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Workflow for Approvals in Several Steps

A SharePoint Workflows tutorial by Peter Kalmström

SharePoint Designer iconIn some earlier Tips articles, Peter Kalmström, kalmstrom.com CEO and Systems Designer, has described different ways for organizations to handle the approval processes for new or changed library files.

In this article we will look at how the process can be automated when several people need to approve documents, one approver after another. Each of these approvers can stop the process by rejecting the document.

In the demo below, Peter describes how to create a SharePoint 2013 workflow that runs automatically when a new document is added to a SharePoint document library. This workflow focuses on user friendliness and the possibility to track the approval process.

Approval process


Note that this is a totally custom solution, neither using the built-in approval status column nor any of the out-of-the-box workflows that Microsoft supplies. The benefit of using a custom approval solution is that it gives you total control of the process. The downside (as you will see) is that the workflow is rather complex and time-consuming to create.

 Approval process

Prerequisites

  • A document library with
    • A Yes/No choice column for "All Approved", displayed in the default view.
    • A Yes/No choice column for the approval decision, "[TEAM] Approved", not displayed in the default view but used in the workflow.
    • A Person or Group column for the approver, "[TEAM] Approved By", not displayed in the default view but used in the workflow.
  • A list that contains the different teams as items. Each item has the team name in the title and the name of the approver in a Person or Group column.
For easy testing of the workflow, add yourself as the approver for all teams and change the names when the workflow is finished. This change of approver does not affect the workflow function, so it can be done anytime.

Each step in the approval process is represented by a stage in workflow. Peter uses as many as five approvers, but this workflow can of course be used for any number of approvers, as long as they are more than one. Just create as many stages as you need!

"Waiting for [TEAM] approval" Stages

Create this stage for each approver, or create one stage, copy it and change applicable fields for the other stages.
  1. Start the workflow. Action: assign a task
    1. User: lookup Approver in the list and return as User Id Number. The list item should have approver's team name in the title.
    2. Task: Lookup for the document name. Wait for task completion (to have all approvals in a sequence). By default, the outcome is set to 'Approved'. This info will be stored in a workflow variable.
  2. Check if the document is approved. Condition: If value equals value. If the Outcome workflow variable equals 'Approved':
    1. Update the document's approval status column. Action: Update List Item.
      1. Set the "[TEAM] Approved" to Yes.
      2. Set the "[TEAM] Approved By" to Yes. Lookup Approver in the list and return as User Id Number. The list item should have approver's team name in the title.
    2. Go to the next stage. When you have created the next stage, it can be selected at 'Go to' in the previous step.

"[TEAM] Rejected" Stage

When all the "Waiting ..." stages are finished, add a "[TEAM] Rejected" stage for each of them and let this stage go directly to the end of the workflow.

Under 'Else' in the condition of each "Waiting ..." stage, replace Go to the end of the workflow with Go to the rejected stage for the team than rejected the document. That way, the rejection will be shown in the library approval status column.  

All Approved Stage

When a document has been approved by stakeholders, the stage for the last one should go to an "All Approved" stage, and the document library should be updated to show that.
  1. Action: 'Update List Item'. In the current item, set the "All Approved" field to Yes.
  2. Go to the end of the workflow.




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