Use Delegated Reviews in ShareGate Protect to route governance decisions to the workspace owners who know their content best.
Owners can then make the decision, and their actions run in ShareGate Protect right away.
Every decision is recorded in the Activity log.
Before you start
You need a ShareGate Protect subscription with access to your ShareGate workspace.
A global admin in your Microsoft 365 tenant must consent to a set of permissions to enable governance actions in Protect.
The workspace owners you want to review sign in with their Microsoft 365 account. They don't need a ShareGate account.
How Delegated reviews work
Delegated Reviews has three parts:
You create a review batch from any Protect report and dispatch it by email.
Each workspace owner reviews their assigned workspaces in a dedicated app, authenticated with their Microsoft 365 account.
Their decisions are executed immediately in Protect, and every decision is recorded in the Activity log with the reviewer's identity and reason.
Create and send a review
You can start a review from the Reviews page, or directly from a Sites or Groups report.
From the Reviews page, under Suggested reviews, select Ask to review on one of the pre-built suggestions (for example, workspaces inactive for 6+ months) to start a batch with those workspaces already selected.
From a report, select the workspaces you want reviewed, then select Bulk actions (or the ⋮ menu on a single row), then Delegated reviews, then Ask owner to review. Select Add to draft review instead to add the workspaces to an existing draft.
Build the review
Enter a name for the review under Review name.
Under What would you like to review?, choose one or more review types: Workspace lifecycle, External sharing links, or Guest access. The types you choose determine which tabs each owner sees.
Under Review expiry, set how long owners have to complete the review: 7, 14 (default), 30, or enter a custom number of days.
Select Next to customize the email. Add a message in the optional text box to give owners more context, then select Send test email to preview it in your own inbox.
Select Next to review the Selected Workspaces and Owners to be notified tabs. Remove a workspace with Remove from review, or add an owner to the exclusion list with Add to Exclusion List.
Select Launch review to dispatch it.
Note: If archiving isn't enabled on your tenant, Protect shows a banner when you select Workspace lifecycle. Learn more about archiving.
Tip: ShareGate Protect saves your progress automatically as you build a review. You can close the window at any point and pick up where you left off from the Draft tab.
Review types
The review types you select decide what each owner is asked to do.
Review type | What owners review |
Workspace lifecycle | A single decision per workspace: keep, delete, or archive it (if archiving is enabled on your tenant), with a reason and an optional note. |
External sharing links | The sharing links for the workspace, including file, creation date, and access count. Owners can remove links per link or in bulk. |
Guest access | The guest users with access, including the domain, permission level, and last active date. Owners can remove access on a per-user basis or in bulk. |
Track reviews from the Reviews page
The Reviews page lists every review batch with its workspace and reviewer counts, deadline, and completion progress. Filter batches by Active, Draft, or Closed.
On a draft batch, select the 3 dots menu to Edit review or Delete draft review.
Open a batch to see the status of each workspace (Reviewed, In progress, or Not reviewed) and who submitted the review, or switch to the Reviewers tab to see the same information by reviewer.
Select Actions to Send reminder to all reviewers with pending tasks (up to once every 24 hours per owner), View reviewer activity to open the Activity Log filtered to that batch, or End the review to close it manually before its deadline.
Note: Automated reminders aren't available in this release. Resend notifications manually from the Reviews page.
Exclusion list
You can add users or workspaces to a tenant-wide exclusion list in Protect settings. Workspaces on the list, workspaces with no owner, and workspaces whose only owner is excluded are skipped when you dispatch a review. Skipped workspaces appear in the pre-dispatch summary.
Activity log
Every review submission is recorded in the Activity Log with the action taken, the source (Review), a timestamp, the reviewer's identity, the reason and any note they added, and the workspace details at the time of review. Each entry links back to the review batch it belongs to.
Good to know
Delegated reviews are available for Microsoft 365 Groups and SharePoint sites, from their respective reports. OneDrive isn't supported at launch.
Owners' actions are executed immediately upon submission. There's no admin approval step before changes apply.
For workspaces with more than one owner, all owners receive the email, but the first submission locks the workspace, and only the first response is recorded.