Forum Discussion
MicrosoftIntroducing "Request sign-off" - an approval flow that requires no set up
The "Request sign-off" works for me until it is time to update the Sign-off column. I receive an email stating the following "(the person's name) signed off on your item. Note that we were not able to update the column in SharePoint because the file was locked by a user".
I'm not sure how to fix this issue. Help, please.
Thank you
I think this may be related to Microsoft changing the default way in which documents are opened.
It used to be that clicking on a document link opened it in the browser in Preview mode; if the user wanted to edit the document they had to click an Edit button.
But now, clicking on a document by default opens it in Edit mode in the browser.
Here's what's happening, as far as I can tell:
- User receives request to sign-off
- User clicks on the document link to look at it
- Document opens in Edit mode (which places a lock on the document)
- User switches back to request and Approves without first closing the document to release the lock
You can test this if you want by sending three requests:
- Have the Approver approve without looking at the document at all - should succeed.
- Have the Approver look at the document and then close it before approving - should succeed, but leave a few seconds between closing the document and Approving.
- Have the Approver look at the document and leave it open while approving - should FAIL.
I really wish the default behavior when clicking on a document link would be to Read the document, not Edit it. I believe that would solve this issue (and a few others we're having).
Jim Duncan wrote:Here's what's happening, as far as I can tell:
- User receives request to sign-off
- User clicks on the document link to look at it
- Document opens in Edit mode (which places a lock on the document)
- User switches back to request and Approves without first closing the document to release the lock
You can test this if you want by sending three requests:
- Have the Approver approve without looking at the document at all - should succeed.
- Have the Approver look at the document and then close it before approving - should succeed, but leave a few seconds between closing the document and Approving.
- Have the Approver look at the document and leave it open while approving - should FAIL.
As far as I can determine there is no way to get this Flow to work end to end (without changing the status manually yourself)
are ANY Flows that try to update document/list item columns working at the moment?
It wouldn't surprise me if this file locking issue was not only impacting the OOTB Request sign-off and approval Flows
I did what Jim Duncan suggested and it still failed. I received the email stating that it has been approved but it can't update the "sign-off" column. How do I change the status manually? And will the issue be corrected on it's own, eventually.
- select the item in the list or library view and then update the list column value via the details pane (as you would update any other metadata value manually).
In my experience , no, the column does not get updated eventually.
- In my environment all 3 tests fail.
- If you read back in this thread you'll see this isn't the issue. This happens with both libraries where updates haven't happened on documents in weeks and on SP lists.
