SharePoint Workflow for Multiple Approvers

hi I'm Peter camps drummer of comes from dot-com business solutions in this demonstration I will go through how to make a workflow that automates the tracking and the handling overall a complex approval process in this company that I've completely made up they have different teams that need to approve the different steps before the procedure is published I'm gonna focus on the track ability who approved wats and so on so if security is your main concern that this might not be the solution for you but if you want to you know keep track of what's going on this one is really powerful so let's jump out of the presentation that I have there to my procedures here end my procedures list you see I've created one column here that says all approved that's supposed to be the end of of when the document has been approved on the default values of course Falls that they're not approved yet I've also created a bunch of columns here for the different approvals I've created to approval columns for each and every one of these teams security approved security approved by legal approved and so on so there's a total of ten of these columns and on the 11th for all approved and of course people could definitely go in and just modify this but that's not our concern in this case we entrusted people do the right thing and we also know that in version history we'll keep track of everything that's being done and will automate filling out all of those ten columns by a workflow so that's what we're doing we've also created a settings list here which contains all of the teams all of the five teams and the designated approver for that team now for now we're testing him for this demo it's all me but of course once I've done with my workflow I can just go in and change the approver for each of these teams and it will just continue working I don't have to modify my workflow so let's move into the workflow now after explaining all the work I've done beforehand I'm gonna go into workflows and create a new list workflow connected to the procedures document library I'm gonna call that new procedure approvals we're gonna use stages a lot in this demonstration and the stage is gonna be used to show the status of each document then the default stage is of course that we're going to be waiting for the construction team so let's do this nice and of course this workflow is going to start automatically when an item is created all right so we're gonna edit the workflow so that the default first stage is that we're going to wait for construction approval in that we're gonna create actions to assign a task for the construction team member to approve the new procedure right so we're going to assign a task there and it's gonna be assigned to this user and that's gonna be a look up your workflow lookup for you sir we're gonna find from the Settings list that I created the procedure settings we're gonna find the approver person the email address of that person usually works best and we're gonna look in the title field for the construction right so we're getting the procedure settings approver for the construction there of course and then we're going to view and set the task title and then we're just gonna use the name of the document that came in wrong let's try that again there we go that's all right then we have the subject line and also you want to take a look at these tax and task options we want to wait for task completion these are supposed to be done in sequence not in parallel so we're gonna wait for task completion we want an email to be sent out when on task creation here so that's fine and the outcome options yeah it's of course important the the default outcome is approved in this case if you just complete the task then it's assumed to be approved because each of these tasks have an approve and rejected option in them so also we could work with tasks overdue emails and handle how long does each team have to handle the approve process we could also send out overdue emails here but of course then we need to figure out when the due date is for each task that's that's gonna complicate this demo a bit more I'm not gonna do that so we have the task there the outcome it's gonna be stored in the variable we can just keep the latest one in the out account because we're gonna do them in sequence so we don't need to handle all of them so the next thing we're gonna do here is to check if if the procedure was approved or not that's gonna be a condition if value equals value gonna check the variable of the outcome if that equals approved in that case we are going to go to the next stage after setting those approval columns so let's do that let's do the action of update list item that's what we're gonna go update the current list item and set their construction approved to yes all right default is now and then we're gonna set the construction approved by to the value and then we're gonna use this lookup again get to the procedure settings list and again we're gonna pick out the approver column use the email address usually works best and then we're gonna get the title field you for the construction team all right so then we've updated the item and then we're gonna go to the next stage I'm gonna copy this entire stage you know just paste that in call-out waiting for the security team so we need to change this in two ways first of all we're gonna get the assigned to you know let's modify that and use the security there instead security oh yes yes and the same thing where the update current item of course we're gonna set the not the construction but the security approval that's what we're getting there and then that's gonna search - yes and the same thing with the security approved their security approved by the procedure settings list that's the one we want we're getting the approver email address well the title field is security again alright so we're gonna be doing this quite a few times then we are going to go to the next stage again we're gonna have a condition it's gonna be the same condition there so I'll just copy that if it's approved then we'll go to the next step here go to a stage in the stage we want to go to in last case is of course the security approval otherwise we'll go to end the workflow so let's try this out now let's try the first two steps out before we do more of this I'm going to publish this now of course I forgot the go down there I'm gonna modify this security rule but I want to test the construction approval first let's do that let's publish this so to test this I'm going to go in to my procedures I'm gonna upload a document I'm gonna upload a file let's just do one that we haven't uploaded already customers excel file that will work fine as an example so we're uploading that now and here we'll see the new procedure approval there we go waiting for construction approval that's exactly what we want to happen that's the first step right so if we go in now to the site contents and look in the workflow tasks there is one workflow task they're assigned to let's see if it's assigned to me yeah perfect well if I open this now I get the link to the related items and I have the option to edit this item and either approve or reject it so I'm of course going to approve this now let's go back to the procedures document library and we'll see that it's now waiting for security approval we can also go into the version history of this document and see that it was construction approved yes that worked out fine construction approved by and that did not work out as it should all