Aside from the out-of-the-box workflows, which are used throughout site collection document libraries and lists, publishing pages throughout SharePoint Server 2007 site collections provisioned from the Publishing Portal site template include a workflow approval mechanism based on the approval workflow (parallel approval). This workflow manages the content approval process and controls the content published by content authors throughout publishing sites and site collections.

The approval workflow tied in with the publishing page will alert the owner of the page so that the owner can either accept or reject the changes, as shown in Figure 10-3.

Figure 10-3. The approval stage of the publishing workflow, as seen by the owner of a publishing page

While the publishing approval process is enabled by default in site collections provisioned from the Publishing Portal site template, site collections provisioned from the Collaboration Portal site template do not include the publishing approval process by default, and each site throughout a site collection will need to have publishing approval enabled manually. We strongly recommend that you enable approval workflows where there is a requirement for consistent content throughout publishing sites.

For top-level sites and/or subsites where publishing approval workflow is required, choose to create the site from the Publishing Site With Workflow site template, where publishing approval workflow is enabled by default.