Forum Discussion
MicrosoftIntroducing "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.
228 Replies
- This is a nice little feature, but I'm confused as to why I get the option to use it, but none of my users do? What are the prerequisites for being able to use this??
- Ian Sanders are you in Targeted Release? This may account for you seeing this and your users not seeing it yet.
Ah! Absolutely nailed it. Thank you John.
As I only have 25 users at the moment I thought I had set targeted release for everyone, but I guess I changed it at some point during the trial to only me! Didn't even think to look there.
Thanks so much. I've changed the setting back to everyone, so hopefully they will see the option to request sign off soon....
It doesn't work properly in scenarios when Require Check Out is turned on in a library. I get an approval answer but the message was:
Test User1 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.
The file wasn't checked out
- Kerem Yuceturk
Thank you for reporting this Сергей Асланов, I've logged a bug for this, and we hope to address this in next couple of months.
Hi, just a short question:
Is everyone who is able to edit the Doc Lib also able to edit the status of the newly created column?
Because we are a bit struggling with that ...
Because how to be sure that the status was changed because the approver approved the request and not by someone else who is just able to?
- Kerem Yuceturk
Hi Deleted,
This feature is designed as a shortcut to help our users be able to create a new column to record some metadata in a column, and then to wire up an approval process using flow. So like other columns that can be created by other users in the library, users with edit permissions will be able to edit this column as well. In a later version, we want to be able to show the date and time information on when an item was approved from the history that will be stored on the Flow approval center.
If your scenario requires more control, it may be better to use the content approval feature, which provides a column that can only be changed by users with Approve Items permission on the site. Request sign-off doesn't use this feature because of the implications this has on the library items that may not be desirable for the more common way libraries are used.
- Hi Kerem Yuceturk can you confirm Request Sign Off will be rolling out to Targeted Release from today? Thanks!
- Kerem Yuceturk
Hi John Wynne and everyone.
We found a small bug where the presence of Request Sign-Off breaks the flow button available through our column formatters, but we have a fix that is rolling out. We are waiting for the fix to become available everywhere to turn this on. Sadly this means, we will likely wait until next Monday/Tuesday to go to Targeted Release. Sorry about the delay here...
- Hi Kerem Yuceturk is this new feature likely to go to TR today? Just keeping tabs on progress. Thanks!
The document library fails to load, it comes up as a blank screen, I can see the library in other views I have created but can not upload files at all. Even the black O365 ribbon is blank .
ANy ideas
wrote:Good feature.
It may cater small flow of business process.
Fantastic news! Can't wait to see this rolled out, great job guys! @eddierthomas
- Question is will the ability to deploy flows to specific sites on the roadmap at all?
Would be good to share and allocate flows to specific sites. I have also the question whether admins have the possibility to disable the new approval flow, or how is the situation if users have no Flow license assigned? Will they start a Flow trial with the first use of "Request sign-off"?
- Kerem Yuceturk
Hi TobiasAT, we will work on a management story for each library. Philip Worrell, we are working on being able to share a flow with a site/library so that the owners of the library become owners of the flow, and members can run it. This is coming soon.
To be able to create a flow and add it to different libraries is also something we want to do, but we don't have a timeline for that yet. I'm hoping towards the end of this year.
- Good news. Can't wait to try it.
