Power Automate Approval Workflow 2.0

what's up guys welcome to another video on this soggy Pacific Northwest day a little bit of rain a little bit of snow and super cold what are we doing here today we are actually going to update my most popular video ever a multi-layer approval the way we do it has changed in power automate and so I'm gonna show you today the new way to do a three layer approval let's go [Music] [Applause] [Music] all right so I am now inside outside of the rain at my desk ready to jump into this multi-layer approval are you ready are you ready let's do this okay so first thing I want to show you is I am here at a SharePoint site that we have internal I have a internal review process list if you watched the previous approval video this will look very familiar to you you can see that I have some displaying fields here project title description link to item and the requester alias if we take a look at my list settings you can take a look here at what's powering each of these you can see I actually also have some hidden fields for content approval approval comments approval date design approval comment state request for approval comments date okay so with that let's go ahead now and jump in and show you how to actually build a flow to use this so we saw how we did it before it is changed slightly and there'll be a couple little speed bumps along the way but if you stay with me I promise we'll move past them and we'll set you up a successful approval all right so first thing to do is click on new and then automated from blank go ahead and name this multi-layer approval and the trigger we want is actually right here when an item is created in SharePoint so we click on that and click create and off we go our trigger is set it's gonna ask us what site we would like to connect to luckily it's pulling my sites here if you if it's not pulling your site you can actually go ahead and just click the enter custom value here you could go to your list your site grab your URL and paste it in there but mine is showing up so I'm gonna go ahead and click on it and then I will select the list internal review process boom so now when the item is created in the internal review process list we're gonna do something we are going to start an approval and we're going to kick off a specific type of approval we're not gonna create an approval we're not gonna wait for an approval we are going to start and wait for an approval okay so choose that now this gives us many types of options we have the standard approvals here for a proven reject where those are the given answers that we have just two then you have custom responses let's say you want approve reject or standby or or yes/no maybe or on time not on time sometimes on some who knows you can create a list of custom options to your heart extent whatever you want them to be but for us we're just going to go ahead and choose this approve reject and choose the first to respond okay so that way we know that we're gonna send this to one person only and that person means to be the only person to respond to move this approval to the next place okay so now we want to go ahead and get descriptive in here we want to make sure that when we send an approval somebody doesn't have to actually like email us or a team's message us and ask us clarifying questions we want to make sure that they have all the information they need right at their fingertips in the approval so let's go ahead and customize this a little bit so I went ahead and put new content requests because that's what this internal review list is for for the team's review content I'm gonna go ahead and assign it to myself that's just gonna keep this nice and easy so I don't have to try and juggle different accounts and show you different mailboxes I'll play all the parts in this approval to keep it nice and simple now details this is actually the body of the approval like the email body this is where you're gonna go ahead and enter all of the relevant information so let's go ahead and customize it so I'm going to say a new request for content has been made by and then I'm gonna go down here and I know that I requested their alias so I'm gonna go ahead and put requester alias right here and then I'm gonna jump down and say the project title and we'll go ahead and find project title project title project title is title okay and then we'll put the project description as well there we go and now we'll add a link link to item and then the item link description will say click to view the item okay now that approval is set okay so now for every approval we have we also need a condition because when an approval happens we have approve and reject and so that means these two things are gonna route our flow in different ways and so if we want to route our flow in different ways we have to have something to do that for us and the two things in flow that can route flows down separate paths branch them now are either one a condition or two what we call a switch and so for this we're gonna go ahead and do something I like to call stacking conditions okay alright so stacking conditions so just stack them means we first need to have one and so at some point we'll have several so in our condition what we're gonna do here is we're gonna choose a value and that value is outcome the outcome of the approval we're gonna say if the outcome of the approval is equal to approve because our options are approve or reject so if the outcome is equal to approve then we have branches if it is do these things if it's not do those other things so what's the first thing we want to do if an item is approved well we probably want to go ahead notify the person who made the request and let them know like hey congratulations your item made it past content so let's go ahead and send an email now you could also post a team's message you could also send a text message there's a lot of different ways you could communicate here I'm just going to go ahead and keep it simple and and what most people have access to and choose send an email so I'm gonna use the office 365 outlook connector to send an email be to action and then it's gonna go ahead and ask me who do I want to send this to okay so I'm gonna go ahead and click into the to field and then click this button right here add dynamic content that's gonna go ahead and pop out some options for me it suggests some things to me that I think I might want but then if I don't see what I want I can click this see more button over here and so I know that I put in a special field for requester alias and so I'm gonna go ahead and find that and use that and the subject is congrats your item past content okay so from there we say congrats your item past content and then we'll just put a simple little note your item was approved by the content team with the following comments now we're gonna go over to the dynamic content section over here and we're gonna click on this responses comments okay now watch what's gonna happen when I click on this okay boom something happens it takes and puts this apply to each box here now I don't want you to worry about this okay what I want you to do is just leave it alone alright so what happened here is the responses comments dynamic content comes out in what is called an array an array is a set of things can be 1 could be 10 could be hundreds but it is a it is a group of things and so