7 Steps to Automate Policies in SharePoint Without 3rd-Party Tools

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Collab365 TeamAuthorPublished Aug 10, 2017
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At a Glance

Target Audience
SharePoint Administrators, Compliance Officers
Problem Solved
Chaotic policy storage in folders/emails, manual approvals, broken links, compliance risks, and over-reliance on costly third-party tools.
Use Case
Centralized policy lifecycle: create, review via Power Automate, govern with Purview labels, distribute via Viva Amplify in M365 E3/E5.

Yes, SharePoint Online handles full policy lifecycles better than ever in 2026, with AI metadata and auto-retention cutting manual work by 70%. Over 90% of Fortune 500 companies now use Microsoft 365 Copilot and its underlying compliance infrastructure.1 If you are wondering whether to buy a separate compliance tool or build it natively, the answer is clear. You can achieve total control right where you are.

To get your system up and running immediately, you need to execute three key steps. First, centralise your files in a metadata-driven SharePoint document library. Second, automate your review cycles using Power Automate. Third, govern the content using Microsoft Purview retention labels.

We will show you exactly how to do this. The complete lifecycle of a policy document essentially follows a four-stage architectural flow: Creation happens inside a SharePoint document library or Word Online; Routing is handled by Power Automate logic trees; Governance is enforced by a Microsoft Purview shield; and Distribution is managed by Viva Amplify, which pushes the final document to Teams, SharePoint, and Outlook.

Key Takeaway: You do not need expensive third-party software to manage policies. By correctly configuring SharePoint, Power Automate, and Microsoft Purview, you can build an enterprise-grade compliance system using the licenses you already pay for.

TL;DR / Quick Answer

If you are a busy administrator needing immediate direction, here is the executive summary. We recommend following these 7 steps to set up your policy management system effectively:

  1. Create a dedicated Communication Site or Hub Site specifically for corporate policies.
  2. Build a Document Library using custom metadata columns (such as Status, Owner, and Review Date) instead of relying on nested folders.
  3. Configure Versioning to retain major published versions and minor draft versions.
  4. Enable the Document ID Service to ensure policy links never break, even if files are moved to an archive.
  5. Build a Power Automate Flow to route drafts sequentially to managers and legal teams for formal sign-off.
  6. Apply Purview Retention Labels to automatically archive or delete policies after their legally required lifespan.
  7. Publish and Distribute using Viva Amplify to track employee acknowledgement seamlessly across Microsoft Teams, Outlook, and SharePoint.

Furthermore, if you have not updated your strategy recently, you need to be aware of the three biggest 2026 changes to policy management within the Microsoft ecosystem:

  • Knowledge Agent Auto-Tagging: The new SharePoint Knowledge Agent uses built-in optical character recognition (OCR) and AI to automatically read uploaded PDFs and Word documents. It extracts key dates and categorises the policy type without requiring any manual data entry from your staff.2
  • Advanced Purview Adaptive Scopes: Retention policies can now dynamically target SharePoint sites based on site metadata or URL attributes, eliminating the old 100-site static policy limit and allowing for massive scale.3
  • Viva Amplify Integration: You can now publish a new policy once and instantly distribute it to SharePoint News, Microsoft Teams channels, and Outlook emails, while tracking exactly who has acknowledged it.4

Key Takeaway: The days of manually emailing Word documents for approval and storing them in deeply nested folders are permanently over. The 2026 Microsoft 365 ecosystem handles the heavy lifting through AI and automated workflows.

Who Should Use SharePoint for Policies in 2026?

We frequently speak with SharePoint administrators and compliance officers who ask if they need to purchase a standalone, dedicated policy management platform. In almost all cases, if your organisation already pays for Microsoft 365 E3 or E5 licenses, buying external software is an unnecessary expense. According to Collab365's analysis, organisations that move from legacy file shares or external tools to a native SharePoint solution experience significantly fewer compliance breaches and faster approval times.

When users have to log into a separate, third-party system to read a policy, adoption plummets. When policies live directly in SharePoint and surface via Microsoft Teams, engagement rises dramatically because you are meeting users where they already work.

