Sharepoint Workflow Automation: 7 Workflows to Automate Now
Microsoft SharePoint workflows are mini-programs within SharePoint that automate business processes, saving time and increasing efficiency by minimizing time-consuming tasks.
Automating workflows in SharePoint eliminates the need for manual intervention at every step, allowing employees to focus on more strategic and value-added activities.
This article will walk through 7 workflows your team can start now with Microsoft Sharepoint through Redwood’s integration.
What is Microsoft Sharepoint Workflow Automation?
Microsoft SharePoint workflow automation refers to the process of automating and streamlining business processes within SharePoint using various tools and features provided by Microsoft or through third-party software like Redwood.
SharePoint offers several built-in workflow options, such as:
- SharePoint Designer
- Power Automate (formerly known as Microsoft Flow)
- Power Apps
And includes the ability to develop custom workflows using Visual Studio or third-party tools.
These automation capabilities enable organizations to automate document approval, document management, content publishing, task management, notifications, data integration, and other work processes.
For example, when a document is uploaded to SharePoint, an approval workflow can be triggered to send the document to the appropriate stakeholders for review and approval. The workflow can automatically track the status, send notifications to the concerned parties, and update the document’s metadata or location based on the approval process outcome.
SharePoint Online is a cloud-based version of SharePoint offering the same features and capabilities as the on-premises version but is hosted and managed in the cloud.
How Does Redwood Integrate with SharePoint?
Redwood is a business process automation (BPA) platform that can integrate with SharePoint to handle complex workflows and process automation capabilities. It offers seamless integration with SharePoint through its connectors and APIs.
By integrating Redwood with SharePoint, organizations can automate and streamline various processes, such as document approvals, workflow management, task assignments, notifications, and data synchronization.
Redwood can access SharePoint lists, libraries, and workflows, automating complex business processes across multiple systems and applications.
With Redwood’s integration, SharePoint users can benefit from advanced workflow orchestration, conditional logic, data manipulation, and real-time monitoring and reporting.
In other words, Redwood offers far more options than is included with the standard SharePoint app.
7 SharePoint Workflows to Automate Today
With the power of Redwood’s automation platform, businesses can leverage a range of pre-built workflows to automate critical tasks, such as document approvals, task assignments, issue tracking, content publishing, contract management, expense approvals, and HR onboarding.
In this section, we will explore these seven SharePoint workflows and how they can be seamlessly integrated with Redwood to drive greater success in your organization.
1. Document Approval Workflow
Automate the approval process for documents uploaded to SharePoint, allowing for sequential or parallel reviews, notifications, and version control.
Redwood provides a user-friendly workflow designer that integrates seamlessly with SharePoint. Teams can use Redwood to design and configure custom document approval workflows tailored to their specific requirements.
How Your Team Can Use It
A marketing team uploads a draft of a marketing campaign brochure to a SharePoint document library. With Redwood’s integration, they can configure a document approval workflow that automatically triggers when a new document is uploaded.
The workflow sends notifications to team members, assigns tasks for review and approval, and tracks the document’s progress until it receives final approval, optimizing the approval process and eliminating the need for manual follow-ups.
2. Task Assignment Workflow
Automatically assign tasks to individuals or teams based on predefined rules or criteria, ensuring timely task distribution and tracking.
SharePoint’s task management features allow team members to track their assigned tasks, update task status, and provide comments or attachments.
Redwood’s workflow management capabilities provide an overview of the entire task assignment workflow, allowing team leads or managers to monitor progress.
How Your Team Can Use It
When a new support ticket is received, Redwood automatically assigns it to the appropriate team member based on their expertise and workload. SharePoint is a knowledge base where team members can access relevant documentation, troubleshoot guides, and collaborate on solutions.
3. Issue Tracking Workflow
Streamline the tracking and resolution of issues by automating the creation, assignment, escalation, and resolution of issues within SharePoint.
SharePoint provides a centralized platform for creating lists, managing tasks, and organizing documents, while Redwood enhances this functionality by offering advanced workflow management features.
With Redwood, teams can automate the entire issue-tracking process, from ticket creation to resolution, by designing customized workflows that assign tasks, send notifications, track progress, and ensure timely resolution.
