Document approval through SharePoint (without signature)

Deal all,

We are looking to use SharePoint to host the QMS and technical files. SharePoint allows you to approve documents through automation/flows. This approval is recorded in the documents' metadata, providing details of who approved it and when, but there is no evidence of this approval in the document (i.e. there is no electronic signature manifestation on the document). Although we are investigating whether a log of the approvals could be created for each document and its revisions, when the file is downloaded this metadata information is not downloaded with it.

If the necessary software validation is performed, would this be an acceptable way to show approvals during an audit or would electronic signatures be required? Has anyone used this method before?

Thank you!

QARA93 said:

Deal all,

We are looking to use SharePoint to host the QMS and technical files. SharePoint allows you to approve documents through automation/flows. This approval is recorded in the documents' metadata, providing details of who approved it and when, but there is no evidence of this approval in the document (i.e. there is no electronic signature manifestation on the document). Although we are investigating whether a log of the approvals could be created for each document and its revisions, when the file is downloaded this metadata information is not downloaded with it.

If the necessary software validation is performed, would this be an acceptable way to show approvals during an audit or would electronic signatures be required? Has anyone used this method before?

Thank you!

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This is in fact an area I have worked with a LOT for over a decade now. I've used SharePoint systems for many different companies with a LOT of success with 3rd Party Audits. There are several ways to handle it properly, but it can be done. The fact that SharePoint in its version history maintains the user ID and time stamp, that is as good as a signature, in fact better, its harder to fake. The catch is you have to be diligent to make sure you update the document properties say in the header of the Word or PDF to match. There are some ways to do this in an automated way, but its not without difficulty. The best way is to just manually set the details, and click approve.

kchambers said:

This is in fact an area I have worked with a LOT for over a decade now. I've used SharePoint systems for many different companies with a LOT of success with 3rd Party Audits. There are several ways to handle it properly, but it can be done. The fact that SharePoint in its version history maintains the user ID and time stamp, that is as good as a signature, in fact better, its harder to fake. The catch is you have to be diligent to make sure you update the document properties say in the header of the Word or PDF to match. There are some ways to do this in an automated way, but its not without difficulty. The best way is to just manually set the details, and click approve.

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Thank you for your message, kchambers! What exactly do you mean by "update the document properties say in the header of the Word or PDF to match"? Would we have to somehow record the approval on the document? We can't rely on the metadata alone?

QARA93 said:

Thank you for your message, kchambers! What exactly do you mean by "update the document properties say in the header of the Word or PDF to match"? Would we have to somehow record the approval on the document? We can't rely on the metadata alone?

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I think you, like many others, are trying hard to avoid putting those initials, or date stamp on the doc, and just let SharePoint manage it. if you are using Word or Excel or PDF files, you cannot get away from it. Cause the moment it is removed from SharePoint say by copy/paste or print then that copy of the doc is fully uncontrolled, we could not tell looking at it or an older version or some draft version that got scrapped what copy is "approved"

I've had customers before type up all their docs in basically a SharePoint Wiki, and then the approval info can be part of the print out or the PDF export. but there are a lot of limits to the online Wiki for documentation. I've only see it work with software and electronics companies cause their people are already all into tech and web based. The average user still wants a Word or Excel doc to edit, and truthfully cannot navigate editing inside a Wiki in SharePoint.

I sit in a weird spot in the industry, I am a Lead Auditor, spent 8 years as QHSE Manager, an I have my MCSE for SharePoint Development...

If you want, give me a call. 281-906-5415. I'm bout to hop on a support call, but should be free in the next hour.

We used this in our old QMS setup and there was one big gotcha: the SharePoint approval history became unlinked with the records after 60 days, for performance reasons. The history was actually still in the system, but in a separate Workflow History table; by searching for the record number of the document in that history table you could find all the associated approvals, but it was clunky. I'm not sure this is still true with SP 2019 or SP 365, but it caught us off-guard! This article describes it in more detail:
SharePoint and the Vanished Workflow History - European SharePoint, Office 365 & Azure Conference, Amsterdam, 2020,

According to this MS page, it was still true as of SP 2016:
All about Approval workflows

The activity in a workflow can be monitored and adjusted from a central status page, and the history of events in a workflow run is maintained for 60 days after completion.

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