This post is part of a series where we examine the advantages and disadvantages of a document approval process, and then build an example automated solution with SharePoint and PowerAutomate.
Posts in this series:
- Should you automate your document approval process?
- Building a basic document approvals automation with SharePoint and PowerAutomate
Spoiler: We think automation is nearly always worth the effort.
Want to skip the discussion? Follow this link to go straight to our article on automating a basic Document Approval and Publishing system.
In this post
Introduction
Businesses often use central document repositories to make key documents such as policies, procedures and forms available to everyone in the company.
To maintain good quality and correct documents, key individuals are normally tasked with approving and then uploading new and updated documents to the repository.
In this article, we look at a simple document approval and publication process based on SharePoint, identify aspects of the process that could be automated, and then look at when automation is worth the effort.
In related articles we show how to implement a central document repository, along with approval and publishing process automation, using Microsoft 365 tools – SharePoint, OneDrive, Outlook and Power Automate.
Requirements
Before we start designing solutions, lets highlight the business requirements for the document repository:
- The business wants a space accessible to their whole Microsoft 365 organisation where the most recent approved versions of important documents can be found.
- This space shall be known as the Published Documents Repository and will include documents such as policies, procedures and forms.
- Documents stored in the repository shall be read-only and shall be in PDF format.
- Various authoring groups – e.g. departments or ad-hoc teams – shall be responsible for authoring documents intended for publication to the repository.
- A draft document must be approved by an authorised person prior to publication. Different people will be authorised to approve documents for different authoring groups.
Solution: Basic document approval and publication process
The diagram above gives an overview of the processes and resources needed to support the requirements of the Document Repository.
In the diagram we see the members of an authoring group work on producing a draft document. (1)
When the document is ready, the authoring group requests that an approver reviews and approves the document. (2)
Assuming the approver is satisfied that the document is ready for publication, they convert the document to PDF format and then upload it to the Published Document Repository. (3)
Since the business uses Microsoft 365, it makes sent to have implement the PDR with a SharePoint Communications Site. Permissions can be configured on the PDR to grant read only access to all members of the Microsoft 365 organisation. (4)
Advantages and disadvantages of the basic solution
Although the above solution meets our requirements, lets review some advantages and disadvantages:
Advantages
- Easy to understand.
- Requires minimal technology beyond the SharePoint Communication Site used to host the PDR
- Configuration activities are limited to the creation of the PDR SharePoint site and assigning relevant access permissions.
Disadvantages
- Authoring group members need to know who the approver is and manually request they carry out a review.
- No explicit process for delivering the document to the Approver. They could send a sharing link, but would probably end up attaching copies of documents to emails.
- Approver needs to know how to convert the document to PDF.
- All approvers will need write permission to upload documents to the PDR. This increases the number of users who could potentially overwrite documents already published to the PDR.
- No deliberate collaboration space created for the authoring group members.
We can summarise the above disadvantages as users are required to handle the mechanics of the process:
- Authoring Group Members.
- Need to know where to store documents to collaborate on drafts.
- Need to know who the approver(s) are for their class of draft documents
- Need to know how to deliver the document to the approver for review.
- Approver
- Needs to know how to retrieve the document to be reviewed.
- Needs to know how to convert a reviewed document to PDF format.
- Needs to know how to upload the PDF document to the Published Documents Repository.
All these things can be documented, but wouldn’t it be easier if we automated them instead?
We can consider automation as a form of documentation that is always in-sync with the implementation!
Solution complexity: Basic document approval and publication process
The basic solution lies totally in the Configure step of the Watford Consulting step-by-step approach to improving your business technology. The whole solution relies on correct configuration of resources – i.e. the SharePoint Communications Site – and for users to manage all data themselves.
Solution: Using automation to improve the previous solution
The disadvantages from the basic solution can be improved upon through automation using Power Automate.
As shown in the overview diagram below, a Power Automate flow will orchestrate the mechanics of the document approval and publication process.
The Authoring Group now has a dedicated SharePoint Team Site to use to collaborate on draft documents. (1)
When a draft document is ready for review, a member of the authoring group will trigger the PowerAutomate flow to start the document approval and publication process (2)
The flow, configured with details of the approvers for the authoring group, sends the approvers an email asking them review the draft document. (3)
After reviewing the draft document, the approver signals their acceptance of the document by clicking either the Approve or Reject buttons in the email. (4)
If the document was rejected, no further action is taken.
If the document was approved, the flow generated a PDF version of the document. (5)
The flow uploads the PDF version of the document to the Published Documents Repository SharePoint Communication Site. (6)
Once the PDF document has been uploaded to the Published Documents Repository, permissions configured on the repository permit all members of the organisation to read the document.
Advantages and disadvantages of the automated solution
Advantages
- Defined collaboration spaces for authoring groups.
- Authoring group members do not need to be aware of who the approvers are.
- Approvers can access review documents through links provided in the approval request email.
- Approvers signal review results by clicking on buttons in approval request email.
- Approvers do not need to know how to produce PDF versions of documents.
- Approvers do not need to know how to upload documents to the Published Documents Repository.
- Approvers do not need to be granted permission to upload documents to the Published Documents Repository.
Disadvantages
- Automation increases the complexity of the solution.
- Solution depends on creating a flow for each authoring group.
- Changes to the list of approvers for an authoring group require a change to the PowerAutomate flow.
Solution complexity: Automated document approval and publication process
The automated solution lies across both the Configure and Integrate steps of our step-by-step approach to improving your business technology.
The Configure step covers the creation of the SharePoint Communication and SharePoint Team Sites, along with appropriate permissions and membership assignments.
The Integrate step covers the use of PowerAutomate to handle emails to approvers, PDF document conversion and uploads to SharePoint.
Is automation worth it?
The short answer: Probably!
The longer, correct and not very helpful answer: It depends!
Building any sort of automation will take time, money and maintenance. The business has to decide whether the return on investment is worth the cost.
Two factors to consider when estimating automation return on investment are process duration/complexity, and process frequency.
Process duration/complexity
The amount of time to complete a process (duration) tends to increase as the number of steps in that process (complexity) increases.
Long running or complex processes are difficult for staff to keep track of without resorting to some sort of record keeping system.
Complex processes are likely to have supporting documentation to guide staff through the various activities that need to be completed.
Automating aspects of a process will reduce the need for separate record keeping as the automation system will ensure all processes are tracked.
Further, the need for documentation to support complex processes is reduced since automation systems are normally self-documenting.
In cases where processes are short and simple, automation may not be worth the effort, but return on investment increases with process complexity and duration as the need to maintain records and documentation reduces.
Process frequency
The effort to automate a process pays off each time that process is run. The payoff tends to be in terms of time saved for the business and/or consistency in how the process was carried out.
If a process is carried out rarely, the potential time savings are unlikely to offset the cost of building an automation. However there may still be enough of a consistency benefit in the process output to justify the build effort.
Generally businesses will rely on process documentation to handle infrequent processes, but
Combining the ROI estimates
We can combine the two return on investment estimates above to produce the following table.
The table shows that return on investment is generally good whenever a task is:
- Frequent; or
- Complex; or
- Long running.
Automation can also benefit the business in that staff do not need to be trained on as many technical activities.
Further, automation tends to uncover opportunities to streamline processes and devise further automation – Compounding the original return on investment.
Is process automation worth it? In most cases, yes.
Build an automated document approval process
Have you decided that automation is worth the investment?
Try building our example automation for a document approval and publication process.