How Your Team Can Use It
An IT team can use Redwood and SharePoint to streamline their issue-tracking process by creating a workflow that automatically assigns incoming support tickets to the appropriate team member, sends notifications to stakeholders at each stage of the resolution process, tracks the ticket’s status, and generates reports for performance analysis.
4. HR Onboarding Workflow
Improve the employee onboarding process by automating document collection, orientation schedules, access provisioning, and HR form submissions.
SharePoint provides a robust platform for storing and managing HR documents, while Redwood offers advanced workflow automation capabilities.
With Redwood, HR teams can automate the entire onboarding process, from collecting and approving necessary documents to notifying stakeholders and initiating tasks.
How Your Team Can Use It
For example, when a new employee joins the company, Redwood can automatically generate a personalized onboarding checklist in SharePoint, assign tasks to various stakeholders (such as IT, HR, and managers), send automated notifications to ensure timely completion, and track the progress of each task.
5. Excel Data Processing Workflow
Automate data extraction, transformation, and analysis from Excel files stored in SharePoint, enabling you to optimize reporting, data validation, and integration with other systems like Power BI.
With Redwood’s automation capabilities integrated into SharePoint, teams can automate the extraction, transformation, and analysis of Excel data stored in SharePoint document libraries.
How Your Team Can Use It
An office administrative team can use Redwood and SharePoint to automate the processing of expense reports. Upon uploading an expense report in Excel format to a SharePoint document library, Redwood can automatically extract relevant data, perform calculations, generate summary reports, and notify the appropriate stakeholders for approval.
6. Expense Approval Workflow
Automate the expense approval process, allowing employees to submit expense claims, managers to review and approve them, and finance teams to process payments efficiently.
Streamline complex approval processes using Redwood’s workflow designer, allowing you to build customized three-state workflows to manage document reviews, approvals, and rejections efficiently.
Using Redwood’s workflow automation capabilities, teams can design and automate the entire expense approval process, integrating seamlessly with SharePoint’s document management and collaboration features.
Redwood can enable the creation of a customized workflow that automates the submission of expense reports, routing them to the appropriate approvers based on predefined rules, and tracking the approval status.
SharePoint provides a central repository for storing expense reports, facilitating collaboration and document versioning.
How Your Team Can Use It
An office administrative team can utilize Redwood and SharePoint to automate their expense approval workflow. Employees can submit their expense reports through a SharePoint form, which triggers a Redwood workflow.
The workflow automatically routes the expense report to the relevant managers for review and approval, based on predefined rules such as expense amount or department. Approvers receive notifications and can access the expense report directly within SharePoint, review the details, and either approve or reject it.
7. List Item Workflow Optimization
Optimize workflows for SharePoint list items by leveraging Redwood’s workflow designer, enabling you to create complex and conditional workflows that automate processes such as task assignments, notifications, and data updates.
Redwood provides advanced workflow management capabilities, allowing teams to design and automate complex workflows with ease, while SharePoint serves as the central platform for collaboration and data storage.
How Your Team Can Use It
An office administrative team can use Redwood and SharePoint to optimize their vacation request approval process. Using Redwood’s workflow designer, they can create a customized workflow in SharePoint where employees submit vacation requests as list items.
Redwood’s automation capabilities enable automatic request routing to the respective managers for approval. Managers can review and approve the requests directly in SharePoint, and once approved, Redwood can automatically update the status and notify the employee.
Bonus: Project Management Workflow Automation
Automate project management processes within SharePoint, including task assignment, progress tracking, status updates, and resource allocation, streamlining project collaboration and improving productivity.
Redwood provides advanced workflow capabilities, allowing teams to design and automate complex business processes with ease.
How Your Team Can Use It
For example, a project management team can use Redwood and SharePoint to automate the approval process for project deliverables stored in a SharePoint document library. They can create a workflow that triggers content approval, assigns tasks to team members, sends notifications for review and feedback, and tracks the progress of each deliverable.
SharePoint & Redwood: A Power Combination
With Redwood’s advanced workflow capabilities and SharePoint’s robust features such as document management, task assignment, and collaboration, teams can automate document approvals, task assignments, issue tracking, HR onboarding, expense approvals, Excel data processing, and project management workflows.
Both apps work together to create a cohesive workflow system that helps teams work smarter, not harder.
