I'd like to allow users to submit content to a specific category, and notify administrators when this happens.
It seems that J4 Workflows is designed to help this, but turn it then adds workflows to everything, so all new articles need to be approved. It feels like I could create a few different workflows and teach current users that all content now has to be "workflowed", but maybe there's a simpler way to do this? I just want a notification on submission for a category.
You have 2 options:
A.) For a simple (J!3 style) content submission, you could just allow frontend submission. The respective frontend menu item allows to restrict submissions to a specific category. There is also admin email notification through a related system plugin. Hence that there are different permissions for Authors, Publishers.
B.) For a more complex or customized content submission, Workflows could be enabled globally. You can choose a workflow per category! See category parameters. If you want to mimic/keep the usual standard workflow, choose the default one.
