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Introducing "Request sign-off" - an approval flow that requires no set up
We are happy to announce a new feature in SharePoint called "Request sign-off". The goal is to provide you an easy way to send an item for approval to someone else. This feature enables an open approval process that allows you to easily record whether or not a document or list item was approved or not. There is no setup required. Request sign-off makes use of SharePoint's integration with Microsoft Flow. You can use it by selecting a file or list item (but not a folder), and then pulling down the Flow menu in the modern library or list UI, and selecting "Request sign-off". This flow will appear alongside any other custom flow that you or others may have added to the library. Once it is invoked, Request sign-off will create a new text column in your library called "Sign-off status". This column will record the state of your request. It works just like any other text column, you can sort, filter or group by it to organize your library. On invocation, this will tell you that it will send an approval request on your behalf, and ask your consent. Once this is provided, you can pick one or more approvers, and write a message to them for your approval request. If you add more than one approver, any one of them can approve your request: The person you sent the approval to will receive an approval request. This will be an actionable message on clients that support it (meaning you can approve it directly from within Outlook). The approver can also provide some comments along with their decision. There will also be a link included that lets the approver view the item in question: The sign-off status column is then updated with the decision, and the person who sent the approval request will receive an email with the comments: By saving you the trouble of setting up a flow and creating a new column to track status, we hope that this feature will make it easy to add a lightweight approval process to your libraries and lists. We expect this feature to start rolling out to our customers in targeted release (previously called first release) after April 9. Barring any issues we will continue to roll it out to the rest of our customers in two phases late April and early May.Announcing PowerApps web part (preview) for SharePoint Online
We are pleased to announce the preview of the PowerApps web part for SharePoint Online. PowerApps is a service that lets you build business apps that run in a browser or on a phone or tablet, with no coding experience required. Once you have created or customized an app using the service, you can add it to your SharePoint page with the PowerApps web part. Getting started To get started, just add the PowerApps web part from the toolbox and then enter the app's URL or the ID in the property pane. You can grab the app's URL or the ID from your apps page in PowerApps. Web part features Below are some of the key benefits of using the PowerApps web part to embed your apps on a SharePoint page: The Web part automatically signs you into PowerApps. The Web part automatically scales the app to a best fit in the canvas. If you do not like the best fit, you can resize the app (up to the app's max size) using the resizer control. Yes, it works in your SharePoint mobile app. Release details We are releasing this web part as a preview, so we can gather feedback and monitor the app's performance. We expect the web part to start rolling out to our customers in Targeted Release in early May 2018. We are excited for you to start using the PowerApps web part and we would love to hear your feedback! Notes Adding the app on a page does not automatically give users permissions to use the app. Users must be granted access to view the app. To learn how to share apps with specific users or security groups, or with your entire organization, see Share an app in PowerApps. PowerApps are designed to work best with fixed sizes. For page layout purposes, apps that use a portrait orientation usually fit well in a one-third or three-column layout. Apps that use a landscape orientation usually fit well in a one-column layout. The PowerApps web part (preview) for SharePoint Online does not yet support screen readers or keyboard navigation.Configuring approvals for lists and libraries
We are adding a new menu item under the Flow menu that will let customers configure the type of approvals they would like to use in their lists and libraries (Request sign-off, or Content approval), or turn approvals off altogether. We have added this feature based on the feedback that we received for the rollout of the Request sign-off feature, where some customers preferred to use the Content approval feature which changes the visibility of the current item based on the approval status, and there are fixed approvers for a given list or library, or other customers had other custom flows configured for their list or library, and did not want to have Request sign-off to become a source of confusion for their users. To make changes, as site owner, you will be able click on Flow->Configure flows in the command bar of your list or library: Then in the panel that appears, pick the approval method that you'd like, or turn approvals off altogether: The new configuration panel will become available for our Targeted Release customers in early September, and then go to the rest of our customers. We expect to complete the rollout by September 19. Please continue to keep the feedback for our features coming, and tell us how we can make SharePoint work better for you.Announcing PowerApps web part (preview) general availability
We are happy to announce that we will be starting to roll out the PowerApps web part (preview) to all tenants worldwide today! It has been a great journey so far with lots of learning along the way. We have just started the rollout, so your tenant should see it as we rollout gradually for all tenants. Please be aware that it might take few days for the web part to be available in your tenants. As a bonus, the web part now allows you to show a border around the app to make it more seamless on the page. Please let us know any feedback or suggestion you have. We did get a lot of feedback with the Targeted Release especially around the ability to embed custom forms and passing parameters to the app. Stay tuned for more updates as we continue to work on our backlog. Meanwhile, let us know how you are using the web part, what you like and not like.Using SharePoint List Choice field in PowerApps
Hi all, If you've tried to create a PowerApp that filters or searches on a choice field in a SharePoint list, you may have found that it doesn't work. This is because today, PowerApps expects the filtered/searched fields to be text fields. I found a simple work-around for this by using a Calculated field in SharePoint for the choice field as PowerApps treats calculcated fields as text fields. In the example below, the field I'm interested to search on is a choice field called bugStatus. Instead, my PowerApp uses bugStatusValue in its search field.
