Workspaces in TYPO3: Drafts and Approvals Explained

Workspaces

A working area where changes are made and reviewed before they appear on the live site.

Draft, preview, approval

By default a change in TYPO3 is live as soon as it is saved and the page is published. For many organisations that is enough. Where it is not, there are workspaces: a separate working area where changes are made without touching the live site.

The flow is always the same. Somebody makes a change in the draft area, generates a preview, somebody else looks at it and approves; only then does the change move to live.

The benefit lies in the preview

The decisive difference from a review document: what gets checked is the finished page, not a description of it. Whoever approves sees exactly what visitors will see, with images, line breaks and at every screen size.

The preview can be shared as a link, including with people who have no backend access. That is often the most practical part of the whole thing.

The price

Workspaces make the installation more complex. Records exist in two versions, which has to be accounted for in custom extensions, and editorial teams need an introduction so it is clear which area they are working in.

So we do not recommend them across the board, but where an approval process already exists and currently runs past the website.

Common questions

Do we need workspaces?

Only if there is a genuine approval process. Where an editor writes a change and publishes it themselves, a draft area is extra work with nothing in return.

It becomes useful as soon as somebody else has to read it first, in public bodies, with press releases, in regulated industries. It then replaces wording discussions by email with a preview of the real thing.

Can several changes be prepared at once?

Yes, and that is the second benefit: a relaunch of individual areas or a campaign can be built in full in draft and published together on a given date.

With extensive changes across many pages it is worth looking at the dependencies first. What should go live together should be approved together.