Introducing "Request sign-off" - an approval flow that requires no set up

Microsoft

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.RequestSignOff Flow menu.png

 

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.

 

Pending.png

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:
RunRequestSignOff.pngRunRequestSignOff2.png

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:

 

ApprovalEmail.png

 

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:

 

ApprovedEmail.JPG

 

Approved.png

 

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
Looking forward to this new feature!

Is there any admin possibility to turn that feature off on site / tenant level?
Furthermore, is it possible to modify the sign-off flow?

Thank you this is a great quick feature addition.  I have a couple questions about the rollout:

  1. Will this feature be able to be edited in Flow and used in a serial or parallel approval flow for multiple required approvers?
  2. Will we be able to add column(s) to track who has approved documents/lists and when, similar to an audit function?

 

Will this create a approved version of the list item like the old SharePoint 2010 approval workflow?
Why an additional column? Why have you not implemented this with the existing Status column which works together with Minor/Major versioning settings? If we use this sign-off approval does this mean that it also sets the existing Status field in a 'document' library to approved/rejected? I am aware that approval for lists is available but still waiting to be able to move away from SharePoint Workflows to Flows for standard document approval. Hoping you can shed some light on this

What will be the retention history for these approvals?  Is there a limit to 90 days like the workflows?

Question about permissions: can you request signoff from someone who does not have permissions on that library/document? If you can, does it automatically "share" and grant them permissions? Or will it only allow you to select people who have permissions on the library?

Hi @Deleted at the outset, there isn't a switch for this. But we are working with the Flow team to be able to manage the list of flows that are available to the library in general, and we hope to be able to manage this particular flow along with the others when that feature becomes available.

Thank you @Gina Hall

 

The flow powering this will not be editable at the moment. We do want to make the template available, however, so you can start to create your own flows that are based on this model, and can use it to create your own custom flows tailored to your specific scenarios. When you create a custom flow, you can also record who approved the documents/lists.

 

The flow approval center will have a history of approval requests you have sent as well as received as a record.

Hi @Tanya Denton@Gabriel Smoljar, this is not using the "Approval Status" column that is associated with the content approval feature. That particular feature is usually not turned on for vast majority of the libraries, and as you know, it affects how items are displayed to visititors, and other members of the site. Also, in "Content approval" scenarios, the approvers for an item are locked, whereas in this scenario, it is open. We find that users would need some education on the implications of turning that feature on, and we wanted to enable a lighter weight scenario.

 

If your library uses content approval, you can still create a flow that automates your approvals. Back in December, we released the "Set Content Approval Status" action, which works primarily with Pages libraries, but can be made to work with other lists and libraries too. We are working on some closer UI integration for publishing scenarios that will be coming in a few months as well, but please let me know if there is anything that can be made better about using the "Set Content Approval Status" action that exists.

Hi @Katrin Weixel, at the moment, it doesn't change permissions, so you will have to share the item separately if the recipient doesn't have permissions already. This is not ideal. We are working on adding a flow action to get a link for a document that anyone in the company can open, and when we have that (hopefully within a few months), our plan would be to update this so that the link that is sent will be company shareable link. 

Hi @Keremt Yuceturk, many thanks for the quick response. I am aware that this new Sign Off does not use the Approval Status column hence my post. I looked at the release 'Set Content Approval Status' and have had a go at creating a Flow for a 'document' library, however as others have commented in other posts, this is not available for document libraries, only list libraries (unless there has been an update to this in the last few weeks).  If you can point me to a blog/post/help article relating to how to create an approval that interacts with the 'Approval Status' column; meaning when a user receives the Approval email with the Approve/Reject buttons, that when the click on Approve button in the email the flow actually updates the Approval Status to 'Approved'.  All posts that i have seen have been based on creating your own Approval Status column and using that instead.  Hope this makes sense.

I really hope that this does not get released without the ability to switch it off. For those of us that have heavily used Document libraries with workflow, we don't want the users to be confused with an option that is different to the intended use.

 

I love the features that Microsoft is developing, but the ability to control them is critical. Another example is the 'Send by Email' button on modern pages. In classic team sites, this button now appears on all modern pages, which makes no sense.

Hi @Michael Droschak, Approvals data, including history, is stored in a Common Data Service database. Unless a database admin chooses to remove history, it will be retained forever. 

Hi there - how will this work with making documents visible to those that have read-only access and can't view minor versions of documents? i.e. will it publish a major version once approved? We are looking at simple ways to ensure only major published/approved versions are visible in libraries to visitors with read-only access so this could be a good feature to ensure we don't need to do too much training on how to publish a major version (as it is currently buried in the long menu and not intuitive to find).

Hi @Kerem Yuceturk it’s great to see both workflow and new innovations working in SharePoint. Given the comprehensive questions (and answers) here it would be great to see a Q and A response covering what is delivered in this iteration of Request sign-off and what the mini-roadmap is for this feature given the integration with Microsoft Flow..

Does it consume our FLOW runs?
Is the txt field 'read only' for FullControl users?
Where are NonDeliveryReports are sent to?