Easy Sequential Approvals in Power Automate | Beginner's Tutorial

hello everyone razza here in this video I will show you how to create sequential approvals in power automate the approval action in power automate has been upgraded in which now we have a sequential approval pattern that we can plug in all we have to do is Define who the approvers are in sequence we can Define this manually or dynamically let's check it out in action [Music] one of the most popular actions and power automate is the approval action within approvals we have multiple actions start and wait for an approval starts the approval and the flow waits for the approval to complete this action can be broken up where you can create an approval and then decide when you would like to wait for the approval so when we create an approval or when we start and wait for an approval the first thing we select is the approval type to date we had four approval types now we have a new entrant which is sequential approval this allows us to create a stepbystep approval process by utilizing a single approval action approval steps add new item here I can Define my first approver or my first set of approvers I've simply plugged in the email address of my approver to create another step I'll click add new step and Define the email address of my second approver if you want multiple approvers as part of a step can plug in a semicolon and plug in email addresses of additional approvers each step is a single task and the approvers will get two options approve or reject if the first step is approved only then it will move to step number two it will keep going through the chain until things are being approved if any approver in the sequence rejects the approval process will be complete at that point and the outcome of that approval would be rejected let's test this sample sequential approval my first approver is Reza my second approver is Sarah I'll test this flow the flow is triggered the sequential approval process begins approval Step One is Resa so Resa gets the approval task Raza approves it enters his commands and submits his response resar task is complete since approval one which is Resa approved it now the sequential approval moves ahead to step two which is Sarah's approval Sarah gets that approval task Sarah can respond via actionable messaging in the email itself the approver can also respond to the approval task by heading over to the approval Center in power automate here Sarah says approved submits her response the approval task completes if we explore the outputs of the approval action responses is the array that includes details about each of the approvers and their responses and if you explore outcome that includes the response that each approver provided also if we explore the approvals app in teams here is the sample approval Tusk that I had created in the flow if I select this I can see the entire thread I had requested the approval that went to myself for approval I said approved commments okay and then the next approver was Sarah commments looks good you can also save this as a PDF note you can also put email enabled security groups or M365 groups here so this approval task for step one will be sent out to that entire group the first person to respond from that group that will be the decision of approval step one each and every member of that M365 group will get that approval task James is a part of that group so he gets the approval task let's say James approves it records his decision now the approval task goes ahead to approval number two which is Sarah let's say Sarah rejects this that completes the approval action let's explore the output James responded from that group and if you explore the outcomes you can see that Sarah rejected it and James approved it I have a SharePoint list where users can enter expense details I have a choice column called approval status this is where I would like to track the status of the approval process as it moves ahead in the sequential approval chain that I will fine in power automate default value is set to pending so the moment an expense is created the status is pending in power automate create I will create an automated Cloud flow that triggers when an item is created I'll call this my expense approval workflow and click create for my trigger I'll connect this to my SharePoint site and my SharePoint list which is expenses the flow will trigger when an item is created in the expenses list straight out I will go and start my approval process I'll pick start and wait for an approval sequential approval here I'll say expense approval rate request for I'll put the title of the expense in the details I can put in information like the expense amount start date end date and any other pieces of metadata from my connected list I can also link to my item in my SharePoint list appr approvers first it should go to Sarah approver to James Next Step I'll add a condition to check the outcome of the approval the best way to do this is to check to see if the outcome does not contain the word reject meaning guaranteed every approver in that approval sequence said approved in that case I'll go ahead and update the item item id any required Fields you would have to repopulate for the update item action and the key thing I want to change here is the status I'll change the status to approved and I'll rename this action to update item to approved in the false Branch I want to update the status to rejected right click copy paste rename the action here I'll change the status to rejected I'll click save the flow is saved and ready to go let's create a new expense created a new expense by default the status is spending the flow has triggered currently it's waiting for the sequential approval process to complete here is the email notification for the approval task that gets assigned to Sarah here are the details here is a link to the specific expense request that res are submitted let's say Sarah approves this submits her response because Sarah approved it the sequential approval will move ahead to the next approval here is the approval task for J James James also approves it and submits his response the approval task completes the condition gets checked the condition was outcome does not contain reject both the approvers approved it that's why the left branch in the flow has executed which will change the status of the item to approved now let's build upon this workflow my expenses list has a lookup column that looks up to another list called cost center these are the cost centers that the person submitting the expense can select now based upon a cost center I would like to dynamically Define who the approvers are and in which sequence for that I have created another list called expense approvers here I have a lookup column again to the cost center list then I have a person type column wherein I can Define who the approver is and a number column where I'm defining the sequence of the approver so for example if the cost center selected is Koso then the first approver will be Resa and then the second approver will be James let's update our approval flow right before start and wait for an approval action I will go and query my expense approvers list to get the list of my approvers based upon the cost center selected for the expense to do that I will Leverage The get items SharePoint action connect to my expense approvers list show all here I'll apply an O data filter query so I'll plug in the internal name of my column and SharePoint it's cost center it's looking up to the title column in the cost center list if this is equal to under single quotes the cost center value Dynamic content coming from my Trigger action and here I would like to get the filtered results sorted by my number column called order order in ascending order now how do I take the output from get items action and plug it in start and wait for an approval action currently I have my approvers hardcoded if I switch to input entire array this is the specific format that the approval steps property expects the key property here is assigned to I will copy this name and keep it for reference right after get items I'll go and add a select data operation action the from property will be the dynamic content output from get items which is body/ value mapping this is where I'll paste assigned to and in the value all I have to do here is provide the approver email approver is a person type column in my expense approvers list I'll search for approver and pick approver email so this select action will give me the array that I can plug in directly here by switching to input entire array I'll remove all of this and enter the array dynamically output of Select I'll click save Let's test this out a new expense is being submitted submitted to Koso the expense is recorded the approval process will begin since cost center is Koso Resa should get the first approval task and here is the approval task that Resa receives Dynamic Resa approves it now it should move to the next approver which is James and here is James who receives that approval request I'll go ahead and reject this request as James the status of this record is set to rejected and if I explore the approvals app here is the expense request that was rejected and you can see the entire approval chain step one Resa step two James let's add another approver for Koso I'll add Sarah set the order as three now if you notice there are three approvers if I want to change the sequence it's very easy I simply change the order James will be the first approver now followed by Resa and there is also a third approver that's introduced which is Sarah Let's test this new expenses submitted James gets the approval request approves it here's the approval request for Resa here is the approval task for Sarah all of them approved it the status is approved and here is the entire approval thread in teams if you enjoyed this video then do like comment and subscribe to my YouTube channel and thank you so much for watching

Channel: Reza Dorrani

Views: 13,749

Keywords: power automate, power automate approval, approval process, power automate tutorial, flow approval workflow, power automate approvals, sequential approval power automate, sequential approval flow power automate, sequential approvals, power automate dynamic approver list, reza dorrani, create an approval power automate, microsoft approvals, power automate approval workflow, flow approvals, approval workflow, sharepoint approval, power automate tutorial for beginners, how to

Id: F819U_l07qI

Length: 17min 17sec (1037 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 17 2024