New Trigger Conditions for Flow!
Microsoft Flow triggers now have a built-in condition checker (in the settings). Now in only 1 step, you can set a condition for a specific column, so that the trigger only fires when the condition is met! We wanted newer Flow makers to be able to leverage this new feature too, so here is a video that shows offr the new feature, with the bonus of a few extra tips for newer makers with minimal experience with expressions. Enjoy, Audrie https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcTMBQ9KuUAModern SharePoint lists are here—including integration with Microsoft Flow and PowerApps!
Earlier this year, we unveiled a new cloud-first, mobile-first vision and roadmap for SharePoint, which included innovations that empower people, teams and organizations to intelligently discover, share and collaborate on content from anywhere and on any device. Today, we’re pleased to announce the rollout of modern SharePoint lists to SharePoint Online, along with one-click integration of PowerApps and Microsoft Flow. These enhancements will begin rolling out to Office 365 First Release customers the first week in August 2016. Learn more about this from Chris McNulty on the blog.Flow Licensing
A question about the Flow licensing model. The charge is number of flows that have run during the course of a month, pooled across an entire enterprise. So if I have 1,000 users in my tenant, each of them with an E3 O365 license, I should have 2,000,000 Flow runs per month, shared among all of my users. (An E1, E3, or E5 O365 license is considered as Flow for Office 365 in the licensing chart.) All well and good, and this should be plenty. However, I have no methodology or tool to see what the usage is in my enterprise. I don't know if I'm expending 100,000 flow runs a month, or 10, or 1.9 million. I don't know if I need to budget for more Flow runs next quarter, or if I need to put in some governance on my users. Moreover, I don't have any governance tools anyway, other than the giant "Off" button. What if I have a small minority of users creating an irresponsible number of Flows, consuming all of my available Flow runs? I have no way of knowing it's taking place, no way of knowing who is consuming the runs, what business needs these runs are fulfilling, nor any way to limit, encourage, or advertise their use, even if these Flow runs bring a great deal of success and value. In short, to have a per-use license structure with zero ability to monitor or manage usage by the consumer (the enterprise IT department) will not encourage adoption of what is, in my opinion, a fantastic tool. Can we please have an administrative tool for Flow, and a relaxing of license enforcement until we do?Set values for Managed Metadata (aka Taxonomy) columns in PowerApps and Flow! (First Release)
Hi everyone, As of today, you will be able to set the values of your managed metadata columns (sometimes also called taxonomy columns) in PowerApps (for both multi-value and single value) and in Flow (single value for now, but multi-value coming soon...) Here's a sample multi-value taxonomy column that was tied to a termset for languages. We are not fully all the way there: the default values are not yet showing up if they are set, and we don't yet let you disambiguate between different paths while you are typing, but we think this is a great net new add for our customers who love and use the managed metadata columns. Please give it a try, and let us know your feedback. In your First Release tenant, you can create a new app, or custom forms, or go to an existing app and refresh the schema to get the new columns. We expect to start rolling out to Production in the last week of November if we don't hit any blocking issues.
