Contract Approval and E-Signature Workflow in Microsoft 365 — SharePoint, Teams Approvals and eSignature
Contract Approval and E-Signature Workflow in Microsoft 365 is a fixed-price build, $2,450 per project over about three weeks, that takes vendor, customer and HR contracts out of email chains and into a governed path on SharePoint and Power Automate: an intake form that captures the contract's metadata, a contract library with versioning and a sensitivity label, review routing to legal and finance through Teams Approvals with revisions tracked as versions, hand-off for signature through SharePoint eSignature — Microsoft's native service or its built-in Adobe Acrobat Sign and Docusign integration — or a direct Adobe Acrobat Sign or Docusign connector, automatic filing of the signed PDF under a retention label, a status dashboard, and one month of break-fix after go-live. We are neutral on the signature provider and set up whichever you already pay for or prefer. Microsoft's per-request eSignature meter and any Adobe or Docusign subscription are your own charges; the pay-as-you-go billing they depend on is part of what we set up, and we explain it before anything is switched on.
What this engagement is
In most 25-to-500-person organizations a contract still travels by email. Someone attaches a draft, legal replies with comments, finance asks about payment terms, a second draft goes out with a different filename, and three weeks later nobody is certain which version was signed or where the signed copy went. The Microsoft 365 licences you already pay for contain everything needed to fix that — SharePoint for the library and its versions, Teams Approvals for the routing, Microsoft Purview labels for confidentiality and retention, Power Automate to connect them, and SharePoint eSignature or your existing Adobe Acrobat Sign or Docusign account for the signature — but wiring them into one dependable path is real design and build work. That is what this service delivers, at a fixed price. The path we build is deliberately plain. A contract request starts from an intake form — Microsoft Forms or a SharePoint form — that captures the fields the business actually needs to find and manage a contract later: type, counterparty, owner, value, effective and expiry dates, renewal notice period, and the draft itself. Power Automate creates the contract record in a dedicated library where major and minor versioning is on, a sensitivity label marks the document confidential and controls sharing, and a retention label is ready for the signed copy. The routing rules you give us — who reviews which contract type, what value needs finance, what needs a second signature — become Teams Approvals requests with reminders, escalation and comments written back to the record. A 'revise' outcome returns the contract to its owner; the next version restarts the review, and every round survives as a SharePoint version rather than a new attachment. Once approved, the contract goes for signature, the signed PDF is filed back into the library with its metadata and retention label, and a status dashboard shows every contract by stage, owner and age. The signature step is where the honest choices live, and we set up whichever fits. SharePoint eSignature is Microsoft's own service: requests go from a PDF (or from Word desktop on the Current and Monthly Enterprise channels) to up to ten internal or external signers, the signed copy lands next to the original, and every activity is written to the Microsoft Purview audit log. It needs pay-as-you-go billing linked to an Azure subscription in your tenant, and Microsoft meters each native request — $2.00 per request at the time of writing, billed to that subscription; the no-cost trial allowance Microsoft offered ran through June 2026 and is over. If you already hold Adobe Acrobat Sign or Docusign, the same SharePoint eSignature panel lets people start a request with that provider from the document; Microsoft does not charge for provider requests (pay-as-you-go still has to be set up), the provider runs the signing and notifications under your licence with it, and the signed copy is saved back to SharePoint automatically. The third route is a direct Adobe Acrobat Sign or Docusign connector in Power Automate, which lets the flow send the approved version for signature without anyone clicking in SharePoint and pull the signed document and audit trail back when signing completes — the pattern we described in our Adobe Acrobat Sign + Power Apps integration article. It is the right choice for fully automated hand-offs and the wrong one when the provider licence or the premium-connector licensing is not already in place; we say which applies to you in the design note. Three boundaries are stated now so they do not surprise anyone later. We build the workflow, not the contracts: drafting, clause libraries and legal review of contract language stay with your counsel. We do not migrate you off — or onto — a contract lifecycle management platform; if you have outgrown SharePoint for contracts, we will say so. And the labels we apply are the labels this workflow needs; designing your organization's retention and records programme is our Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management service, and a full Dataverse contract register with a model-driven app is custom app development, both quoted separately.
Success criteria
What you receive
How the work unfolds
Walk through how contracts move today with legal, finance and the people who raise them. Agree the intake fields, metadata, approval matrix and revision rule, choose the signature route against the licences you hold, confirm the Purview labels available in your tenant, and check the pay-as-you-go and Azure prerequisites. Output: the design note for your approval.
Build the contract library with its columns, views, versioning and permissions; apply or create the sensitivity label and publish the retention label; build the intake form and the flow that turns a submission into a contract record.
Build the Teams Approvals routing with the agreed conditions, reminders and escalation, write outcomes and comments back to the record, and build the revise-and-resubmit path that restarts the review on the next version.
