How to manage permissions per file semi-automatically

Question

we have a document library. A team reviews the uploads and if the data quality is good, they want to allow a certain group of people to read the files (but not before). There are a lot of files (thousands) and

1. it is not an option for the reviewer to manage the permission per file (I advised them to activate the checkbox next to the file, go to manage document permissions, break the permission inheritance and add read rights to the auditor group, but this is too complex for these people) and
2. there are too many files to do it manually by myself.

The question is: Is there a way that for instance the reviewers set a flag (= a column in the library) and then this flag can somehow be read in the file system by me and the permissions be set for instance via a command in Windows Power Shell?

Is it possible to add read permissions for a SharePoint permission group via Power Shell (or something else) in general?

Thank you very much!!

Answer 1

Is there some reason the OOB SharePoint versioning and content approval process is not sufficient?

By using versioning and content approval, you can restrict access to "draft" documents to the group of reviewers until they approve the document and publish a major version.

Once the document is published as a major version, it would be available for any users who have read access to the library. (You say "they want to allow a certain group of people to read the files" - so, you may be restricting access to the entire library to this group and the group of reviewers.)

This would allow you to only break permission inheritance at the library level, which is a much better idea than setting item level permissions on thousands of documents.