I have created a blank Document Library: DocumentApproval1
- Turn on the OOTB Approval
- This brings up a dialog box. Enable Approvals, and Apply.
- The “Approval status” column will appear.
- Turn on the other Approval columns. Goto the “Show or hide columns” area.
- Add columns:
- Columns:
- Approval status: The status of the process
- Approvers
- Responses
- Approval Creator: The person who starts the approval process
How it works
- Upload a file
- Click on Approval status: Not submitted. This will open the approval request form.
- The Request approval form looks like this:
- To have the approvals in series (one after another), select “Require responses in the assigned order”. If you want them in parallel (all at the same time), then don't select it.
- Then add the people you would like to be the approvers.
- Example of in Series turned on: “Require responses in the assigned order”
- If Parallel is on, it will ask “Require a response from all approvers”. Which means the document wont approved until everyone in the list has approved.
- Example:
- If this Example I'm just going to assign it to myself, and submit.
- It start the approval process (aka the workflow).
- Then the Approver gets an Approval request, which will arrive by Teams only (not by Email).
- The really interesting thing, is you can get that same view on the Document Library, and click on the Approval status, as the approver you will see the same thing.
- As the non-approver you will see this:
- Then the Approver, I write my comment and approve. This can be done, on the document library or Teams.
- Once approved it kicks off the workflow process and changes the status to Approved.
- Now it looks like this, and you can click on it and it show the full process.
What happens when you update the document properties?
- Update the Title, because for this example that is the only property
- It then pops up with this:
- When you apply the changes, the Approval Status changes
- Then you have to do the full process all over again.
Other
The Approval Process is not tracked in Version history:
The is no OOTB Email when Approval are request. So if you do want an email, a custom Power Automate workflow will need to be created on the “Approval Requests" list in Dataverse.
