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
We have now built our document approvals and publishing system for the Finance authoring group.
It is now time to test our automation solution works as expected.
Create a document and request approval
The finance authoring group consists of two members:
- Alex
- Henrietta
Alex is also the document approver for the group.
In the screenshot below, Henrietta has visited the Finance authoring group’s SharePoint Team Site and will create a new Word document in the site’s Document Library.
Name the new document and add some content becore closing the document’s tab.
Back on the authoring group’s SharePoint Team Site, click the context menu and then select Automate -> Request finance document approval from the pop-up menu.
The Run flow side-panel shows the current user’s connections that are going to be used by the flow.
If the user has not previously authorised connections to Office 365 Outlook and OneDrive for Business, they will be prompted to Sign-In to those apps, triggering creation of the connections needed by the flow.
The Run flow side-panel then shows information about which flow will be run and the apps (e.g. SharePoint) that it will use.
Click the Run flow button to trigger the flow to run for the draft document in the Finance authoring group’s SharePoint Team Site.
After clicking the Run flow button, a notification is shown advising that the PowerAutomate Flow has been started.
The approval request email
When Henrietta triggered the above approval request for document, Finance Doc 1, the PowerAutomate Flow shall send an email to the Finance authoring group’s approver, Alex.
In the screenshot below, we see the email that Alex has received.
Notice that the email is from Henrietta rather than Lynne. This is because the flow used the Outlook connection belonging to Henrietta.
Alex can click the link to Finance Doc 1 to view the document he is being asked to review.
Once Alex has reviewed the document he decides whether the document should be approved for publication. In this test case he approves the document by clicking on the Approve button.
After clicking the Approve button, Alex is shown a confirmation of the option he selected.
The published document
By clicking the Approve button in the email, Alex signalled to the document approval automation that a PDF version of the document should be produced and uploaded to the Published Documents Repository (PDR).
All users in the Microsoft 365 organisation have been granted read access to the PDR. The screenshot below shows the Finance folder in the PDR containing the PDF version of Finance Doc 1.
Clicking on the PDF document’s title causes SharePoint to display a preview of the document.