right so we need to modify that but otherwise we see the whole structure working as it should let's go in there so it's the update the current item there modify that right so I need to get this and instead of getting the procedure settings we're gonna get the approver like I'm not gonna get that as login name we're gonna get that user ID number we're gonna get that from the title where the title is instruction all right small mistake there that's how you learn at least a line all right no of course we're gonna do the same now in this update the current item here modify that click on this and it's not gonna be the email address is gonna be the user ID instead alright so now we just need to build the other steps here all the other stages and build them in the same way that I've created this first one I'll do one more complete than just show you and I'll do the other three outside of the recording just to make sure that we have got all the steps correct here so of course after this then we updated the current item and then we're gonna have this if statement in the transition so that's gonna be copied entirely in here so let's remove this step because then it's not what we want but instead we want to go of course to the next one in the next stage let's copy this entire thing there copy that over and the next one is the legal one right so step three would be legal and of course we're gonna go to we're go great thing for legal approval there we go and after the security approval here on this one we're gonna go to the legal approval all right alright so I think the waiting for security approval is done now we can go to the legal approval and we make the changes needed it there so we want to change who gets assigned the task of course so let's go into the functional guide for that that's the one instead of picking up the approver for security we're gonna get the one for legal there yes that's done and then when we update the current item we're gonna do the legal proved that's gonna be set to yes and down the we're gonna get the legal approved by an of course it's gonna be the from the security from the procedures settings list we're gonna get the approver we're gonna get the login ID number from that person where the title is the legal so now we have three of these steps I'm gonna do two more out of recording here and then I'm gonna test the whole thing so now I've done ups all the five steps we have the construction going to security security going to legal legal going to marketing marketing going to PR and then we're done so then we need another step when all of this has been approved so we're gonna put a stage for that also and call out all approved so that what's gonna be visible in the view right and in that we're gonna do an action to update the item again update list item and it's gonna be the current item and of course we're gonna set the all approved to yes in that case there we go and then of course we're gonna end the workflow totally done go to a stage and of workflow there we go one more thing that I want to do about the denials here before we test this out is that instead of just going to the end here it's gonna keep waiting for construction approval indefinitely if the construction denies or rejects the approval so instead we're gonna have another stage for that so I'm going to insert that after it just put that there and that's gonna be a construction rejected and that's going to not really do anything but just goes around but the benefit of doing that is that now it's gonna say that in the list so I'm gonna show what happened there so instead of going to and the workflow directly I'm gonna go to construction reject it and then I'm gonna create a bunch of these also five of them actually so I'm gonna copy this entire thing here called beam live down below security and paste that yes and call it security rejected now that's the end of that element of course I'm gonna go to that security rejected there we go again after legal right and it can be easily --gel and reject it if you understand if it's getting boring that means they understand it so that's good legal rejected and we're just going to do two more you're gonna do under marketing here place that all right and that would be the marketing rejected and I'll go to that instead marketing rejected there and then finally the PR rejected and that's gonna be the end of that PR rejected there and we're gonna go there if PR approved and of course we're gonna go to all approved right that concludes all of the work that I've done here in this very very long workflow so I think I've done everything correct so let's publish this and test the whole thing nope there was something wrong let's see we should get that in red somewhere scrolling down oh it turns out that some of these had been copied incorrectly so we need to modify that let's do that the outcome is equal to approved of course let's go through this if value equals value of course that makes no sense whatsoever so let's go through that outcome equals sometimes these things happen when you copy and paste whole stages like I did before here so let's do this all right let's try to publish this again now and no errors so far publishing subscribing yeah looking good but let's try it out and see if it works because I don't want to redo this one of course so let's upload another document there and try it up again and upload a file of site collections that's a good one so it's uploading that and let's do a refresh waiting for construction approval right that's the stage wherein you can also actually click on this to see the workflow status what's happening and as you see we have the link there to the item that's the task and then I go into edit there let's go ahead and approve that one so now the task is completed and let's refresh the workflow and we'll see the status changing they're waiting for security approval and then we have another task here coming up the second one that's not started let's check here also how it looks there now it's waiting for security approval and I can go through all of this let's just click on that one and edit and prove that one also all right let's see that this work now now it's waiting for marketing I think no legal what's the next one right so here we have the legal now it's waiting for legal and there we have the legal task so let's go in actually edit that item that task can reject to the task so we should reject from legal that's what we're doing now right so we rejected that so the task is completed and let's go to the procedures document library and look for that one they received legal rejected so the whole workflow now work so it was a rather long video and rather complex yeah but this is rather complex scenario the most important thing of course is that you can track exactly what's happened at each step step you can build views for four different departments and here's the version history so you can see exactly what's been happening so we're waiting I'm down legal rejected securely approved we can see everything that's been going on there so I think this is a powerful solution it took a while to do but of course it will be easy to use for the users once it's done thank you for watching this demonstration

Channel: kalmstrom.com

Views: 59,345

Rating: 4.8290596 out of 5

Keywords: SharePoint workflow, approvals workflow, approval in several steps, kalmstrom.com tutorial, kalmstrom.com demo, Microsoft SharePoint, SharePoint Designer

Id: pHThonxwf8Q

Length: 20min 44sec (1244 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 24 2018