SharePoint Page Approval Flow

With Microsoft Flow integrated with SharePoint, leveraging the power of Flow to manage page approvals become a snap. At the end of July 2018, Microsoft began rolling out the new SharePoint page approval flow for all modern SharePoint pages.

Simply described by Microsoft: “When a new page is submitted for approval everyone on the approvers list will receive an email.  Anyone on the approvers list can approve the page. When approved, the page will be published for all readers and the approval status of the page will be Approved.”

How Does this Work?

The standard publishing process for a site can be configured by a site owner on the approval page. The site owner can configure Page Approval Flow from the menu of the pages library. By adding the Page Approval Flow, new and updated pages will not be published instantly. Instead, the publication will occur once the approval flow is completed.

Creating a Page Approval Flow

Navigating from the SharePoint Site Pages Library:

1. Located on the command bar menu is the Flow drop-down menu. Select an item and click the Flow drop-down menu;

2. There are four Configure page approval flow options available:

a. Request sign-off;

b. Create a flow;

c. See your flows; and

d. Configure page approval flow

Additional flows that you created for this library will also appear in the drop-down;

3.  When choosing Configure Page Approval Flow, prompts will appear on the right-hand side of the library page. The Submit SharePoint Page for Approval has several sections to it.  

The first section is to Create the Flow approval. The first portion requires the name of the Flow to be entered. The second portion requires the addition of one or more people to be added as Approvers.

The second section consists of the Details, which is where the above quote is taken from. The third section lists where this Flow will connect to, including Approvals, SharePoint, and Notifications. The fourth section visually shows the permissions that are assigned. If these are all satisfactory, then choose “Create” to create the Page Approval Flow;

4.  Once the Flow is created, the Publish button that appears on pages will be replaced with a Submit for Approval button;

5. Click Submit for Approval. Upon clicking this button, a dialogue box will appear prompting the submitter to add a message. Click Submit to submit the Page Approval Flow;

6. An approval message is then sent to all the people that were configured as Approvers in the second section. Within the email is a link to the page.

Approvers have two options.

The first is to approve the page, which is then published and the status in the pages library changes to Approved.

The second option is to reject the page and the status in the pages library changes to either Rejected or Draft Status, so it can be reviewed and reworked.

Approvers can approve or reject the page from either the email (if action items are enabled for emails) or open a new page from the email to review and approve/reject in SharePoint. 

By integrating Microsoft Flow with SharePoint, another layer of control is granted to site owners to ensure that pages are approved before being published. With this type of control, pages containing communication to teams are ensured to comply with corporate and project requirements while providing the necessary communication for collaborative teamwork.