Approval flow for publishing major version in Sharepoint online Document Library

[o365_4ccsbizgro]

Situation:

• SharePoint online document library used for document management system (engineering firm), with Major/Minor Versions enabled, Check-In, Check-Out, and Content Approval
• Want to create a Power Automate Approval Flow that triggers when someone tries to publish a Major Version of an existing document (ie. status of document changes to Pending from Draft)
• This is standard functionality required of any document management system, and appears to be doable using legacy Sharepoint Workflows (SharePoint Designer based? sunsetted eventually?), but there doesn't appear to be a straighforward solution for this with Power Automate, which seems to only allow Approval Flows on a manual trigger, or when a new document is created.

Question:

• Is there a straightforward Power Automate Flow template for automated approval of publishing/approving Major Versions in a SharePoint Online document library?
• If not, is this coming?

[ChristianAbata]

Hi @o365_4ccsbizgro  unfortunally the answers are no and no.

But you can try developing by javascript someting in sharepoint.

[DeepakS]

Hi @o365_4ccsbizgro ,

You should add an extra steps to Approval Power Automate to check if the current version is Major or not, here is an example:

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[ClaireAllen]

Hello @DeepakS ,

Thank you for providing a screen shot on how to build the flow for documents with Minor or Major Versions

I've built the flow, but I don't get an email to approve when the document is published to a Major Version, it shows the condition input as False

This is my workflow:

Expression = split(triggerBody()?['{VersionNumber}'],'.')[1]

Results:

Please can you help where I have gone wrong?

Thank you in advance,

Claire

[ClaireAllen]

Hello @DeepakS ,

I've managed to resolve my issue,

I changed the expression and used Dynamic content - version number ends with .0 and the flow runs successfully, I have tested this also using a minor version and the workflow did not issue the approval request.

@o365_4ccsbizgro , I am not sure if you found a way to send a workflow against a major version, I had the same query and I did mine this way. Hope this helps?

Kind regards

Claire

[smittie]

Hi @ClaireAllen,

The trouble that I'm having with this is that the flow sees my document as having a minor version until after approval.

How did you manage to get it to see a major version before the approval stage?

Thanks,

Ian.

[ClaireAllen]

Hello @smittie ,

I added a condition before the approval process

Dynamic Content (Version) ends with .0, if it has the .0 then it send the email for approval

Hope that helps?

Regards
Claire

[smittie]

Thanks Claire,

I can't seem to get that working. If I put the condition before the approval process then my file is seen as still being a minor version. It is only after approval that the version gets updated to a major but the whole point is to only send the approval if the version is major. I must be doing something different I guess.

What I have got working is checking to see if the Content approval status is equal to Pending:

Thanks,

Ian.

[ClaireAllen]

Hello @smittie 

The condition that you have entered, is the content field a choice column?

I had an issue with another workflow where the field was a choice and I had to select the dynamic as the value option, so in your case

Content Value?

Is the document being published before the approval process starts? mine will only trigger if the document is Published to a major version, if it's a minor version the workflow does not do anything, as I only want approval on major versions

So my condition was dynamic content 'Version ends with .0

In the original post by @DeepakS , they added a condition before the approval process to check if the version was a major or minor

If you can provide a full screen shot of your flow, we can take a look to see what the workflow is doing step by step to try to help further if required.

Kind regards

Claire

[smittie]

Hi Claire,

I have my flow working by checking for the approval status as below:

When you have approval set and check a file in as a major version the file version remains as a minor version until after approval. All of these conditions checks are done before approval and that is why I don't understand how checking for version can work.

On check-in the status changes to pending, so this is a surefire way of making sure that you are working with a version that will be major after approval.

Thanks,

Ian.