Approval Workflow : SharePoint Approval workflows can help you automate your business processes, making them both more consistent and more efficient. The Approval workflow lets you route documents and other items stored in SharePoint to one or more people for their approval.
With the approvals capability in Power Automate, you can automate sign-off requests and combine human decision-making for workflows.
Here i am using a “Expense tracker” list Template
The use of an Expense Report application in SharePoint where users log expense details & we have a Power Automate Approval Process that secures the SharePoint item under approval (read-only) while the approval process is on-going.
The view of an Expense tracker list template with different Type of columns
Add “status” columns by using choice column type .
Where the choices are New, Approved, Under Review and Rejected.
Add one more column “Approval Info” which is multiple line of text column.
Go to +New -> Edit columns
Remove the status column in the Edit columns, so that the changes to the Status column is driven by the approval workflow in power automate
Create an Automated Cloud Flow and select the trigger as “When an item is created” (SharePoint), As show in figure
Add the site address and List Name of the SharePoint list
Add an “Update item” action to the flow and add the required fields as shown in image
In Power Automate, there is an action that starts an automated approval process and waits for it to complete. Also, it allows canceling the approval.
- Next, it will ask to select the approval type. such as:
- Approve/Reject – Everyone must approve (where each approvers have to respond the approval request using two responses options i.e. Approve or Reject).
- Approve/Reject – First to respond (where the approval request will be complete if any of the approver respond this request).
- Custom Responses – Wait for all responses (Where all approvers should ahould respond the request to complete the approval request using custom responses).
- Custom Responses – Wait for one response(Where the request will be complete if any of the approver respond the request using custom responses).
Now Add the Approval action i.e “Start and wait for an approval”
- Approval type– Approve/Reject – Everyone must approve.
- Title– Create a title for the approval (Ex- Leave request approval)
- Assigned to– It accepts the email address of the approver, separated by semecolon.
- Details– Specify the details of the approval request.
- Item link- Add a link to the item to approve.
- Item link description- Describe the link to the item.
Add a Condition Action to the Flow and specify The outcome of the Approval action doesn’t include Rejected in that case only the flow will run.
In the Yes condition Add the following action
copy the yes condition in the Clipboard
Paste it in the No condition and make some changes as shown below
Add an Action “Create HTML Table”
From : Add “all of the Responses” from Start and wait for an approval in Dynamic Data
Approver : Dynamic data
Response :Expression:
| dateDifference(item()?[‘requestDate’],item()?[‘responseDate’]) |
Decision :
Comments:
Now add the output of HTML to the place of “Approval info” in both YES and NO Conditions
Now save the Flow
Add an item in the SharePoint
Initially the status will be “New” after the flow starts it will change to “Under Review”
The approvers will get the Mail requests where they can Approve or reject the approval
Add “stop sharing an item or a file” action to the flow after “when an item is created” action
The benefit of this action is Only site owners Group users will have access to the item, All other users will have no access to the item
Add “Grant access to an item or a folder” action before the Approval action and Save the flow
Now add an item in the List Of SharePoint, Initially it will be in New status
When the flow runs the status changed to “Under review”
The approvers will get an approve mail when they Approved it the status will be changed to “Approved”
The status of the New item is changed to “Approved” as shown in the image