what's happening here is flow things you're going to actually get several comments for this approval and so what it's saying is for each of those comments responses we're gonna send an email now lucky for us we're only gonna get one comment per approval there so we don't even have to worry about this we can just go ahead and close those up and leave them alone and not pay attention to them again okay so the next thing we want to do here now is actually add another action and we're gonna type in update item because we're gonna go ahead and update our SharePoint list with a status that this item went ahead and passed through the content approval okay so let's go ahead and look for update item in here a final update item there it is alright and so now our site address we're gonna put in the same information for that we use when we created the item so process simple partners list name is internal review process and the ID should be supplied to us perfect so we want to update the item from that we're actually triggered off of when it was created so flow is smart and supplies that to us yay now we want to go down here and look at content approval okay and so this is actually the status of the approval and so we're gonna go ahead and say and type in the word approve and then for the comments we can go ahead and do this same thing and add the responses comments it's gonna drop it in and apply to each don't worry about that and then for the approval date we'll go ahead and add a completion date right here okay so now those things are done okay we have our email that gets sent out we have our item that gets updated perfect okay so now we have to do these same things on the know side so if it's if it's rejected we also want to send an email and say it's rejected we also want to then update the item and say it's rejected now in the past if you watch the past video in flow you would have seen that I would have had to go and make each of these steps over and over and over to complete this but now we have the beauty of copy and paste so I'm gonna go ahead and click right here I'm gonna say copy to my clipboard I'm going to go over here and add an action I'm gonna click on my clipboard and I'm gonna insert this apply to each and so we can see here that the send and email go went and actually got moved over to this side okay so now we just have to change up this language we don't have to create this whole step again and do it all over let's just say sorry your item did not pass content okay your item and then we'll just change this your item was rejected by the content team with the following comments okay and now we'll do the same thing here we're gonna copy our other apply to each we're gonna add an action and then we're gonna go to my clipboard and we'll add the other apply to each which now we can see contains our update item which will open up and we're gonna say rejected okay and so now very quickly we have completed one layer of our multi-layer approval and now you're gonna be amazed because with the beauty of copy and paste now you're gonna see how fast the rest of this flow is going to go okay so now what we're gonna do is we are going to actually copy this approval step add an action go to my clipboard we're gonna start another approval okay and we're gonna say new design request we're gonna say a new request for design review has been made by such-and-such there's the project title here's the project description here's the link the item and some text okay and so now we have our next approval in place let's go ahead and then grab our condition we're gonna copy that okay we'll add another action here we'll go to my clipboard and we build in the condition now are you ready for this this is my favorite part so a condition comes with an if yes and if no fields right so as soon as we open up this condition here we go so now we have to change this okay so we're looking at start and wait for an approval to now and so we want to make sure that we're gonna grab the outcome of start and wait for an approval to not number one so if the outcome is equal to approve now we're gonna do all of this again okay we're just gonna customize we're gonna say congrats your item past design your item was approved by the design team with the following comments okay and so now all we're doing is just customizing each of these steps okay so again applied each five sorry your item did not pass this time its design right these are very simple updates we're making and so now we want to go ahead and move these down right because these are design alright I'm gonna do this design approval so week for no comments okay so responses comments what happened we got an apply to each inside of one let's let's start that one over really quick we had the update item and again click SharePoint update item connect to our site in our list and in our ID okay now design approval approved design approval comments again now gonna drop us in that apply to each we're not worried about that and then our approval date is our completion date okay so now that's good let's look at our number six okay same thing let's see if this time you can get it to work so let's cut it from there and paste it in there let's cut it from there paste it there if you notice I have to click in these twice it's trying to jump on me for some reason so that's why it got messed up so just do what I did click twice there okay so those are good okay so now we have our if yes and now let's go ahead and finish up our if knows okay so this one's good we can leave that alone this one needs editing okay good and these are for design good okay so our if yes and if no is good and we can now go ahead on to our third approval and so now we're not on design now we are on final approval request okay so a request for final approval has been made by so-and-so here's the title in the description and here's a link to the item okay and so now we're gonna do this exact same thing again so we have that let's go ahead and grab our condition we will copy it to the clipboard we'll add an action we go to my clipboard we click on condition number two it then creates condition number three for us so let's go ahead delete out this last approval we don't need and so we can see how we're landing right we have layer one start an approval and condition okay awesome if yes send an email update the item to start the next approval here's the next condition if yes send an email update the item start the next approval and then here we are at our final condition where this would be the final approver of the day okay and so let's go ahead and just customize these one more time okay so if this person says approve Congrats your item has achieved final approval and is ready to share okay and so we'll say your item was approved by the final approver with the following comments okay well then go ahead and update our okay we're gonna grab this from here click here click here again and put it in cut this out click watch it's gonna make me click again and put it in and then click here again it moves click it again and paste okay so now we have a requester approval request your approval comments and date all right and so now that side is good let's do our reject side sorry your did item did not pass final approval alright now just cut and paste these one more time remember this little trick how it makes you click in the box two times before