Create Approval workflow in MS Flow Step-By-Step

Hello SharePointers,
In Today’s article, we will learn “How to create an Approval workflow in MS Flow or Power Automate step-by-step”.

During my recent days of SharePoint Development, there was a requirement by the client to apply an approval process on one of the lists in their tenant.

Creating an approval process workflow in Microsoft Flow or nowadays Power Automate is not a difficult task as compared with SharePoint Designer.

Microsoft created their product Power Automate very user friendly by adding lot many actions. These actions can easily understand by a beginners.

That’s the main reason developers and architects consider the power automate as a beginner-friendly.

Now, let us move on our current topic, create approval process workflow in Microsoft Flow.

Context:

Create an Approval Process on item added or modified in SharePoint List.

Example: I have a SharePoint List named Estimates, and on creation or Modification of new Estimates I would like to run a flow.

Solution:

Create a approval workflow by adding below actions.

Create Approval workflow in MS Flow Step-By-Step:

1. Create a Workflow

We can create a workflow using multiple ways or methods. All these methods are described below.

1.1 From SharePoint List

We can create a Power Automate workflow directly from SharePoint list on which we wish to automate process.

To do this Please follow below instructions.

1. Open SharePoint List
2. Click On Automate
3. Select Power Automate
4. Select Create a Flow

1.2 From Flow site

To create a power automate flow we need to visit a flow site from browser.

Type an url of flow https://us.flow.microsoft.com and sign in with your credentials

Click on Create

1.3 From Office 365 Apps

Also we can create a flow from Apps of Microsoft 365. To create a flow from apps we need to do following things.

Click on all apps icon in Microsoft 365 (top left corner of your SharePoint site or Office 365 app)
Click on Power Automate App
Create a Flow

That’s it!!! Now we learn how to create a flow in Power Automate.

Now Let us move ahead and create an approval Flow by adding action in our flow. I assume you have selected a create flow from Blank.

Step 2- Add a trigger

Once you selected to create a flow from blank, then give a name to your flow and Add a SharePoint trigger named When Item is created or Modified.

Once you click on Create, We need to provide an URL of our site and List Name on which we need to configure a flow.

If you cannot select your site collection URL from Site Address dropdown field, then you can click on Enter Custom Value option to add your site collection URL

As soon as an item is created or Edited this trigger will launch or start flow to start an approval process.

step 3- Start an approval process

In this step we will add and configure start and wait for an approval action. This action is actually used for an approval process.

Approval Types: There are total 4 approval types
1. Approve/Reject – Everyone Must Approve
2. Approve/Reject – First to respond
3. Custom Responses – Wait for all responses
4. Custom Responses – Wait for one restponse.

out of all these, we are going to use the second type i.e. Approve/Reject – First to respond. (you can choose as per your business requirement)

step 4- Condition

In this step, we will get a response or outcome about our requested approval. Hence we need to add a Condition to check whether our request is Approved or Rejected.

Based on the response received we need to update the status of the item in the SharePoint list.

The below are action setup to set an Approval status of a item

Step5 – Notify approval status

In this step, we are going to send an email notification to the item creator or submitter. To do this we are going to use an Office 365 action – send an email.

That’s it!! Our approval flow is ready now.

Just go ahead and check a flow that it does not have any errors. We can check it from Flow checker.

And Now we are done!!! That’s how you can Create Approval workflow in MS Flow Step-By-Step.

Now you can just save your flow and run it. It will give the desired output and send an approval request to a user.

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