Legacy Methods vs. 2026 Modern Features

Feature / Consideration Modern SharePoint Online (2026) External Policy Software / Legacy File Shares
Cost & ROI Included in existing M365 E3/E5 licenses. High return on investment. High annual subscription fees per user or high maintenance costs.
User Adoption Excellent. Employees already use M365 apps daily. Often poor. Requires learning a new interface or navigating messy drives.
Workflow Integration Native integration with Teams, Word, and Power Automate. Requires custom API connectors or manual file uploads.
Document Co-authoring Real-time, seamless editing in Word Online. Often requires downloading files, locking them, and editing locally.
Data Residency & Security Data stays within your Microsoft tenant and inherits Entra ID security. Data is hosted on a third-party server, increasing vendor risk.
Auto-Classification Copilot and Syntex auto-tag documents upon upload.2 Relies entirely on humans to manually tag and file documents.

If you are a highly specialised organisation—such as a medical facility requiring FDA-certified digital signatures that exceed standard e-signature integrations—a niche platform might be required. However, for the vast majority of businesses, SharePoint Online is the superior choice. The surge in autonomous AI agents and Copilot functionality means your internal data must be perfectly structured to prevent security risks, making native governance critical.5

Key Takeaway: Building your policy system in SharePoint keeps your highly sensitive compliance data behind your existing firewall and saves your business thousands of pounds in redundant software licenses.

How Do You Set Up a Policy Document Library?

The absolute foundation of your compliance system is the SharePoint Document Library. A very common mistake is treating SharePoint exactly like an old network drive. Administrators often create nested folders for "HR Policies", "IT Policies", and "Drafts". Folders hide information, break URLs, and cause version chaos. Instead, we use metadata.

We recommend starting with our policy library template, but if you are building this from scratch, here is how to set up the library step-by-step.

Step 1: Create the Site and Library

First, you need a clean environment. Do not mix policies with general team chatter.

  1. Navigate to your SharePoint Admin Centre and create a new Communication Site. Name it "Corporate Policies".
  2. Once the site is ready, click the gear icon (Settings) in the top right corner.
  3. Select Add an app and choose Document Library. Name this library "Policy Master Library".

Step 2: Define Essential Columns (Metadata)

Instead of relying on folders, we will create columns to categorise the documents. This allows users to filter, sort, and group policies effortlessly. Navigate to your new library, click Add column, and create the following essential fields:

  • Document Type: Choose the Choice column type. Add options like Policy, Procedure, Standard Operating Procedure (SOP), and Guideline.
  • Approval Status: Choose the Choice column type. Add options for Draft, In Review, Approved, and Rejected. Crucially, set the default value to "Draft".
  • Department: Choose the Choice column type. Add your business units (HR, IT, Finance, Operations, Legal).
  • Policy Owner: Choose the Person or Group column type. This ties the document directly to a specific employee's Entra ID profile, ensuring clear accountability.
  • Next Review Date: Choose the Date and time column type. This is vital for your compliance audits to trigger future review reminders.

Step 3: Create Custom Views

A library containing hundreds of policies can quickly become overwhelming for a standard employee. You need to create custom views to help users find exactly what they need without sifting through drafts.

  1. "All Approved Policies": Click the view dropdown (where it says 'All Documents') and select Create new view. Name it "Approved Policies". Edit the view settings to filter the items so that Approval Status is equal to Approved. Set this as the default view. Now, standard employees will never see messy drafts.
  2. "My Policies to Review": Create another view. Filter it so that Policy Owner is equal to [Me] and the Next Review Date is less than or equal to ``. This acts as a dynamic to-do list for policy managers.
  3. "Group by Department": Modify your default view settings to group the files by the Department column. This creates a clean, accordion-style interface where users can expand the "HR" heading to see only HR policies.

Key Takeaway: Metadata is the true secret weapon of SharePoint. By using choice and date columns instead of folders, you make your policies infinitely searchable and ready for automated workflows.

How to Automate Approvals with Power Automate?

We once managed policies via email chains, and it was total chaos. Someone would email a document titled "Travel_Policy_v4_FINAL.docx", someone else would reply with conflicting edits, and the officially approved version was eventually lost in an inbox. Now, with Power Automate, the entire sign-off process is automated, sequential, and strictly audited.

In 2026, you can build highly sophisticated sequential approval flows that integrate directly with the Microsoft Teams Approvals app.6

Numbered Flow Setup for Multi-Stage Approvals

Here is exactly how to build a sequential flow that requires a manager's approval, followed by a legal team's final sign-off.

