Publishing documents in Modern UI
Yesterday at a client I got the question if it's possible to publish documents in Modern UI and if it's possible to only show documents that have been published. In the good old Classic UI days everyone would jump and say "YES, that's possible". However in Modern UI I was a little sceptic. What is possible concerning Publishing and can users only see documents that have been published.
Want the short answer? NO, there is no publishing mechanism in Modern UI and NO it's not possible to show documents (default feature) that have been published.
Now the long answer.
We all know the settings in the classic document library that you need content approval and that users can only see draft items when:
- Any user who can read items
- Users that have contribute permissions
- Users that can approve or the author
However in Modern UI these features don't work. Microsoft introduced a "Sign-off" workflow that can be used to approve items (here). This workflow is really nice to be able to have a document reviewed by someone but this workflow doesn't replace the publishing of documents in libraries. For example the version of the document does not get adjusted when approved. If you had a 0.1 document after approval it will still be 0.1.
Microsoft said the following about this:
Back in December, we released the "Set Content Approval Status" action, which works primarily with Pages libraries, but can be made to work with other lists and libraries too. We are working on some closer UI integration for publishing scenarios that will be coming in a few months as well, but please let me know if there is anything that can be made better about using the "Set Content Approval Status" action that exists.
The sign-off flow doesn't enable any visibility of documents based on Approved yes/no. To fix this issue you could use a view and have filters enabled on this. However a document that has been adjusted could still have status "Approved".
With Flow you can of course create a Flow that enables the review and approval of documents. See the example Here. This workflow is good but there are a few notes to keep in mind:
1. You can't trigger it manually (except by using a button in the mobile App)
2. Publishing like in the classic is not the same (you press the publish major version and a workflow is triggered asking you to approve the item to publish it)
3. Should you have set that documents aren't visible in library settings for people with only Read permissions this won't work.
4. It does enable you to set a major version on a document (1.0,2.0,3.0)
5. You can set it to a default approver, which is useful if you want each document to be approved by the same person. However if you want use a different user each time you could look at the Sign-off Flow that Microsoft provides.
Want the short answer? NO, there is no publishing mechanism in Modern UI and NO it's not possible to show documents (default feature) that have been published.
Now the long answer.
We all know the settings in the classic document library that you need content approval and that users can only see draft items when:
- Any user who can read items
- Users that have contribute permissions
- Users that can approve or the author
However in Modern UI these features don't work. Microsoft introduced a "Sign-off" workflow that can be used to approve items (here). This workflow is really nice to be able to have a document reviewed by someone but this workflow doesn't replace the publishing of documents in libraries. For example the version of the document does not get adjusted when approved. If you had a 0.1 document after approval it will still be 0.1.
Microsoft said the following about this:
Back in December, we released the "Set Content Approval Status" action, which works primarily with Pages libraries, but can be made to work with other lists and libraries too. We are working on some closer UI integration for publishing scenarios that will be coming in a few months as well, but please let me know if there is anything that can be made better about using the "Set Content Approval Status" action that exists.
The sign-off flow doesn't enable any visibility of documents based on Approved yes/no. To fix this issue you could use a view and have filters enabled on this. However a document that has been adjusted could still have status "Approved".
With Flow you can of course create a Flow that enables the review and approval of documents. See the example Here. This workflow is good but there are a few notes to keep in mind:
1. You can't trigger it manually (except by using a button in the mobile App)
2. Publishing like in the classic is not the same (you press the publish major version and a workflow is triggered asking you to approve the item to publish it)
3. Should you have set that documents aren't visible in library settings for people with only Read permissions this won't work.
4. It does enable you to set a major version on a document (1.0,2.0,3.0)
5. You can set it to a default approver, which is useful if you want each document to be approved by the same person. However if you want use a different user each time you could look at the Sign-off Flow that Microsoft provides.
Conclusion
At this moment a real publishing mechanism from Microsoft is not available. Don't expect something coming near to the publishing workflow from the Classic UI. With the "Set Content approval status" Microsoft has made it possible to be able to set a document status to Approved or Rejected but visibility is still the same. To fix this for now you will need a view to filter the status.
So are you looking for a full Publishing approval mechanism? Then stay on the classic environment for now. You won't get any wiser in Modern UI. The sign-off Flow that Microsoft provides is a step in the good direction but a lot of work still has to be done on the publishing side in Modern UI.
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