Do you have experience in automating the processes? SharePoint workflows are the best place to do that for developers and Power Automate Flows are the best place to do that for business users.
Automating business process in SharePoint using Power Automate
Don’t be confused with the term Power Automate, it was previously called Microsoft Flow. A modern way to automate the tasks, like sending emails, notification alerts, updating values in the SharePoint list.
This is the most preferred approach than any traditional approach like SharePoint designer or tasks.
Open any SharePoint online list and look for the Automate option in the top and choose “Power Automate” and create “Create a flow” option like below,
Now it will open a popup where you can find related templated suggestions for that can be done using SharePoint lists some of them are listed below,
- Send a customized email when a new SharePoint list item is added
- Start approval when a new item is added
- Request manager approval for a selected item
- Request approval in Teams for a selected item in SharePoint
- Post a message to Microsoft Teams for a selected item
Creating SharePoint alerts using Out of the box option
It’s a very simple approach without using workflows which can be done with just a few options.
Click the three dot in the top command bar and select “Alert me” which will open up a popup like below,
Here you would be able to define the below options,
Pick the user to whom you want to send alerts
- Configure the delivery method of notification either Email or Text Message
- Configure the type of change for which you want to send alerts, like adding a new item/editing an item.
- Define a criteria, on which scenarios you would like to send alerts.
- Define the frequency when to send the alerts.
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Use Content approval to implement approval workflow
Enable content approvals for the official documents before they go live or before its been accessed by everyone. Don’t worry about implementing such an approval process, we have out of the box for that as well.
Go to the versioning settings like below,
“Gear Icon (Settings icon at the O365 banner)” => List Settings => Versioning Settings
Enable the Content approval option like below,
Now SharePoint will take care of sending out emails on approving or rejecting the contents to the approver as well as the content creator. A column also will get added to handle the status of the approval item.
Implementing out of the SharePoint Workflow
Alert: SharePoint 2010 workflows are retiring starting from 01-November-2020, after that users will not be able to create or run SharePoint 2010 workflows. So be sure to create SharePoint 2013 workflows, but it may also expire in near future.
Before we start with first make sure to enable the “Workflows” feature. To do that go to Site settings of the site collection using below URL
{SiteURL}/_layouts/15/settings.aspx
Look for “Manage Site Collection features” and activate the “Workflows” feature
Now go to list settings and go to “Workflow Settings”
Then in the upcoming screen choose “Add Workflow”
There you go, choose the desired template and configure settings as per the business requirement. Here is a snapshot of the workflow screen.
We have discussed various options to implement the business process automation using SharePoint online Out of the box option.