Stump the Panel » SharePoint Workflow for All Users

Workflow Making Copies of Approved Doc in Other Document Libraries?

(5 posts)
  • Started 3 months ago by jamescox
  • Latest reply from jamescox
  1. jamescox
    Member

    We've got a set of documents and need to restrict read access to them for various groups of users - Group A needs to see all, Group B can see only a subset and Group C can see a different subset (with some overlap) than Group B.

    We don't want to get into document level security for these hundreds of documents.

    We will need a works-in-progress (WIP) document library to hold pre-approved updates of these documents (and a fourth Group D will need read/write permissions there) and we were wondering if a workflow initiated in the WIP document library can be set up to place a copy of an approved document into a Group A document library, a copy into the Group B document library and a copy into the Group C document library (as appropriate).

    Even if a workflow can do that, it might take three separate workflows (1. Copy to Group A document library, 2. Copy to Group A and Group B document libraries, and 3. Copy to Group A and Group C libraries) - or maybe there is a way a single workflow could be conditionally directed by some input made by the person who triggers the workflow?

    Another possibility - but one that seemed less likely to be feasible - would be to have the workflow set the document-level permissions of the approved document before placing it in a single document library that all user groups could access.

    Any insights would be most appreciated!

    James

    Posted 3 months ago #
  2. This could be done with workflows and audiencing.

    The workflow can see who the request is coming from and send it to the appropriate libraries(s). You then set audiencing on the libraries so A group sees A, B sees B, and C sees C. This might not be the optimal way to do it because you are in essense storing up to 4 copies of the same file.

    I'll think more about this and see if anything else comes to mind.

    Posted 3 months ago #
  3. jamescox
    Member

    Thanks for the information, Eric.

    Yes, having four copies isn't optimal, but it still may be the best solution if it greatly reduces / eliminates the possiblity of human error in setting up the document-level permissions.

    You didn't comment on the possibility of a workflow setting document level permissions - is that something that can be done?

    This leads to another question - can the document-level permissions be somehow treated as metadata and persist through the revision/approval process? In other words, if a document is copied from a document library and pasted into another one, does it (or can it be made to) keep the document level permissions it had - and can those permissions be made to persist through document edits until it is moved by the workflow back to the original document library?

    These may be capabilities that are way beyone SharePoint, but would offer a couple of other solutions if they actually do exist...

    James

    Posted 3 months ago #
  4. I haven't done item level permissions through a workflow, but I have done things like setting the status of approvals like pending, approved, rejected. I'll have to look in SPD to see if it's possible. If not, Visual Studio might be able to handle it at which point I'd have to defer to someone else.

    Posted 3 months ago #
  5. jamescox
    Member


RSS feed for this topic

Reply

You must log in to post.