you paste alright okay and so this is our multi-layer approval we can see that we have one two three stacked conditions to go with our three approvals this gives us three different layers so content design and a final approval you can see that I'm assigned to all three but in the real world you would have three different people assigned to these things you would probably want to customize your start and wait for approval action a little bit more most likely so that there was more detail at each layer but let's go ahead and save the flow and then let's test this guy out and I say I'll say I'll perform the trigger action so it's gonna wait I'm gonna go here and say all right let's upload a new piece of content so I have a talk called flow overload and I'm gonna go ahead and add the presentation deck here the description is an introductory course an introductory course to power automate my alias and then a link to the item alright so let's go over here let's get a link to flow overload copy the link copy I'll go over here to the where is it okay URL and then display text deck thank you okay and that's all I need all these are for the flow to update and so we don't need to worry about those let's just go ahead and click Save okay so we can now see flow overload the presentation deck is here let's go over to the flow it says our flow is running here we go and it's kicked off so when an item is created start and wait for approval one if I go over here to my email inbox and I refresh I should be getting an email any second now from the flow and boom there this okay so pending approval a new item has been uploaded for review by oh I didn't have my dynamic content in there okay so that's something we have to fix and so I can click here to view the item so let's go ahead and open it in a new tab and check that out okay so we can see that it links to my material I can go through it yeah okay awesome it looks good we'll go back to the now and okay so content looks solid okay okay now we can see here Congrats your item isn't approved by content please see the comments content looks solid okay let's go back to the flow and see where it's at okay so we see the flow is running it's now waiting for an approval so we can see here a new request has been made by me the project title is flow overload the presentation deck the project description is an introductory course to power automate so if we want to go ahead and view the item we can click it here see that it's gonna take us over to the deck awesome if we go through it yeah this looks good contents pretty solid okay so I'm gonna go back to my email I'm gonna say approve and I'm gonna say content whoops solid submit now if I go back to the flow we should see it hit the next step awesome condition Matt apply to each send an email apply to each update the item so if we go and you know I don't have that view on right now but if we go back to the email here we go Congrats your item past content your item was approved by the content team with the following comments content looks solid okay perfect so now we should see that this approval is it's actually waiting on the next layer of approval so I should have another email coming to me any minute now there it is so now I am the second person I am the design team so you can see the first one was a Content new content request and now you can see new design requests and so if I want to do the same thing I could click to view the item but we've already done that and we know that design is impeccable so let's go ahead and say design is so good submit that baby I'm gonna get another email now as the requests are saying awesome your item was approved by design all right so now if we go back to the flow we can see we've passed that last approval we're now into the last notification email which we just saw and now we're waiting for our final approval which will then be for the final approver whoever that may be you know my case is like the marketing team or someone like that all right so email here we go final approval request it just came in so same information to everybody it's a good idea actually if you want to when you are escalating these approvals you can always add the comments from the previous levels as well so then that way each new approver can see the comments of the previous approver that can be helpful so now let's go ahead and say this is awesome take it to night it's ready to be presented so now we click Submit and Congrats your item has achieved final approval and is ready to share ok so we now have built in our our comments our our updates and our notification emails for a three-layer approval we have run it successfully and shown how very simply we can put this together to build in notifications approval processes and to just very simply keep a process like this moving now if we go back to the list and we look at the settings here you can see that I'd have done dates and and also kept the comments and things this is because if you want to actually take this to the next level and begin to like measure the amount of time between approvers if you want to you know keep track of how well people commented or what they said about things this is a great way to actually archive and measure a lot of this information and so it's not just a simple approval yes/no moving through the stages that's what we did today but if you have this list and you have it set up just like I do there's actually a lot more that can be done with it you could build a power bi dashboard on top of this to show how many things have been approved and how long they took to move between stages you could create reports about who has done the most approving you could create leaderboards even that encouraged people to approve things faster by showing who are the fastest approvers in the company and then giving you know kudos to such things so I hope that this multi-level approval gives you lots of ideas I hope that we've brought you up to date with the current way to do it it's a little bit tricky with the apply to each is that get apply it in everything compared to how it used to be but it's a little bit more flexible and a little bit more powerful if you want to go into the advanced mode alright guys so that's all I have for you today all right so just like that we've built a three layer approval and I showed you how to use the start and wait for an approval action now instead of the old way so now you're all set to take this very helpful technique and go use it in your situations today if you guys have any suggestions for what videos I should do next go ahead and drop them in the description otherwise you know what to do click like click subscribe much love from me I'll see you guys in the next one [Music]

Channel: Jon Levesque

Views: 83,097

Rating: 4.9469695 out of 5

Keywords: workflow, Approval process, flow approval workflow, flow approval multiple approvers, flow approval email with comments, flow approval sharepoint, flow approval email, jon levesque, jon levesque microsoft, power automate approval, power automate tutorial, power automate microsoft, Power Automate approval process, sharepoint approval, power platform, microsoft flow approval, microsoft flow approval workflow, office 365, microsoft flow tutorial, microsoft flow, power automate

Id: HPs9Y-Ku6kM

Length: 29min 4sec (1744 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 04 2020