Introduction to Approval Workflows in SharePoint 2010

in this video you will be introduced to working with a built-in approval workflow the approval workflow routes a document or list item to specify people for approval this workflow can be used in business processes such as a product specification approval or a vacation request approval the approval workflow makes an approval business process more efficient by managing and tracking all of the human tasks involved with the process and by providing a record of the process after it is completed before a workflow can be used it must be added to the list or library in order to be made available for those documents or items in most cases site administrators or site owners will perform this task this does not require any technical or programming skills you are basically using a workflow template and supplying required information for this demonstration we will create an approval workflow for a document library named specifications before documents can be seen by the site users they must be reviewed and approved by the designated approvers before creating the workflow I want to point out the permission level of the users who will be involved with uploading approving and viewing the documents in this demonstration so will view the permissions for this site by choosing site actions and then site permissions users in the DMI members group have contribute permissions and are able to upload documents to the library in this demonstration I will sign in as Jim Halpert to upload a document for approval the designated approvers must be in an approvers group with approval permission level and I will be using Andy Phyllis and Stanley as approvers for this demonstration I will also demonstrate what a user with read-only permission to the library sees before and after a document is approved for that I will be signing in as Erin Hannon so I'll return to the sales page so the first thing I must do to add this workflow to the library is to open the library specifications and in order for the approval workflow to work the option to require content approval must be turned on in the library to do that I click on the library tab at the top go to library settings and then versioning settings and in the top area here for content approval I'll change this to yes to require content approval for submitted items I'll go to the bottom choose ok to save and then I'll use the breadcrumb trail to return to the library to get started adding the workflow I'll click on the library tab at the top then on the far right we'll click on this icon which is workflow settings workflows that were already created for this library would appear at the top of this page however a message displays indicating there are no workflows associated to this library so to create a new workflow I'll click on the link add a workflow the first step is to select the workflow template that I want to use and there is a list here to select the workflow template if I click on any of these template names a brief description will display here on the right here you see the five templates available with SharePoint Server 2010 collect feedback approval which will be using collect signatures three-state and disposition approval so I'm selecting the approval template next I need to give the workflow a name and I'm going to call this specification approval next I must specify a task list to use with this workflow when a workflow is run it creates tasks for people such as approving a document those tasks can be stored in the default task list for the site or have a new task list created specifically for the workflow I'm going to leave this at the default task list the workflow also requires a history list the history list displays all of the events that occurred during each instance of the workflow you will be able to select a history list from a previous workflow if one already exists or the only choice I have is to create a new history list in the start options section specify how the workflow will be initiated for each document the default selection is to start a workflow manually we can leave that checked even though my preference is to start the workflow automatically when a new document is created and then I'll choose next in the approvers section I identify the users and/or groups to whom I want to assign the workflow tasks for approval groups include both SharePoint and Active Directory security groups in this demonstration there will be two levels of approval and in the first level there will be two people to review the specified document so an click on the Browse button and I'll enter the first name which is Phyllis Phyllis Vance and the second person is Stanley so if Phyllis Vance and Stanley Hudson and just as a reminder I did point out that these two names were in that approvers permission group when multiple people are selected at one approval level then you also select what order they approve the document the default is one at a time also referred to as serial with this option selected Phyllis would first receive a task notification to approve the document once she proves it then Stanley will receive a task notification to approve the document the other option is all at once also called parallel since I want them to be notified at the same time to review and approve the document I will choose all at once after a document is approved by Phyllis and Stanley then it requires a final approval from a third person Andy Bernard to add the second level of approval I'll click on add a new stage and a new approvers line is added and again I'll use the Browse button to locate Andy's name I'll double-click his name to select it and then choose okay so Andy will be assigned a task to approve the document only after Phyllis and Stanley have both approved the document if user groups