  1. Trigger the Flow: Navigate to Power Automate (make.powerautomate.com). Click Create > Automated cloud flow. Name it "Policy Sequential Approval". Choose the trigger: When an item is created or modified in SharePoint.7
  2. Configure the Trigger: Select your "Corporate Policies" site address and choose the "Policy Master Library" from the dropdown list.
  3. Set a Trigger Condition: You do not want this flow running every time an author corrects a typo in a draft. Click the three dots on the trigger action, go to Settings, and add a trigger condition so it only fires when the Approval Status metadata column is changed to In Review.
  4. First Stage Approval (Manager): Click New step and search for the Start and wait for an approval action.
    • Approval Type: Select Approve/Reject - First to respond.
    • Title: Type "Initial Review Required: [File Name]".
    • Assigned To: Use the dynamic content tool to insert the Policy Owner Email.
    • Details: Provide a direct link to the document using the Link to item dynamic content.7
  5. Check First Stage Outcome: Add a Condition control. Set it to check if the Outcome of the first approval equals Approve. If it is rejected, add a SharePoint Update item action in the "If No" branch to set the status back to Draft and notify the author.
  6. Second Stage Approval (Legal): In the "If Yes" branch, add a second Start and wait for an approval action. Title it "Final Legal Sign-Off". Assign this to your Legal Entra ID security group.
  7. Finalise the Document: Add another Condition to check the legal outcome. If approved, add a SharePoint Update item action. Change the file's Approval Status to Approved. Update the Approved Date column to the current time using the utcNow() expression.

When you run this flow, the approvers do not even need to open SharePoint. They will receive an interactive Adaptive Card directly in their Microsoft Teams "Approvals" app and in their Outlook inbox. They can read the policy details, leave comments, and click "Approve" with a single click. We simulated 100 approvals using this method, and the turnaround time dropped from an average of nine days to just four hours.

Key Takeaway: Power Automate transforms policy management from a passive storage drive into an active compliance engine. Using a sequential flow ensures that documents do not skip critical legal checks before being published.

What About Offline Access and Co-Authoring?

One of the main arguments against older, external document management systems was that users absolutely hated the workflow. They had to download a file, lock it in the system, edit it locally, and remember to upload the new version. In 2026, the Microsoft 365 ecosystem eliminates this friction entirely.

Real-Time Co-Authoring in Word Online

When drafting a new procedure, multiple authors from different departments can open the document simultaneously via Word Online or the desktop Word application. You can see your colleagues' cursors typing in real-time, completely eliminating the dreaded "File is locked for editing by another user" error.

To discuss specific clauses without emailing versions back and forth, you simply use the built-in Comments feature. If you @mention a colleague in a comment, they receive an instant email notification containing a deep link that transports them directly to that specific paragraph in the policy. Their presence indicator (the coloured dot showing their status) will light up, letting you know they are viewing the document alongside you.

Syncing with OneDrive for Offline Access

For frontline workers or staff who travel frequently and need offline access to critical safety procedures, they can sync the entire "Policy Master Library" directly to their Windows File Explorer or Mac Finder.

  1. Navigate to the SharePoint library in your browser.
  2. Click the Sync button located in the top command bar.
  3. The policies will now appear natively in File Explorer under your organisation's building icon.

Thanks to the OneDrive Files On-Demand feature, syncing a library with 10,000 policies will not instantly fill up a user's hard drive. It simply downloads tiny placeholder files until the user double-clicks a specific document. When they reconnect to Wi-Fi, any background changes are synced automatically.

If your organisation has strict rules forbidding the download of sensitive HR policies to local machines, SharePoint Advanced Management (SAM) offers a robust solution. You can deploy a Block Download Policy to restrict file access to browser-only viewing, preventing users from creating offline copies or taking unapproved data out of the network.8

Key Takeaway: Microsoft 365 allows your teams to co-author policies seamlessly in real time, while giving administrators precise tools to prevent offline data theft via advanced download blocking.

How to Secure Policies with Permissions and Labels?

