Talking Drupal #475 - Workspaces

Today we are talking about Workspaces, What They are, and How
They Work with guest Scott Weston. We’ll also cover Workspaces
Extra as our module of the week.


For show notes visit:
https://www.talkingDrupal.com/475
Topics

What are Workspaces in Drupal

What's a common use cases for Workspaces

Are Workspaces stable

Do Workspaces help with content versioning

What does the module ecosystem look like for Workspaces

Inspiration

Workspaces best practices

Any interesting ways it is being used

Is there a way to access workspace content in twig

Navigation integration

Workspaces and workflows

What aspects of a Workspace are limited to live

If someone wants to get involved or get started

Resources

Drupal Workspaces

Core issue: Media library form can only be submitted in the
default workspace

Integrate Navigation with Workspaces

Guests

Scott Weston - scott-weston
Hosts

Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan
John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi
Joshua "Josh" Mitchell - joshuami.com joshuami
MOTW Correspondent

Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu.com mandclu


Brief description:

Do you want to extend the capabilities of the Workspaces
system in Drupal core? There’s a module for that.



Module name/project name:

Workspaces Extra



Brief history

How old: created in Apr 2021 by Andrei Mateescu
(amateescu) of tag1, who has also contributed to Workspaces
in core, among other many things

Versions available: 2.0.0-alpha3 which works with Drupal
10.3 or 11



Maintainership

Actively maintained, latest release is less than a week
old

Security coverage: technically yes, but not really until
it has a stable release

Test coverage

Number of open issues: 20 open issues, 3 of which are
bugs against the current branch, though one has already been
fixed



Usage stats:

89 sites



Module features and usage

One of the big features in Drupal 10.3 was that
Workspaces is now officially stable. That said, not
everything works the way some site builders will want it to.
That’s where a contrib solution like Workspace Extra can help
to fill in the gaps

It provides new options like letting you roll back
changes from a published workspace, move content between
workspaces, discard changes in a workspace, squashing content
revisions when a workspace is published, and more

Workspaces Extra, or WSE also includes a number of
submodules to add even more capabilities. For example, they
can allow your workspace to stage an allowlist of
configuration changes, deploy workspace content using an
import/export system, stage menu changes, and more. For
workflow, there’s an option to generate a shareable workspace
preview link for external users, and a scheduler to publish
your workspace at a specific day and time

I will add that the first time I played with workspaces I
ran into an issue where I couldn’t create media entities
within a workspace. I don’t know for sure that this hasn’t
been fixed in core, but the core issue about it is still
listed as “Needs work”. That said, the last comment on that
issue (link in the show notes) lists WSE as something that
helps, so if you encounter the same issue with Workspaces,
WSE is worth a try