Forum Discussion
MicrosoftIntroducing "Request sign-off" - an approval flow that requires no set up
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.I'm back doing some testing on this again today just to see if anything has changed.
I attended #msignitethetour (in London) and I noticed that "Request sign-off" was included in one of the slide-decks. It was briefly mentioned and they didn't demo the flow end to end ( perhaps luckily for them .. but i was hoping that I would at last see it working)
The presenter suggested that I raise a ticket for this. Personally, I was surprised that this issue wasn't in more common knowledge by now . I can only assume that it's not causing issues for all users (or that adoption has been low and there hasn't yet been a support ticket raised for this)
Has anyone else raised a support ticket for this?
Also, I note that a guest user added to my SharePoint site (an MSA without an O365 licence) , is able to see the "flow" menu and can see "request sign off" on the drop down. However , they are unable to trigger the "request sign-off" flow from the Document library . An error message displays in the Details pane (see attached)
Also I note that a licenced user can not direct the "request sign off" flow to the guest MSA account.
What is the by-design position here. Are MSA guest users unable to interact with Flows unless they have O365 licences (in this case it would be better to hide the Flow menu perhaps?)
- In my environment all 3 tests fail.
