Not all content should go live without a review — especially when it’s showcased on the homepage of your intranet. In this post, I’ll guide you through setting up an automated approval flow for SharePoint news pages using Power Automate, targeting only homepage-worthy news.
The Setup: Custom Metadata Fields
We start by extending the default Site Pages content type with two additional metadata fields:
- Approval Status
- Type: Choice
- Options: New (default), Approved, Declined
- Purpose: Track where your page is in the approval process.
- Homepage News
- Type: Yes/No (default = No)
- Purpose: Mark if the news is intended to be shown on the homepage.
These fields will help us control which news items require approval and which ones should be filtered for display.
Triggering the Flow — Only for Homepage News
Your Power Automate flow begins with the “When an item is created” trigger for the Site Pages library. But we don’t want to trigger the flow for every page — only published news articles that are intended for the homepage.
Here’s the trigger condition that ensures just that:
@and(
equals(triggerBody()?['PromotedState'], 2),
equals(triggerBody()?['Approval_x0020_Status/Value'], 'New'),
equals(triggerBody()?['HomepageNews'], true),
endsWith(triggerBody()?['{VersionNumber}'], '.0')
)What does this do?
- PromotedState = 2 → It’s a news post (not just a regular page).
- Approval Status = New → It hasn’t been approved yet.
- Homepage News = true → It’s meant for the homepage.
- Version ends with ‘.0’ → Ensures the trigger only fires on the first major version.
This guarantees that your flow only runs for newly published news that require approval to appear on the homepage.
The Approval Flow
Once the trigger condition is met, you can start an approval process using the “Start and wait for an approval” action. Assign it to your content approvers or communication team.
Here’s a basic outline of the steps:
- Start and wait for approval
- Title: “Approve homepage news?”
- Assigned to:
[Your Approvers]
- Condition: Outcome = Approve?
- ✅ If Yes → Update the Approval Status field to Approved
- ❌ If No → Update the Approval Status field to Declined
💡 You can optionally send an email to the author notifying them of the outcome.
Filtering Hub News for Display
Now that news items are approved through a workflow, we want to filter what’s shown on the homepage.
Use the Highlighted Content Web Part or PnP Search Web Part, and apply the following filters:
- Approval Status = Approved
- Homepage News = Yes
Make sure to map the crawled properties to refinable managed properties to make these filters work.
Summary
With this setup, you now have:
- A clean approval process for homepage news
- Controlled publishing through metadata
- Dynamic filtering for your hub news roll-up
This gives you governance without sacrificing agility, keeping your homepage fresh and relevant — but always reviewed.