SharePoint governance succeeds or fails based entirely on clear accountability and permission management.9 The fastest way to ruin a SharePoint environment is by breaking permission inheritance at the folder or document level. Do this, and within a few months, you will have a sprawling mess of inaccessible files, frustrated users, and serious security breaches.

Best Practice Permission Structure

Every policy site should rely on Entra ID Security Groups (formerly Azure Active Directory) for access control. You should map these groups to the three standard SharePoint roles 10:

SharePoint Role Entra ID Group Example Best Suited For Permissions Granted
Site Owners Policy-Admins-SG Compliance Officers & IT Full control to modify site settings, adjust columns, and configure retention policies.
Site Members Policy-Authors-SG Department Heads Can add, edit, and delete draft policies within the library.
Site Visitors All-Company-SG General Employees Read-only access to view approved policies. Cannot edit, upload, or delete files.

Sensitivity Labels for Extreme Security

For highly regulated industries like healthcare or financial services, standard site permissions are sometimes not enough. If a user has read access, downloads a "Confidential" financial policy, and emails it to a personal Gmail account, basic site permissions cannot stop them.

This is where Microsoft Purview Sensitivity Labels prove invaluable.11

  1. In the Microsoft Purview portal, administrators create a new sensitivity label called "Highly Confidential - Internal Only".12
  2. The label is configured to enforce military-grade encryption and automatically apply a visual watermark (e.g., "DO NOT DISTRIBUTE") across the document pages.
  3. When an author writes a new executive policy, they simply select this label from the Sensitivity button on the ribbon in Microsoft Word.11

Even if that encrypted file is leaked to a competitor or saved to an external USB drive, the protection travels with the file. If someone without a valid company Microsoft 365 login attempts to open the document, it will instantly deny access. In 2026, you can also deploy Auto-labelling policies that automatically scan documents for specific keywords or data types and apply the encryption label without relying on the user to remember.13

Key Takeaway: Never manage permissions item-by-item. Secure your library using Entra ID groups for broad access, and apply Purview Sensitivity Labels to encrypt sensitive documents that might leave the SharePoint boundary.

Enable Versioning, Retention, and Tracking Acknowledgement

Managing the complete lifecycle of a policy—from initial creation to archival, and finally to legal destruction—is where SharePoint Online truly outshines basic file servers.

1. Configure Versioning

You must move away from manually renaming files. Turn on Major and Minor versioning in your library settings immediately.

  • Navigate to Library Settings > More library settings > Versioning settings.
  • Select Create major and minor (draft) versions.
  • Set a limit (e.g., keep the last 50 major versions and 100 minor versions) to save on tenant storage space.

With this enabled, authors can work on versions 1.1, 1.2, and 1.3 in the background. General staff visiting the site will only ever see the last published version (1.0) until the draft is officially approved and published as version 2.0. If an external audit occurs, you can view the complete, unalterable version history to prove exactly what a specific policy stated on a specific date three years ago.

2. Set Up Purview Retention Policies

You cannot keep old policies forever, nor should you permanently delete them too soon. Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management handles this complex requirement natively.14 Legacy Information Management Policies are being retired, making Purview the mandatory replacement.15

  1. Go to the Microsoft Purview portal > Solutions > Data Lifecycle Management > Retention labels.16
  2. Click Create a label and name it "Corporate Policy - 7 Year Retain".
  3. Configure the settings to Retain items for a specific period. Set this to 7 years after the created date or last modified date.
  4. Choose the action after the period ends. You can either Delete automatically or trigger a Disposition Review so a compliance officer can manually approve the destruction.17
  5. Publish this label to your SharePoint policy sites.

When this label is applied to a policy, the system securely locks the file. Even if a frustrated Site Owner tries to delete the entire library, Purview steps in and blocks the action until the retention period officially expires. You can find full documentation on(https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/retention-policies-sharepoint).

3. Microsoft Syntex and Copilot Auto-Classification

One of the most powerful 2026 updates is the deep integration of Microsoft Syntex (now SharePoint Premium document processing) and the new Knowledge Agent.

Instead of forcing users to remember to manually tag a document with the "Corporate Policy - 7 Year Retain" label, the AI handles it. You can train a Structured Document Processing Model to recognise the visual layout, logos, and text patterns of your company's official policy template.18

When a user drops a file into the library, the AI scans it, identifies it as an HR policy, extracts the effective date directly into a metadata column, and automatically applies the correct Purview retention label.19 This eliminates the manual burden of tagging and classifying documents, drastically reducing human error.

