Sitecore Page Editor and Workflow - how to?

Let's say that I have a classic page layout.

• A header, with logo (one sublayout)
• A top navigation in the header of the page (another sublayout)
• A 3-column page sublayout with:
  • A left navigation sublayout loaded in the left column placeholder
  • A placeholder in the center column where different content items (slideshow, tabs container, block of HTML, etc.) can be loaded
  • A placeholder in the right column where different sidebar content items (shared across multiple pages) can be loaded
• A footer sublayout, possibly with a footer navigation sublayout as well (such as Contact Us, Help, T&C, etc.)

Now let's say that all this can be edited in the page editor, and let's add the fact that I want everything to go through workflow.

When the editor goes to a specific page (say the "About Us" page), when he will click EDIT, what exactly is Sitecore expected to do? Would all items that appear on that page switch to DRAFT state? Or would that happen only when, say, the editor actually does edit some content in some of the "content items" displayed on the page?

And what happens when the page is submitted for approval? Would all the subitems that were modified ALSO go into "Submitted for Approval" state and appear in the Approver/Publisher's workbox?

If none of this happens out of the box, how could all this be implemented? Has anyone already tackled this problem and solved it successfully? It seems like a common problem to have, yet I don't seem to be able to find any guidance on how all this ties together.

Thanks, FG

I have just done a quick test of this. These are my findings:

When the user clicks edit in page editor mode, nothing happens at that point to the workflow states. All that this does is allow the user to edit the content.

There is an "Edit" chunk on the page editor which would allow the user to lock and unlock - this only appears to affect the current item being edited, not any related items used to render content to the page.

The same happens if the user clicks the save button. Only the current item is locked and put into the draft workflow state.

However, if the user edits some of the related content (logo, nav, footer etc...), when the user clicks the save button both the current item and the items that have been edited are locked and placed in the initial workflow state (as long as the templates standard values has an initial workflow setup of course)

These test were done on Sitecore 7.0 initial release - but I don't think the behavior has changed from 6.5 or 6.6.