One of the most requested features from my clients is the ability to approve new pages or edits to existing pages. While there are plenty of marketplace apps for this, my question is whether this can actually be done with some creativity in Confluence without marketplace apps?

To take this to the next level, is it also possible to do it with appropriate audit trails so it can pass an actual audit?

From what I can see, the only way we can have something like this is to use the permissions to restrict who can publish new pages and changes.

This would be to have users without the Create content and the Edit content permissions (in the new role-based permissions). Doing this would require that we create a new role, and it only works if we have all the content in the space to require review for publication.

Doing this would allow a user to create a page or edit it, but not to publish.

It would be great with a publishing workflow in Confluence for audit purposes, but also for things like publications and approvals. I think that is why we have so many marketplace apps for workflows and approvals?