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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.
PowerApp forms get stuck on "Getting your data..."
Some, but not all of my SharePoint Forms that are built using PowerApps are getting stuck saying (Getting your data...". The strange thing is that sometimes the data will load then this will happen, or I can click out of the form and reopen it and then it will work. Anyone experiencing a similar issue?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.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.Flow Action - Convert Word Document to PDF
I'm trying to use the Convert Word Document to PDF action in a Flow. There are three parameters that have to be entered: Location - the SharePoint Site Document Library - Library where the document is located. File - The document to convert The parameter that I'm having an issue with is the File. The flow works if I choose the specific document from the library but I want it to be dynamic so that when the user starts a Flow on the document it will convert that one, so I don't want to hardcode the document name. For the File property I'm using the property from a previous step with the file name called File name with extension. When I run the flow I get an error, "There was an error accessing the file. Please try again or select a different file." Can I not use dynamic content for the File property? ThanksAutomating Reminders for Approval Flows
Microsoft has recently introduced Approvals to Flow. This functionality provides users with an easy way to look at all their outstanding approval requests and action them. But what if you don’t know that you have pending approvals? In this article, I provide an example how to receive time-based reminders of an outstanding approval until it has been actioned. In my example, I created a SharePoint list for vacation request that need approvals. The vacation requests have a requester, approver, start and finish date, and approval status. When the approval is first created, the Approval Status is set to Pending. (NOTE: Due to a current limit in the Flow functionality, I am leveraging a text field for the Approval Status rather than a choice field or other structure data). Once a vacation request has been submitted, the flow kicks off. Let’s have a look at how it works. The flow is broken into three major sections Flow Initiation During the initiation of the flow, information is captured about the vacation request, such as the name of the requester and approver. As well, I create a variable Approval Provided, which I use later to determine whether approval has been provided or is still pending. The next two sections run in parallel branches. Flow Approval (right branch) In this section, I submit an approval to the approver mentioned in the SharePoint Vacation Request list item. As this step is synchronous, the right branch will pause until the approval step has been completed by the approver by either approving or rejecting the vacation request. Once an action has been performed, the original SharePoint Vacation Request list item is updated with the corresponding Approval Status. Reminder (left branch) The left branch is responsible for sending out email reminders to the approver. The trigger is time based and continues until the Approval Provided variable is set to true (which happens in the Flow Approval branch). To make things easier for the approver, I am including a link to the Flow Approvals page (https://flow.microsoft.com/manage/environment/<your tenant ID>/approvals/received) directly in the email message. Caveats There are a couple of caveats with this approach. The first one is that you cannot target a specific approval for your user. If the user has several approvals outstanding, you will need to be creating in your messaging to ensure that they address the correct one. For example, in my email message above, I have included the approval type (Vacation Request), who requested it, and start and end dates. These can be matched to the Approval information. The second caveat is that unless you put a limit on the reminders, they will continue until the approval has been actioned. This can possibly a point of annoyance if someone is away for some time and comes back to find a long list of approvals in their mailbox.Microsoft Flow and document lifecycle for approving major versions
Is there any guidance on how to use Flow to manage document lifecycle with published versions with multiple approvals? This would require the option to trigger the flow from the drop down for a document in the document library. Flow on approval would set a new major version and publish it. Something frequently done in the past with SharePoint Designer.Approval Flow - Approval Status - why can't this be updated?
I am hoping i am missing something! Just looking at moving approval workflows from SharePoint workflows to Microsoft Flow. From what i have read the flow cannot update the standard 'Approval Status' field in a library. Is this right? Does this mean that when the Approver receives a lovely email with Approve | Reject call to actions, that when they select either, this cannot reflect in the 'Approval Status' field? This would mean an Approver would have to approve/reject the document from the library?
