Share
Report
41Hi Community,
THE SCENARIO
I am a SharePoint and Power Automate novice. I was asked to set up a SharePoint library for my department (Engineering) to help us share PDF documents to other areas of the business (Manufacturing, Purchasing, Sales & Technical Support Teams). The master files are currently stored elsewhere. The PDFs are exported into this library for the purposes of distribution.
Those in my department are given Read / Edit / Approve permissions. Everyone else has "read only" permission. The library requires 'Content approval' and we use Version History.
The filename needs to contain the revision details so that anyone who downloads a file has a clear description of what they are using or sending to a supplier (For example: "Document 123456 RevA.pdf").
The document ID needs to remain constant for the life of the file so that we can create links to the file and know it will always take a user to the latest version of the document (we don't want to update links every time we change revision). We also want to be able to access previous revisions from the Version History.
THE PROBLEM
I need to create a flow that will allow an Engineer to update the file content and file name (i.e. upload a new revision PDF to replace the previous... e.g. "Document 123456 RevB.pdf"), but ensure that this is only visible after the nominated person has approved the update.
My first solution involved updating the filename and content and then running the approval. When the update occured, the new content was hidden from those with 'Visitor' permissions (as this version was in Approval Status 'Draft' and then 'Pending'). BUT the filename change was immediately visible! Meaning that in the time between an Engineer uploading a draft PDF and that document being approved (this can take weeks) there is a mismatch in the revision details held in the filename and the visible content.
My second and current solution has involved flow that combines the file update process and the approval process together. I have done this by creating a 'button' column to manually trigger the flow for a selected file (see "Update & Approve"):
The user is then asked to upload a new file to replace the selected, to be sent to the nominated person for approval.
The uploaded file is then attached to the 'Start and wait for approval' email along with the selected (previous revision) file so that the approver can review.
Only if the request is approved will the flow then run to update the file name and file content and set the file to Approval Status "Approved" so that it is visible to all visitors.
BUT this is not an ideal solution. Some of our PDF files are up to 60MB in size. This flow will be filling up everyone's email inbox with attachments. Also, while testing the file the below error was created:
THE QUESTION
Are there any more experienced SharePoint and Power Automate users out there who have a better solution for my problem? How can I structure the process and the flow ensure that there is no mismatch between file name (revision detail) and the file content without filling up inboxes and risking a failed flow due to large attachments?
All responses (
Answers (
