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
Hi,
I'm setting up an approval process. The sign off can be anyone of multiple people. Is it possible to have the notifications go to a security group and any of those members can sign off?
Is it possible to do an "If" statement for the approval group, e.g. if John.Doe submits, lookup his department (e.g. Sales) and email a sales group?I guess, it is possible to restrict the approvers to a specific group of people?
This might have been answered already. Approval looks really useful for us but it can get tricky in our workplace.
Is there a recent issue with this Flow?
Last week I started getting a message in the email confirmation saying...
"Note that we were not able to update the column in SharePoint because the file was locked by a user."However the flow was previously working fine.
I'm now also able to replicate this issue across various Lists and across two Tennants (just to try and make sure we'd not broken out tennant!)
It seems that the approval/rejection happens and gets logged but the list item doesn't get the Sign off status field updated.Its also reassuring and frustrating to realise that this is a feature 'under development' as there's nothing to suggest this on first appearance.
I guess misery loves company - I also started a formal testing of this feature today, but on a custom list not a document library.
Same result as everyone else - final emails says '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've tried approving from the email. Approving from the mobile flow app. Same thing every time.
Kerem Yuceturk - Is anyone at MS looking at this? I went to introduce this "great" feature to someone in leadership only to be embarrassed that it is BROKEN as others have pointed out recently. It appears it has been broken for a number of days now and there's nothing in O365 Admin Center about it.
Hi, I've just tried using this for the first time. The emails seem to work fine but the Sign-off status in my SharePoint documents list isn't updating once the approval has been complete. It goes to pending when started but doesn't update to approved when complete. Any idea's?
Marcus_Khoo wrote:the reply is :
Hi @Peter Baddeley, when a file is open, it is locked by the Office client (like Word, PowerPoint, etc.) or Office Online. Request sign-off will try to update the status of the file, and if it fails it will keep retrying at increasingly longer intervals up to two days to see if the file is unlocked. If you start it with the file open, the approval message should still go out even if the status is not set to "Pending", and once the file is closed within two days it should update to the Approved/Rejected state.
2 considerations , first - isn't it likely that the signee will need to have the document open in order to review the file before they can sign off.. and therefore the file is quite likely to be open when "approve" or "reject" is clicked.
The 2nd consideration is that the Flow is not updating the File itself (i.e. the blob) but rather should be updating one of the metadata columns. Is the original flow locking the file so that someone can't change the status directly in the list , i.e. independently of the Flow?
The scenario described by Aaron is also happening for me too by the way (I used this Flow for the first time today !). It might be fine from a business process perspective for the status to update within a day or 2.. however, this functionality won't demo well in a short session/workshop if the status doesn't update at the end of the Flow... I'll check in on the file/list/Flow on monday and see if the status has changed.
Hi there,
This workflow is very useful and works well on documents within document libraries.
However, I've created a document set to contain a group of documents that need approval. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a way to run this document flow on a document set.
When I try to run it on individual documents within the document set, it tells me the workflow failed due to an internal error.
Any ideas on how to get this working with a document set?
Thanks
JasonHi Kerem,
i tried to use this the way you explained, but run flow button is greyed out and I get this message:
Could not run flow: 'Request sign-off' as it is suspended.
Where can I unsuspend this?- Kerem Yuceturk
Hi Tivac-34, sorry to hear that. This may happen if your administrator has set up some Flow policies that prevent the use of the connectors this feature uses: Notifications, Approvals or SharePoint. You will have to ask your administrator about any Flow policies that they may have put in place.
Hi, This is exactly what I am after. However, when I try and set it up, I get the following message: Could not run flow: 'Request sign-off' as it is suspended. and it wont allow me to choose Run Flow button. Is this something switched off for our tenant perhaps?
Dear Microsoft
This looks as a useful feature, much appreciated. After doing some testing today I see that the statuses in the Sign-off status column shows in another language than is used in my Office365 group.
Where is it decided to show the statuses in Norwegian instead of English? Is there a way I can fix this?
We are an international company based in Norway. When our tenant was created this was recognized and we have been struggling with Norwegian language bleeding through, although our company language is English.
Looking forward to hear from you
Per Kristian
- Kerem Yuceturk
Hi Per_Kristian_Hagen, we use the site language for this to make sure that it is consistent for all users of the site. I suspect your site was created with Norwegian as the default language, and that's probably why you are seeing this. Site language is set when the site is being created, and unfortunately I don't think there is a way to change it afterwards.
Another half-baked, buggy, undocumented, nuisance from the SharePoint team.
You guys are out of control.
Do you have any details on the Outlook Clients that will allow you to approve from within Outlook. It's one of my biggest concerns for 'Approvals' within Flow is that it launches a browser to then click more buttons to approve. I am on Version 1806 (Build 10228.20072 Click to Run)
- Kerem Yuceturk
Hi Graham Parkin, actionable messages should be available after Version 1708 per this article. If you send me the details of your username, and build number in a private message, I can try to get some more information for you.
You really have put the cart before the horse by implementing functionality like this before providing any way to manage it. I can't have users going off and running flows you have arbitrarily created and pushed out to my lists without giving me any control. This whole flow thing is half-baked unless you have an IT staff that can devote time to keep it under control. And I don't have any IT staff. For the most part Flow is creating more problems than it is solving simply because the rollout is not being managed well by Microsoft.
At last, a sensible position on the introduction of new features to end users. It can be seen from many posts on this thread that the solution is effectively a "beta". Some very good posts here with regard to "real life" issues around permissions, the ability to edit the control field etc.
Now, whilst it is commendable that Kerem is taking on board these suggestions (and it seems he is very good at taking a suggestion and implementing it), the introduction of these types of features are a veritable nightmare for the support teams. It really does not help when half developed add-ons become visible to end users who a) quickly adopt them b) find out scenarios to break them then c) demand that IT department to fix them.
I would kindly suggest that the philosophy of immediately turning "ON" these features for end usrs should be revisited.
By all means introduce them but please add them in with the default of being turned "OFF".
Then allow only a certain role (say Full Access) to have the ability to turn them "ON".- Kerem Yuceturk
Hi Mike Uveges, Olaf Fischer, we will be adding a configuration panel in the month of September to allow for turning these flows off. You can see more information in this post. Hope this will meet your needs.
Great idea - but is there a way to turn it off? It appears in my document library as a default approval flow, but I have my own slightly more complicated flow that I want everyone to use instead. Having the default one visible causes confusion.
- Kerem Yuceturk
Ross Roberts, Philip Worrell, thank you for your comments. We heard this scenario and feedback loudly from other customers during the time in Targeted Release as well. We have started work on being able to select which flows appear for your list or library. We hope to make it available towards late summer.
- Fantastic news, thank you Karem for the very quick reply!
- It is really nice to have some useful flows as examples. Yet having the ab8litt to select which ones you need is required.