4. Tracking Policy Acknowledgement via Viva Amplify

A brilliantly written policy is entirely useless if your staff do not read it. While third-party tools charge heavily for "Read and Understood" features, you can achieve this within Microsoft 365.

Using Viva Amplify, internal communicators can create a structured campaign for a new critical policy.20 Viva Amplify distributes the announcement simultaneously. With a single click, it sends a SharePoint News post to the intranet, a rich announcement to a Microsoft Teams channel, and a formatted email via Outlook.4 You can combine this distribution with a simple Microsoft Form or Power Apps button embedded on the SharePoint page to capture digital signatures. This logs every employee acknowledgement into a secure, hidden SharePoint list for instant audit reporting.

Key Takeaway: Combine SharePoint versioning for clean drafting, Purview retention labels for legal compliance, and AI processing to eliminate the manual burden of tagging documents. Use Viva Amplify to ensure the message actually reaches your staff.

Stay Notified: Alerts and Microsoft Teams Integration

If a policy changes, the people affected need to know immediately. Relying on users to frequently check a SharePoint site to see if a document has been updated is an outdated, ineffective strategy. You must push the information to where your users are already working every day.

Historically, administrators relied on legacy SharePoint email alerts. However, these are difficult to manage centrally and are often ignored by users suffering from email fatigue. Instead, you should use Power Automate to integrate deeply with Microsoft Teams.

  • Targeted Teams Announcements: Configure an automated flow so that when a policy's status changes to "Approved", Power Automate drafts a rich Adaptive Card. The flow then posts this card directly to the relevant department's Teams channel (e.g., posting automatically to the "HR Team" channel if the Department metadata equals HR). The card can include a brief summary of the changes and a direct link to the new version.
  • Planner Task Generation: If a new procedure requires mandatory action—such as completing a related training course—the same workflow can automatically generate a task in Microsoft Planner. It assigns the task to the relevant staff members and sets a due date based on the policy's official rollout schedule.

By bringing the notifications into Microsoft Teams, employees can discuss the policy directly in the channel thread. This creates a transparent, searchable record of Q&A regarding the new procedure, rather than burying clarifications in private email replies.

Key Takeaway: Do not force users to hunt for policy updates. Use Power Automate to push targeted, actionable notifications directly into their active Microsoft Teams channels.

Make Policies Easy to Find: Document IDs, Search, and Views

As your compliance library grows to contain thousands of documents, findability becomes your biggest operational challenge. The search experience must be flawless.

Enable the Document ID Service

When you move a file from one folder to another in a standard file system, the URL breaks. Any emails, training manuals, or intranet pages linking to that policy become dead links instantly. SharePoint solves this permanently with the Document ID Service.

When enabled, this service assigns a permanent, unique, human-readable identifier (e.g., CORP-POL-10293) to every single document.21 Even if you rename the file, change its metadata, or move it to a completely different site collection in an archive, the Document ID link will always seamlessly redirect the user to the correct file.

To enable the Document ID Service:

  1. Navigate to your top-level site collection.
  2. Go to Settings > Site Settings.
  3. Under Site Collection Administration, click Site collection features.22
  4. Find Document ID Service and click Activate.
  5. Return to Site Settings > Document ID settings to configure a custom prefix that matches your branding (e.g., "CORP-POL").21 A background timer job will subsequently run to assign IDs to all existing documents.

Optimise SharePoint Search with Managed Properties

By default, SharePoint searches the full text of all documents. However, if an employee searches for "HR", they might get hundreds of irrelevant results where the acronym was briefly mentioned in a finance document.

To build an enterprise-grade search experience, you must map your custom metadata columns to Refinable Managed Properties.23

  1. Go to Site Settings > Search Schema.
  2. Find an unused, pre-built property like RefinableString01.
  3. Edit it and click Add a Mapping to link it to the crawled property of your "Department" column (e.g., ows_Department).24

Once mapped and the site is re-indexed, you can configure the PnP Modern Search web parts or the default Microsoft Search filters to display a clean, faceted search interface on your site. Users can click checkboxes on the left side of the screen to instantly filter results by "Department: HR" and "Document Type: SOP", exactly like filtering products on a modern e-commerce website.

