Who doesn’t know the widespread proverb "Too many cooks spoil the broth"? That which applies to cuisine, may also prove to be a problem in the field of editorial work. Because as soon as several editors collaborate on content, loss of time and coordination problems are inevitable. WordPress therefore has taken up the cause to optimize the workflow of editorial teams. How? Using the modular Plugin Edit-Flow.

Overview is half the battle

With the calendar feature, editors keep an eye on all the content on a monthly basis. With a built-in filter, additional information can be queried, such as product status (“ready to publish”, “in progress”, etc.), certain content categories and which editors are involved. The custom status tool allows the team to define individual process steps.

Thanks to the widget “Post Status”, the team is shown in tabular form how many posts are present and in what state they are in. The widget "Posts I'm following" visualizes for the individual editor the posts he is currently following.

Information is the reporter's best friend

This applies not only to content, but equally to teamwork.  Therefore the Edit-Flow plug-in provides the functions “Editorial Comments”, “Editorial Metadata” and “Notifications”.  In practice this means that private comments or notes, visible to other editors, can be added.  In addition to that important metadata can be added and configured individually.  In this way for example, all editors are notified at the same time on the post length and the deadline for a first draft of the article.  Possible status changes or comments are communicated to the individual team members via message.

Organizing is the lifeblood of successful teamwork

This has also been recognized by WordPress and enriched the Edit-Flow collection with two useful functions. The “Story Budget” tool allows the team to always keep an eye on the proposed budget for the respective content at a glance. With the “User Groups” function, user groups can be created to visualize the team structure, as well as a better overview of the existing resources in terms of editors, photographers, reporters, etc.