can give access to a user group such as "employees" etc.? How would you handle an approval process, preferably without additional apps?

Thank you & Best Regards
Matthias

[Barbara Szczesniak · Accepted solution]

@Matthias Lochmann To expand on what @Richard Scholtes said, you can instruct your writers that:

1. Depending on the stage of the workflow:
   • while drafting the page, they can click the lock icon (left of the Publish button) to open the Restrictions modal.
   • the first time they publish the page, they should select Only specific people can view or edit in the Access list to open the Restrictions modal.
2. On the Restrictions modal, they can specify individuals or groups that can view or view and edit the page. You can also use these setting to hide the page from approvers until it is ready for them to review.

Once the page has been approved, they can click the lock icon and change the selection from Only specific people can view or edit to Anyone in this space can view, only some can edit (unless you want everyone to be able to edit).

Note that, if the page has a parent page, that page must be visible to the same people for the child page to be visible. 

[Matthias Lochmann]

I use now eSin Document Management, this works super! Thank you!

[Richard Scholtes · Accepted solution]

I suggest you create pages in a restricted area of the space or in another space with just employees as users and simply move them to the public area as soon as they are approved. If you want to implement a real approval process and some automation around it, you can check the marketplace for some addons that allow you to di that.