Set up the chosen route: SharePoint eSignature with pay-as-you-go billing, site selection and providers, or the direct Adobe Acrobat Sign or Docusign connector flow. Verify external-signer prerequisites (guest sharing, Microsoft Entra B2B integration, Conditional Access) where external signers are in scope. Build the signed-copy filing step with the retention label.
Build the status views and reminders, run three real contracts end to end — one internal, one with an external signer, one with a revision round — fix what testing finds, walk legal, finance and the owners through the result, and switch the workflow on for the agreed contract types.
Deliver the admin handover note (billing, settings, flows and connection owners, labels, how to add an approver or contract type). For one month after acceptance we fix defects in the delivered workflow at no charge; changes to scope are quoted.
Prerequisites
Who does what
IT Partner
- Run the kickoff, write the design note, and confirm licensing and prerequisites in writing before build.
- Build the library, labels, intake, approval, revision, signature, filing and dashboard components as described, using first-party Microsoft 365 building blocks and least-privilege connections.
- Set up SharePoint eSignature — pay-as-you-go billing link, service, sites, providers and external-signer prerequisites — or the direct connector flow, and explain what Microsoft or the provider will charge before it is switched on.
- Test with your real contracts, fix in-scope defects found in testing and during the one-month break-fix window, and deliver the admin handover note and the walkthrough.
- Tell you plainly when a requirement belongs to a different service — records programme design, a Dataverse contract register, AI extraction of contract terms — rather than stretching this one.
Your team
- Name the legal, finance and contract-owner contacts, and give them time for the kickoff, one review of the design note, and the testing round.
- Provide administrator or delegated access to Microsoft 365, SharePoint and Power Automate, the Azure subscription for pay-as-you-go billing, and the Adobe Acrobat Sign or Docusign account where a provider route is chosen.
- Own the decisions in the design note — approval matrix, contract types, naming, retention period — and approve it in writing before build starts.
- Pay Microsoft's per-request eSignature meter and any provider subscription directly; these are your accounts and your charges.
- Complete the testing round with real contracts and confirm acceptance; own approver and contract-type changes after handover using the notes we leave.
What's not included
Limitations & technical notes
Frequently asked questions
What does the contract approval and e-signature workflow actually do?
It gives every contract one path instead of an email thread. A request comes in through a form with the contract's metadata, lands in a versioned SharePoint library with a confidentiality label, is routed to legal and finance in Teams Approvals according to your rules, loops back for revisions as new versions when needed, goes out for signature through SharePoint eSignature or your Adobe Acrobat Sign or Docusign account once approved, and comes back as a signed PDF filed with its metadata and a retention label. A dashboard shows where every contract is and reminds owners before expiry or renewal-notice dates. It is a fixed-price build — $2,450, about three weeks — using tools already inside Microsoft 365.
Which e-signature option should we use — SharePoint eSignature, Adobe Acrobat Sign or Docusign?
The one you can already pay for, in most cases. If you hold Adobe Acrobat Sign or Docusign, we enable that provider inside SharePoint eSignature so people start the request from the document and the signed copy comes back automatically; Microsoft does not charge for provider requests. If you hold neither and sign a modest number of contracts, Microsoft's native SharePoint eSignature avoids a new subscription and meters each request instead — $2.00 per request at the time of writing, up to ten signers. If the signature must be sent by the flow itself with nobody clicking, the direct Adobe Acrobat Sign or Docusign connector is the route, with the premium-connector licensing that implies. We are neutral on the provider and put the reasoning in the design note.
What is the pay-as-you-go prerequisite, and do we need Azure?
SharePoint eSignature is one of Microsoft's pay-as-you-go document services: before it can be enabled, an Azure subscription in your tenant has to be linked to pay-as-you-go billing under Org settings in the Microsoft 365 admin center, and that is where Microsoft invoices native requests. The link is required even if you only ever send requests through Adobe Acrobat Sign or Docusign — although those requests are not charged by Microsoft. If you have no Azure subscription, one can be created for this purpose, or for organizations that buy their licensing through IT Partner we can provision an Azure plan through our CSP; either way the subscription is yours and the meter is Microsoft's.
How much will the signatures cost us?
That depends on the route. Native SharePoint eSignature requests are metered by Microsoft at $2.00 per request at the time of writing, billed monthly to your linked Azure subscription; a request can include up to ten recipients, so a two-party contract is one request. Requests sent through Adobe Acrobat Sign or Docusign are covered by your subscription with that provider and are not charged by Microsoft. Neither charge is part of our fixed price, we do not mark them up, and the rates are the vendors' to change — we show you where to read your own usage before go-live.
Can external counterparties sign without a Microsoft account?
With SharePoint eSignature, external signers are onboarded as guests in your tenant through Microsoft Entra B2B, so guest sharing and the B2B integration for SharePoint and OneDrive must be on, the contract site's sensitivity label must allow external sharing, and Conditional Access must let the eSignature app through — we check all three during design. Signers authenticate according to your guest settings and do not need a Microsoft 365 licence. With Adobe Acrobat Sign or Docusign, external signers follow the provider's own process, and your Microsoft 365 sharing settings do not apply to that request.
