Index unapproved items

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As of February 18, 2020, you can choose whether your SharePoint Online source retrieves unapproved items, which are items with a Draft or Pending approval status, in lists where moderation is enabled (see How does versioning work in a SharePoint list or library). Prior to this date, SharePoint Online sources automatically retrieved unapproved items.

Sources created before February 18, 2020 continue to index unapproved items by default. If you create your SharePoint Online source after this date, unapproved items aren’t indexed by default. To index Draft or Pending items for a new SharePoint Online source, you must enable Unapproved items in your source configuration.

The unapproved item indexing feature doesn’t take item-level security permissions into account (see Management of Security Identities and Item Permissions). In other words, Coveo retrieves all unapproved items, regardless of their visibility permissions (DraftVersionVisibility property in SharePoint Online). Moreover, unapproved items retrieved by Coveo are associated with the security permissions of the list on which they appear, so users allowed to see a list in their search results are also able to see all items on this list.

Disabling the moderation feature for a SharePoint Online list isn’t considered by Coveo update operations as an item change. So, items that were previously unapproved aren’t searchable with Coveo until they’re edited, although they’re available to everyone in SharePoint Online since they’re no longer drafts.