Draft version: When a page/content is edited in CMS, a copy is automatically made for authors to edit. This copy is called the Draft version. It enables authors to work on modifications (and save partially-completed work) without site visitors seeing the unfinished effort. The draft version is committed to the Live version when a publisher publishes the content.

Live version: The page/content that a person sees when he/she visits an NDSU Web site, for example, at www.ndsu.edu/cms/ .

Publish: The process of moving pages/content from draft version to the live version.

Swap (publish): The process of exchanging the draft and live versions so the live becomes draft and draft becomes live. This is very useful when publishing content that will be 100% undone (or swapped-back) after some time period.

Workspace: A working environment within the CMS application where authors work on copies of Web page content, called draft versions. Though a workspace commonly contains only one Web site, it may contain two or more Web sites. The workspace makes it possible to work on several pages/content at the same time and "release" all of the content at the same time.  More about what is a workspace.

Workspace author(s): A group of persons who author pages and contents in a workspace.  Requires a CMS account.

Workspace manager(s): A group of one or more persons that execute and approve daily changes of the workspace, e.g., adding a staff person as a publisher.  Requires a CMS account.
One manager, if there is more than one, is designated as the primary manager. This is a single person who carries responsibility for the workspace content being appropriate and up-to-date, and for electing a trusted manager to carry out further tasks if appropriate. The primary manager does not need a CMS account as long as there are additional managers to log in and execute tasks in the CMS backend.

Workspace publisher(s): A group of 1-10 persons who approve and publish page/content in a workspace.  Inherits the same properties as a workspace author.  Requires a CMS account.