were assigned as approvers rather than individuals the expand groups option assigns the approval task to every individual in a group in the request box you can type a message that will appear with each task notification so I'll add a message here so I've added my message please review and approve submitted documents in the due date for all tasks you can enter a specific date for all tasks to be completed in duration per task I'll enter a 3 to allow 3 days for each person to review and approve a document from the time they receive their tasks notification duration units defaults to days which is what I want however you can also choose weeks and months in the CC field you can select users to be copied when a workflow starts and ends such as a manager you want to select the option end on first rejection when you want the workflow to be terminated if any one of the approvers rejects the document and I will select this option you want to select end on document change when you want the workflow to stop if any one of the approvers changes the document I'm not going to select this one and select this last option enable content approval if you want to automatically update the approval status of the document from pending to approved after the workflow is completed and I will select this a document will not be visible to users onto the workflow for the document is complete and the status has changed from pending to approved so now I'll choose save to save all the settings for the workflow I'm returned to the workflow settings page and now the workflow I just created is listed under workflow name so now I'll return to the specifications library and run through the steps of uploading and approving a document you'll notice the approval status column added to the library since approval is now required for documents in this library so for uploading a document I'm going to sign in as Jim Halpert who we saw earlier has a contributor permission level okay so now we so I'm signed in as Jim here and I'll add a document here's the document I want to upload and you'll see the approval status right now is pending now when i refresh the page you'll notice a new column was added to display the status of the workflow which is now in progress I did not have to manually start the workflow because I chose the setting to automatically initiate the workflow when a new document is added to the library with the workflow in progress tasks will have been created for the first tier of approval which go to Phyllis and Stanley by now they would have received a task notification email requesting them to approve the document with a link to the task list before I sign in as Phyllis to approve the document I will demonstrate what a user sees with read-only permission so I'll sign in as Erin Hannon who we saw earlier was in the read-only permission group so now that I'm logged in as Aaron I can not see that document that Jim had uploaded and I will not be able to see it until it has gone through all the approvals and has been approved reviewing so next I'm going to sign in as the first approver Phyllis as an improver I can see the document in the library with approval status of pending and the workflow is in progress so as I mentioned Phyllis as an approver would have received the email with a link to the task list so I'm going to go here to the task list I can see both tasks that were generated by the workflow for Phyllis as well as Stanley to approve a document so I'll open the task that was assigned to Phyllis in the task at the top here is a link to the document so I can open and review it it shows me this was requested by Jim as he's the one that uploaded the document here's the comment that I entered as part of the workflow to appear on all tasks and here is the due date which is three days out from today's date and in this comments box I can add a comment if I'd like about the document down below or the buttons where I take action where I can approve the document reject it cancel from this task request changes or reassign the task and I'm going to choose to approve it and back here in the tasks list it shows that I have completed my tasks and over here on the far right shows the outcome is the document is approved so next I will sign in as Stanley and approve the document as well so here's Stanley's task open the task looks just like it did for Phyllis again here's the link to review the document the other information I can add a comment if I like and then I'll click approve now that both Phyllis and Stanley have approved the document my task has been created for Andy to approve the document as well so before I sign in as Andy I will view the status of the document in the library so we'll open a specification library and because we're still waiting for one more approval the approval status is still pending for the document and the workflow is in progress so I'll sign in as Andy and then I'll go to the task list open the tasks assigned to Andy and I will prove the document so in the task list it shows Andy has completed the task and has approved the document and now that all of the approvals have been made I'll go back to the specification library and notice now for the document the approval status is approved and for the workflow everything has been approved as well now the document is visible to all the site users so I'm going to sign back in as Erin again who is the read-only person and now Aaron who has read-only permission level can see the document so there you have seen one example of using the approval workflow template that comes with SharePoint Server 2010

Channel: dataBridge LLC

Views: 58,043

Rating: 4.942029 out of 5

Keywords: Microsoft SharePoint (Software), Workflows

Id: O-sKkqf-ZjM

Length: 14min 12sec (852 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 20 2014