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Policy Approval Workflow

Automated policy approval workflows offer several benefits that can significantly enhance the efficiency and accuracy of policy creation within an organization. Here are some of the key advantages:
- Increased Efficiency: Automation speeds up the document approval process by eliminating manual steps. This results in quicker turnaround times for document approvals.
- Reduced Errors: Automated workflows minimize human error, ensuring that documents are processed correctly every time.
- Enhanced Traceability: Every step in an automated workflow is recorded, making it easy to track the progress of a document and review its history.
- Improved Compliance: Automation helps in enforcing consistent application of business rules and policies, which is essential for regulatory compliance.
- Better Accountability: With an automated system, it's clear who is responsible for each step of the approval process, leading to increased accountability among team members.
- Cost Savings: By reducing the time and resources needed for manual approvals, companies can save money and allocate those resources elsewhere.
- Streamlined Communication: Automated notifications and reminders keep all stakeholders informed about the status of document approvals, reducing the need for follow-up emails and meetings.
- Scalability: Automated workflows can easily be scaled up or down to handle varying volumes of documents without a significant increase in effort or resources.
- Enhanced Security: Sensitive documents are better protected with automated systems that can include permissions and encryption, reducing the risk of unauthorized access.
- Data-Driven Insights: The data collected from automated workflows can be analyzed to identify bottlenecks and improve processes over time.
By implementing an automated document approval workflow, organizations can realize substantial improvements in productivity, reliability, and decision-making.
How to create a policy approval workflow in Power Automate
1) Plan your policy storage
Firstly, decide where you want to store your policies and documents. Ideally you want to have one place for draft items and a separate place for the final approved versions. By doing this you will be able to keep draft/work in progress separate from the finished article so you will never get them muddled up.
Our flow will begin when a policy is finalized and needs final approval before being issued to relevant employees or staff. It doesn't matter how you have created your policy, the important part is that, once it is ready, you upload or save it into the Policy Library used to trigger the approval flow.
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2) Create the flow
1) Begin by selecting + Create and then select "Automated cloud flow" in Power Automate.

This will create a blank flow canvas for you to create your workflow.
3) Set a trigger
Our flow needs to start when a new file is added to a SharePoint Document Library. Select "When an item is created or modified (properties only)" as the trigger for this flow.
- In the Site Address field, select the site that contains the document library you will be saving the policies needing approval to.
- Then select the document library name from this site that will contain the policy you want to get approved.

4) Retrieve the approvers details to use in the flow
As we want to direct the approval to the appropriate group of people, we need to link to Entra. Add a new step into the flow and search for Entra. This will narrow down the available steps to those relating to Entra.

Note: You may need to Sign in to Entra

Enter "Entra" in the search box and select the "Microsoft Entra ID" option to only show the Entra Actions

Scroll down the list of possible actions and select "Get group members"

Enter the Group ID for the group.

This step will retrieve all of the group members details, however, we only need to retain and use the email address for later in this flow.
5) Select the email details for the approvers
Now you need to select the group members email details

6) Add an approval step
Next, add "Start and wait for an approval" to this flow. You need to decide how many people need to approval the item, and whether they all need to approve the policy, or if you only need one person to respond. It is possible to select "Everyone must approve" and only add one name to the list. In this example, I am only going to need one person out of my Policy Approvers Group to approve on behalf of the entire group.

I chose, "Everyone must approve" and called the step "Approve policy"
- In the "Assigned to" box we need to dynamically use all of the email addresses we retrieved in the previous step. Note: All of the people listed here need to have access to the SharePoint site/library for the flow to work.
- Because the email addresses need to be listed one by one and separated by a semi colon (;) to achieve this we need to use a join function.
join(body('Select'),';')
Note: If only one person is named in the flow, no approvals will be made when they are unavailable.
- Select the same document ID as in the previous steps and add the document's title in the link description. These will be included in the approval request so the approver can see which item they are being asked to approve.
Each user specified in the "Assigned to" field will get an email requesting that they approve or reject the item.

The item will be either approved, or rejected depending on the criteria you selected in an earlier step.
Reza added the "or modified" bit at the end and explained how this can create a infinite loop. If the file is modified it will re trigger the workflow.
7) Add condition to check the output of the approval
The next step is to react to the decision made at the approval stage.
If the decision is to approve the item, you may like to send an email to it's originator congratulating them. Or if the item is rejected, you may like to send an email explaining why and detailing any necessary changes.
In the condition box, set the Outcome from the approval stage to equal Approve as shown below.

This means that if the approval decision is to approve the item, the flow will continue along the "If Yes" path. If the item is rejected, the flow will follow the "If No" path.

8) Define the "If Yes" path
If the policy is approved, I want to
- send an email confirming this to the originator and also
- move the file to a different location

In the "Send an email" action, add the email addresses you want the emails to be sent to. Give the email a subject and also write the main text for the email.

You can include dynamic text in the email. Remember to select the fields from the "When a file is created or modified" step to ensure you refer to the item that have been approved.

To move an approved file into a final location, you can identify the current and destination folders in a "Move file" action.
You need to select the "Identifier" field in the "File to Move" field so the flow can identify the correct item to move.
There are drop down options to choose a solution in case a file with the same name already exists in the final location.

9) Define the "If No" path
If the policy is rejected, I want to send an email explaining why and requesting and necessary changes.

In the "Send an email" action, add the email addresses you want the emails to be sent to. Give the email a suitable subject and also write the main text for the email.

10) Testing the flow
Once your flow is completed, save and then test it to make sure it all works as expected. Click the "Test" icon at the top of the screen and Add a file into the

You will have the option of either
- manually triggering the flow (by adding or modifying a file into the first location) or
- automatically triggering the flow. This is useful if you want to retest the flow using a file that was previously added or modified.

The flow will then run and you will notice a coloured icon at each stage to show whether it was successful or not.
Getting your policy read by end users
The process so far has focussed on creating a policy and getting it formally approved. Your next challenge is to ensure the right employees receive the policy and agree to its contents. You could create similar workflows in Power Automate. However, this can become complicated if you need to send lots of policies to hundreds of employees.
DocRead can help you to easily send policies and documents to the right groups of employees. It will also track whether they have read/understood/accepted the information provided. A reporting suite provides access to proof of compliance. The reports can also be used for tracking and monitoring or as evidence should something go wrong.
DocRead is a compliance solution that is compatible with Office 365 and on-premises versions of SharePoint. It allows you to continue storing standard operating procedures and other important information securely in SharePoint. SharePoint search, versioning, approvals and permissions can all continue to be used with DocRead providing functionality to enhance your SharePoint experience.
We have been developing policy compliance solutions for SharePoint for over 12 years.
We understand how Compliance Managers struggle to ensure all employees have acknowledged critical documents like policies or procedures.
That's why we created DocRead, a tool that allows you to distribute policies, procedures, and important documents to employees and track acknowledgments, ensuring employee compliance and accountability.
All without leaving SharePoint.
Want to see how we can save you time and automate your employee compliance?
DocRead has enabled us to see a massive efficiency improvement... we are now saving 2 to 3 weeks per policy on administration alone.
Nick Ferguson
Peregrine Pharmaceuticals
Feedback for the on-premises version of DocRead.