How To Update List Items With Elevated Access To Read-only Content Using Power Automate

Introduction

In this article, we will learn how to update SharePoint list items with elevated access when the logged-in user doesn’t have access to update the content.

Use case: I was working on a functionality where a user's comments were needed to be updated in an existing SharePoint list item for the current user's request. Only SharePoint admins had edit permissions on the list, and all other users had read-only permission. We used power automate instant flow to update list item using elevated permissions (admin account) when user triggers flow for a selected item from SharePoint list view.

Prerequisites

• SharePoint admin account
• SharePoint user account (with read only permission)
• SharePoint list with unique permissions
• Power Automate

Note: For this demo, I have used “Santosh Sarnobat” user account as admin and “Alex Wilber” as user account with read-only permission on list items.

Below are the steps to update SharePoint list item with elevated permission,

Step 1

Create a SharePoint list and add required columns. I have created DemoList with Demo Title(single line text), Person or group and multiline text column and added dummy data.

 

Only the admin will have edit access and other users will have read-only permission at the list item level.

We will create a flow to update Comments with elevated access for a selected item using admin account.

Step 2

Create an instant cloud flow with “For a selected item” trigger and click on create.

Step 3

Now select SharePoint site and list to configure the flow trigger.

Step 4

Add “Updated item” action to update Comments to SharePoint list for selected item.

Step 5

Now, we will configure flow to run with admin user account. Go to flow details page and click on Edit in “Run only users” section.

In this section, first add current list to share flow to trigger with those who have access to the list. Select admin user’s connection and click on save.

This flow will use admin user account for SharePoint connection in flow whenever this flow is triggered by any user.

Step 6

In this step, we will trigger a flow with a read-only user account to update the selected list item from SharePoint list view.

Output

We can validate version history for this item that admin account is used by the flow to update item action.

Conclusion

In this article, you have learned how to use elevated permissions with an admin user or service account to update read-only items in a SharePoint list using Power Automate flow. Elevated permission can be the solution for a number of use cases, like creating flows with premium connectors with a single subscription or updating sensitive read-only data with an admin account.