AEM workflows sound like a power move for content teams, and they can be when they are shaped for editors first. In Adobe Experience Manager, the moment you connect workflows to everyday actions like review, approval, translation, and publish, you touch the heart of how editors work. The trick is to keep the tools serving the humans, not the other way around. This post shares a practical take for content authors and site managers who live inside AEM and want workflows that are simple, visible, and reliable.
Problem framing
Right now a lot of teams are moving from CQ5 habits to the newer AEM touch UI, Granite Inbox, and the Projects console. AEM 6.1 is common and 6.2 is rolling out after Adobe Summit. Editors are being asked to use the Inbox, pick steps, and route pages while juggling daily publish windows. It is easy to end up with a maze that slows everything. The core problem is simple: editors need predictable review and publish with a light touch. Tech wants audit trails, guardrails, and automation. Both are valid, but a good workflow has to feel smooth for the person who writes and hits publish.
Think of the basics your authors need every day: request for activation, peer review, legal check, and then push to publish. Add DAM asset changes and the occasional translation run. That is the real flow. Anything more should prove it belongs.
Patterns and anti patterns
These are patterns that play nice with editorial work in AEM:
- Few human steps with clear owners. Use groups like Editors, Legal, and Publishers. Assign to a group, not to a person. People change. Groups stick.
- Request for activation on sensitive areas only. Let trusted sections go straight to publish when the author has the right permission.
- Version on approval. Add a Create Version step before publish so you can roll back without drama.
- Inbox first. Make the Granite Inbox the place to work. Train teams to pick up tasks from there instead of email links.
- Metadata driven routing. Route legal or brand checks by page properties like Country or Product Line instead of guessing by path alone.
- Short SLAs and reminders. Set timeouts on participant steps and auto escalate to the next group. Editors need to keep moving.
- Asset checks on upload. Use a simple DAM workflow to create renditions and flag missing metadata so assets are publish ready.
- Translation as a project. Use Projects to bundle pages, send to your provider, and track status in one place.
And here are anti patterns that burn time and goodwill:
- Every page must run a workflow. If you force all edits into a three step review, your site will crawl. Give trusted authors a fast lane.
- Workflows as permission control. Do not use a workflow to simulate missing permissions. Fix groups and ACLs.
- Mixing heavy system steps with human approvals. Keep long running jobs like exports or feeds in separate workflows so editors are not blocked.
- Email storm. Relying only on email notifications makes people blind to real tasks. Use the Inbox and keep email as a gentle nudge.
- Too many branches. Or Split everywhere creates a spaghetti board. Start simple and add one branch when a proven rule needs it.
- Transient everywhere. Transient steps save resources but kill audit. For review chains, keep the audit trail on.
- Payload clutter. Stuffing custom data inside the payload folder complicates cleanup. Prefer page properties or workflow metadata.
Case vignette
A regional news group moved from CQ5.6 to AEM 6.1. The old process had a checklist that tried to cover every edge case. A story could sit in limbo while three different people approved three tiny things. Editors had no single place to see tasks, so they hunted email threads and page status. Publish deadlines suffered, and weekend editions felt like a fire drill.
We sat with editors and watched a full day of work. The real flow was simple. A reporter created a page, an editor reviewed copy and SEO bits, legal checked names when the topic needed it, and a publisher pushed the story live at a set time. Photos came from a small DAM team with preset crops. Translation to Spanish happened for about ten percent of stories.
We built a new workflow with three human steps and a few smart checks:
- Editorial review goes to the Editors group. The step checks required fields like Title and Teaser. If missing, the task stays put with a clear message in the Inbox.
- Conditional legal fires only when a page property called Sensitive equals Yes. The toggle sits in the page properties so the editor can set it with one click.
- Publish window is handled by the Publisher group, which can schedule activation right from the Inbox. A version is created at this step.
On the DAM side, a tiny workflow created three renditions and flagged missing credits. No human approval there. For translation, we used the Projects console to collect pages and send to the provider, then a short review step before activation.
We trimmed email to a daily digest and taught everyone to live in the Inbox. The board had clear columns by group. Editors could pick tasks without waiting for a direct ping. Legal had a single view for the sensitive bucket. Publishers saw what was ready and what was waiting for a fix.
Results after two cycles: average time from draft to live for standard stories dropped from hours to under one hour. The weekend queue stopped piling up. The audit log was clean, so the compliance team felt safe. Most telling, editors said the workflow did not feel like extra work. It felt like the way they already worked, but tidy.
Lessons learned
Start with the editor’s map. Watch a real publish day. Draw the steps on a whiteboard with names of groups, not tool jargon. Your first workflow should mirror that map with the least number of steps that still gives traceability.
Keep human steps short and owned. One group per step. Clear entry and exit. No mystery. If a step needs a tool tip to explain itself, rename it.
Route by facts. Use page properties and asset metadata to make routing decisions. Country, Product, Sensitive content, Publish date. Keep rules visible to editors so they know why a task moved.
Make the Inbox the home base. Pin it in training. Clean labels, no noisy duplicates, and smart filters. Email is a backup. The Inbox is the source of truth.
Give a fast lane to trusted authors. Not every change needs a ceremony. For sections with low risk, allow direct publish and rely on versioning for safety.
Protect the audit. For review chains, keep workflows non transient. Save transient for purely technical jobs where you do not need a trail.
Measure and tune. Track time in step, rejection rate, and repeat sends. If a step gets stuck, either the owner is wrong, the rule is fuzzy, or the task is not needed.
Teach the why. A short cheat sheet with the flow, who owns each step, and what each button does beats a 40 page manual. Editors just want to ship good content and not fight the tool.
Done well, AEM workflows for editors feel like the site is helping you keep promises to your readers and your brand team. Keep it simple. Keep it visible. Let people do their best work and let AEM handle the repeatable chores in the background.