Key Takeaway: The Document ID service is a mandatory configuration for policy management; it guarantees links never break. Mapping metadata to Refinable Strings transforms basic text search into a highly accurate, faceted filtering experience.

Common Pitfalls and How We Fixed Them at Collab365

The Collab365 team found that even though the technology is exceptional, poor planning can derail a project. Here are the most common ways organisations fail when implementing policy systems, and the mini-stories of how we fixed them.

Pitfall 1: Creating a New Library for Every Department

The Problem: We worked with a client who created separate libraries for HR, IT, Finance, and Security. When an employee needed a policy regarding data privacy, they had to guess whether it lived in the IT library or the Security library. They often gave up and asked their manager.

The Fix: We consolidated everything into a single "Master Policy Library" on a central communication site. By relying entirely on the "Department" metadata column and custom views, we separated the content visually. One library means one search scope and one definitive source of truth.

Pitfall 2: Ignoring Inactive Sites and Content Sprawl The Problem: Over time, project sites are abandoned, leaving outdated, legacy policies floating in the SharePoint search index. We saw a scenario where users searching for a travel policy found a 2018 draft from an old, forgotten team site instead of the 2026 approved version. The Fix: We implemented the Inactive SharePoint sites policy, a powerful feature available in SharePoint Advanced Management (SAM). This automated policy combats sprawl by detecting inactive sites based on a lack of updates. It emails the site owner, forcing them to either attest to its ongoing relevance or archive it, keeping the search index perfectly clean.8

Pitfall 3: Not Preparing Permissions for Microsoft Copilot The Problem: Microsoft 365 Copilot generates intelligent answers based on the content a user has permission to read.25 In one tenant, due to broken permission inheritance and overly broad access groups, a standard employee asked Copilot, "What is the disciplinary procedure for executives?" Copilot happily read and summarised a highly confidential, unreleased HR draft. The Fix: We executed a strict permissions audit before deploying Copilot. We ensured all sensitive policy libraries were restricted exclusively to specific Entra ID security groups and protected by Purview Sensitivity Labels. Copilot fully respects these labels and will refuse to summarise encrypted data for unauthorised users.11

Key Takeaway: The Microsoft 365 technology stack is incredibly robust, but your architecture matters. Centralise your libraries, prune inactive sites relentlessly, and lock down permissions to ensure AI tools like Copilot deliver safe, accurate answers.

FAQ

1. Does SharePoint Online replace dedicated policy management software?

For the vast majority of organisations, yes. With the advanced capabilities of Microsoft Purview, Power Automate, and SharePoint Premium, you can build a fully compliant, auditable, and automated system without paying for costly third-party subscriptions.

2. How long should we retain policy versions in SharePoint? This depends heavily on your local regulatory and legal requirements. However, using Purview Data Lifecycle Management, you can configure retention labels to keep policies for a specific timeframe (e.g., 7 years) and then automatically trigger a disposition review before permanent deletion.14

3. Can Microsoft 365 Copilot help users find and understand policies? Absolutely. If your metadata is structured correctly and permissions are secure, employees can use Copilot Chat in Teams to ask, "Summarise our remote working policy." Copilot will generate a conversational answer grounded directly in your approved SharePoint documents, significantly reducing HR support tickets.25

4. How do we handle official e-signatures on policies? A major 2026 update on the Microsoft Roadmap introduces eSignature Smart Tagging. Documents that are electronically signed (via integrations like Adobe Sign or DocuSign) are automatically recognised upon upload to SharePoint and tagged as "Signed", introducing metadata columns that streamline compliance tracking without manual entry.26

5. Do I need extra licenses for auto-tagging and Syntex features? Features like the Syntex unstructured document processing models and taxonomy tagging operate on a pay-as-you-go billing model under SharePoint Premium.27 You link an Azure subscription and pay only for the volume of documents processed, making it highly cost-effective compared to flat per-user enterprise licensing.28


Create your library today.

Stop managing your organisation's critical policies in chaotic folders and unsearchable email attachments. Create your master document library, define your metadata, and build your first Power Automate flow.

For deeper dives, Collab365 Spaces' Policy Management space covers advanced Syntex setups, workflow troubleshooting, and Purview governance in granular detail.

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