Out of The Box SharePoint Approval Workflow for Pages and Documents

In this “SharePoint Approval Workflow” article, we will learn how to develop a SharePoint Approval Workflow using the out of the box SharePoint Online Workflow mechanism for the Pages and Documents. The use case is that if your page or document is approved, then only it should be visible to all users in your organisation who have read access to your site; otherwise, only the creator of the document or page can see those documents or pages.

The beauty of this mechanism is that the approved versions of the documents or pages will only be indexed by the SharePoint Online crawler; the other versions, like Draft and Pending, will not be indexed. Do you know? Such a beautiful mechanism can be implemented for your site in just a few clicks without writing any codes, Power Automate flow, or workflow development. Let’s get started on how to do that.

Implement the SharePoint Approval Workflow Process with the Out of the Box Solution

I will explain the SharePoint Approval Workflow process in two approaches:

• Document Version History – Create major and minor versions
• Document Version History – Create major versions

In this section, we will learn how the SharePoint Approval Workflow process works in SharePoint Online.

Document Version History  with the create major and minor versions: How to create an approval workflow in SharePoint

In the below steps, I will explain how to create an approval workflow in SharePoint.

The SharePoint Approval Workflow process is built on the SharePoint version settings page. Navigate to your Pages or Document Library settings page.

Click on the “Versioning settings” link.

On this page, there are a couple of sections. We need to configure the following three sections:

• Approval
• Document Version History
• Draft Item Security

In the content approval section, for “Require content approval for submitted items?” select “Yes.” By default, it will be “No.”.

In the Document Version History section for “Create a version each time you edit a file in this document library?” Select “Create major and minor (draft) versions. Example: 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, 2.0” By default, it will be “No versioning.“

Note:

• Here, you can even select “Create major versions. Example: 1, 2, 3, 4” as well, but if you select this option, you will not get the “Draft” approval status option in your “Approval Status” hidden system-created choice column. If you see that the “Approval Status” column status only has “Pending” and “Approved” as status values, this is the reason. So, in order to have the Draft, Pending, and Approved status in your “Approved Status” column, we must select the Document Version History as Create major and minor (draft) versions. Example: 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, 2.0“.

In the Draft Item Security section, who should see draft items in this document library? Select “only users who can approve items (and the author of the item)“; by default, it will be “any user who can read items.“.

Note:

• The draft item security configuration is integrated with the content approval configuration; once you select “content approval: require content approval for submitted items?” as “yes,” the “Draft Item Security” will be selected as “only users who can approve items (and the author of the item)” automatically. So, this section is auto-configured.

Once you configure the above and click on the save button, we can see the following changes in the site:

Automatic views and columns added to the library

We can see that two views, “My Submissions” and “Approve/Reject Items,” were created automatically when we enabled the above content approval.

Approval columns in SharePoint Online Pages and Document Library

We can see that two columns, “Approval Status” and “Approval Comments,” were created automatically when we enabled the above content approval.

Approvers group in SharePoint Online Pages and Document Library

We can see that one SharePoint Online Security Group with the name “Approvers” was created automatically when we enabled the above content approval.

Members of this approver group can only approve pages and documents.

We have seen the changes in the site since we enabled the content approval mechanism in the Pages or Document library. Now, we will see the demo of how this approval process works in SharePoint Online.

Demo: SharePoint Approval Workflow Examples

First, let’s create a wiki page in SharePoint Online from the out-of-the box Pages Library.

Then, fill the created page with the sample content, as I have used ChatGPT to create sample content for this page and save it.

We can see that the page was created in the pages library with a draft status.

Now, let’s submit the page.

Click on the “Submit” icon from the Publish menu.

Note:

• If you are a member of the approver group, you can even publish it without going through the approval process.

Now, we can see the approval status column value changed to pending.

Now, let’s approve this page. We can also reject it.

Once we approve the page, we can see that the approval status column has been updated with the “Approved” and “Approver Comments” columns with the comments entered by the approver.

Wait for a few minutes and open your SharePoint site search page. And enter the text, “What is the SharePoint Wiki Page?” We can find the page we just approved on the search result page.

Notes:

• Before approval, if you had searched with this given text, it would not have been available in the search. This out-of-the-box SharePoint Approval Workflow for Pages and Documents is security proof; it will only be indexed and displayed in the search result page if the pages or documents are in approve state; otherwise, it will not. Also, it will be accessible from the search result page if you have access to that page or document; otherwise, it will not be accessible, so it is fully permission-proof and secured.
• In this demo, I have used the same admin account for the page creation and approval process. In reality, approver group members will approve the pages and documents, while the normal user of the site (contribute group members) will create the page and document.

Document Version History with the create major versions: How to create an approval workflow in SharePoint

This is the same approach as the above model, only I will change the document version history to “Create major versions.”.

Then, let’s create another enterprise wiki page for something like “What is Power Platform?”

Here we can see that the “Submit” icon is missing under the publish menu.

And we will not see the “Draft” status in the approval status column, which is normal and expected.

Pending pages or documents are not shown in the SharePoint search result page.

Now, let’s do a search with this text: “What is Power Platform” The search query doesn’t return any results, which is normal and expected.

Note:

• This scenario is applicable for both Document Version History with the Create major versions and Create major and minor versions; only the approved versions of the pages and documents will be indexed by the SharePoint Online crawler, and those approved pages and documents will be displayed in the search result page when users query for those pages and documents.

Now, let’s approve this page.

Now, we can see that the page is approved.

After Sometimes, let’s refresh the same search query, “What is Power Platform” We can see that the query is returning the page in the search result, which I just approved.

Note:

• We can even extend this out of the box SharePoint Approval Workflow for pages and documents using the Power Automate flow and post this as an actionable task for the approver in the Microsoft Teams channel using the Adaptive card.

Summary: Out of the box SharePoint Online Approval Workflow Examples

Thus, in this article, we have learned how quickly we can implement the pages or documents approval process workflow mechanism with the out of the box SharePoint Approval Workflow tool.

See Also: Power Platform Articles

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SP Doctor

I am your SharePoint and Power Platform doctor and guide. Sharing knowledge with my fellow colleagues, friends, and the tech community makes me utmost happy in my job.

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