Previously I provided an overview of why Power Automate disposition reviews are important to record management tasks for many organizations.  With the introduction aside, let’s cover how to create a Power Automate disposition review from concept to execution.  This process will create a custom message to the disposition reviewer.  If approved it will delete the document and update a destruction tracker list in SharePoint.  If rejected, the record manager will be notified to take necessary action.

Create a Simple Power Automate Distribution Review

Start with the Workflow

Before building the process, you first must plan out the process.  In this case, we are going to deal with a simple situation.  Create a disposition review with a customized message and approval workflow (we’ll do something more complex in my next post).  The process of implementing a Power Automate disposition review process is actually to start with Power Automate.  The workflow has to exist in the tenant before it can be linked to a retention label.

  1. Log in to Power Automate and click on Create.  Select Automated cloud flow.

Create a Simple Power Automate Disposition Review - CreateAutomatedFlow

  1. Give the flow a meaningful name and select the trigger “When an item reaches end of its retention period” (a trick to find this one is to type retention in the search bar)

Create a Simple Power Automate Disposition Review - SelectRetentionTrigger

  1. For the purpose of this flow, all of the information necessary for the following steps are captured in the trigger so add an approval activity to the flow
    • Approval Activity Type: Stop and wait for an approval
    • Approval Type: Approve/Reject – First to Respond

Create a Simple Power Automate Disposition Review - AddApproval

  1. Add the custom message to the approval request and assign to the necessary approvers.

Create a Simple Power Automate Disposition Review - CreateApprovalAction

  1. Add a condition to track the approval process.
  2. If approved:
    1. Add the “Deletes the item” activity from the Microsoft Compliance connector.
    2. Fill in the information within the activity (all fields are available from the workflow trigger)

Create a Simple Power Automate Disposition Review - DeleteTheItemActivity

    1. Update the Destruction Tracker list

Create a Simple Power Automate Disposition Review - InsertIntoDestructionTracker

Note: For large organizations, a SharePoint list will likely not be the best place to track this.  A SQL database would likely be better.

  1. If rejected:
    1. You can follow any process you wish here, but be aware that at this time there isn’t any of the standard disposition controls such as relabel, extend retention, etc. available at this in the Power Automate workflow connector.  In this case, I am simply going to send a notification to the record manager to have them review the document.  But I would update the flow to follow any internal process defined within your organization.

Create a Simple Power Automate Disposition Review - SendRejectionNotice

 

Attach Workflow to Retention Label

Once the disposition workflow has been created, the next step is to create the label and link to the disposition workflow created for this purpose.

  1. Login to the records management console within Microsoft Purview
  2. Click on the File plan tab and click “+ Create label”
  3. Provide the label with a meaningful name and description based on your organization’s record plan and click Next.
  4. Fill in the necessary descriptors for the label (optional) and click Next.
  5. Select the label retention settings and click Next.

Create a Simple Power Automate Disposition Review - LabelRetentionSettings

  1. Fill in the required retention timeline based on the file plan and click Next.

Create a Simple Power Automate Disposition Review - LabelRetentionPeriod

  1. Select how the label will protect the document during the retention period and click Next.
  2. At the screen “Choose what happens after the retention period” select the option “Run a Power Automate Flow“
  3. Click on “+ Select a flow“
  4. Select the flow created above.
  5. Click Apply and then Next.

Create a Simple Power Automate Disposition Review - SetRunPowerAutomateFlow

  1. Review the configurations and click Create Label
  2. Deploy your label and wait for a document to trigger for retention.

Once the retention schedule completes the selected user(s) will receive the notification to dispose of the document and once it has been done, the workflow deletes it.

Approval Email:

Create a Simple Power Automate Disposition Review - Email Message

 

IMPORTANT NOTE: I really want to point this out because it caught me the first time.  Using the M365 Compliance Connector will NOT result in immediate deletion.  It instead runs the back-end disposition process so you have to wait for that to run.

After approval (note file still exists):

Create a Simple Power Automate Disposition Review - File Still Exists

Once backend processes had run:

Create a Simple Power Automate Disposition Review - Library After Deletion

And a view of the custom destruction log:

Create a Simple Power Automate Disposition Review - Destruction Logged

Thanks for reading!