How do legal and finance approvals work?
Through the Approvals app in Microsoft Teams, driven by Power Automate. The design note captures your matrix — for example, every contract to legal; anything over a value threshold to finance as well; sequential for some types, parallel for others — and the flow creates the approval requests with the contract's details and a link to the document. Approvers act in Teams, Outlook or the Approvals app, reminders and escalation to a named backup fire on schedule, and each decision and comment is written back to the contract record so the history is on the item, not in someone's inbox.
What happens when a reviewer wants changes?
The approval has a 'revise' outcome. Choosing it sends the contract back to its owner with the reviewer's comments, sets the status to 'Revision requested', and pauses the routing. When the owner uploads or edits the next version, it becomes a new major version in SharePoint and the review restarts from the agreed point. Every round remains as a version with its comments, so the document that reaches signature is exactly the one that was approved. Redlining itself stays in Word — Track Changes and Compare — where reviewers already do it.
How are the sensitivity and retention labels used?
The sensitivity label marks contracts as confidential, controls who can share them and how, and can be applied at the site level so the whole contract space carries it. The retention label is published to the library and set as the default for signed contracts, so every filed contract inherits the retention period you choose. What we can automate depends on the Purview features in your plan: manual labels and a default retention label are included with Microsoft 365 Business Premium and E3; default sensitivity labels on a library, auto-labelling and event-based retention that starts at contract expiry are E5-level features. We confirm at kickoff and design to what you own; designing a wider retention or records programme is our Purview Data Lifecycle Management service.
Can we send signature requests from Word instead of from a PDF?
Yes, where your Office channel supports it. SharePoint eSignature for Word desktop is available to users on the Current and Monthly Enterprise channels (and Beta), after the Word option is turned on in the eSignature settings and the 'Allow the use of eSignature for Microsoft Word' Office policy is applied — we can publish that policy through the Cloud Policy service for Microsoft 365. The signer sees an automatically generated PDF copy and the signed PDF is saved in the same SharePoint location as the Word file. Device-managed rollout of the policy through Intune is outside this service.
Where do we track the signature requests?
Native SharePoint eSignature requests can be tracked through the Approvals app in Microsoft Teams, which shows the latest status and links to where the signed document was saved; requests sent through Adobe Acrobat Sign or Docusign are tracked there too, or on the provider's own site, and the provider emails the parties throughout. The contract record itself carries the workflow status — Draft, In review, Revision requested, Approved, Out for signature, Signed — which is what the dashboard shows. Every native eSignature activity is also written to the Microsoft Purview audit log.
Is a SharePoint signature legally binding?
SharePoint eSignature creates a simple electronic signature as defined under applicable law, including the EU's eIDAS Regulation, with a digital audit trail that can verify the document and the transaction. For most commercial, vendor and HR agreements that level is what organizations already accept by email today, but whether it satisfies a specific contract type or jurisdiction is a decision for your counsel, not for us. Advanced or qualified signatures with identity verification are Adobe Acrobat Sign and Docusign features, licensed from the provider.
Does this replace a contract lifecycle management platform?
For many organizations of this size, it replaces the email chains that a CLM platform would otherwise be bought to fix: intake, approvals, signature, filing, versions, reminders and a dashboard. It does not offer clause libraries, negotiation redlining, obligation management or AI-drafted terms, and if you need those we will say so rather than stretch SharePoint past what it does well. We do not migrate contracts from or to a CLM platform; that, and a full Dataverse contract register, are separate engagements.
What licences do we need?
Microsoft 365 with SharePoint, Teams and Power Automate — Business Standard or Office 365 E3 at minimum; Microsoft 365 Business Premium or E3 for sensitivity and retention labels. SharePoint eSignature needs an Azure subscription linked to pay-as-you-go billing rather than a per-user licence. A provider route needs an Adobe Acrobat Sign or Docusign subscription for the senders. The direct-connector route uses premium connectors, so the flow owner needs Power Automate premium licensing unless your provider agreement includes an entitlement — Adobe and Docusign both publish such arrangements, and we confirm what yours covers. The Teams Approvals and SharePoint connectors used for routing and filing are standard and included.
How long does it take, and what is included after go-live?
About three weeks: design in week one, build in weeks one to three, and testing with three of your real contracts before go-live, assuming decisions are made in the first week and an Azure subscription exists for pay-as-you-go billing. After acceptance, we fix defects in the delivered workflow for one month at no charge. Organizations that buy their Microsoft licensing through IT Partner keep unlimited business-hours break-fix support included after that; for others, ongoing support is a separately priced agreement. New contract types, approvers or scenarios are changes and are quoted.
Who manages this service?
Contract Approval and E-Signature Workflow in Microsoft 365 is managed by Roman Sotnik. The price is fixed and quoted in writing before work begins, you pay after you approve delivery, and there is no lock-in: the library, labels, flows and eSignature settings are in your tenant, documented, and yours to keep whether or not you work with us again.