Power Automate approval process template

“Why is something as simple as an approval process so complicated in Power Automate, isn’t there some template I could use?”

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The Approval flow is getting a bit complicated…

You got this awesome Power Automate tool and started building your first flows, maybe one of them being an approval process. You start with something simple – create a task, send an email with response, and that’s it, it works! So you start thinking about adding some new features. Functionality, that you and your colleagues would expect in such processes, let it be task reminders, audit logs, permissions management, or how to manage errors without running the flow over and over again.

That’s where it starts getting complicated. With each new idea, with each new piece of functionality you must not only add the feature, but do it without breaking what’s already there. One small issue, second small issue, and soon you’re doubting whether it’s really worth your time. You handled this process via email for ages, why change it now?

Deep down you know it would be awesome to automate this approval process… you just don’t know whether you’re the right person to do it.

…but you don’t have to do everything by yourself

What if you didn’t have to do it alone? If you could take an existing solution and just configure it? A solution that would take care of all the necessary functionality and you’d just configure and slightly modify it?

Often it’s hard to even know what this necessary (and often missing) functionality is until you start using the solution… but you can have it from the start.

Add a flexible Approval process to any SharePoint list or library

Get the Approval process template and automate more of your approval processes faster and cheaper! Import the solution to your Power Platform environment, do a bit of configuration and start approving things in less than 1 hour. No need for days spent by development of the flow and its testing, a few clicks and it’s ready!

To cover the most common needs for approval processes, you can pick one of the two versions, depending on the functionality you need.

But no matter which version you pick, you can rest assured that you’ll get a working, fully tested process including lots of custom developed functionality!

What custom functionality are we talking about?

Every time you build an approval process, you should ask yourself some important questions:

❓Will the process finish in less than 29 days?
If not, you have a problem as each flow is terminated after this period, meaning you have to change the flow architecture.

❓What if users edit the request during the approval process?
It doesn’t make much sense to approve request if it can be changed in the middle of the process.

❓Is there some approval history I can show to audit if they ask for it?
The standard flow run history is deleted 30 days after the flow finished, what then? Is there an easy way to share the approval history with anyone?

❓How will I know that there was an error in the flow? Will I know it before the users notice?
You should always know before the users that the process failed.

❓If the flow fails, can I restart it from the current step? Or will it run from the beginning, asking all the approvers to approve again?
Nobody likes doing their work twice, especially if you go higher in the company hierarchy.

❓Where do I manage the approval steps, do I have to edit the flow if the approvers change or if there’s a new approval step?
Every change in a production flow can be risky, you don’t want to touch the flow for these “maintenance” tasks.

❓How to remind users that there’s a task waiting for them?
It’s easy to overlook the email with a task and then forget about it completely, stopping the whole process.

❓What if users go on holiday / get sick / leave the company?
The difference between successful and stuck approval process is just one unavailable approver away.

❓Do you have these situations covered? THE TEMPLATES DO!

Light version of the approval process

If you’re thinking about a simple process, something where you just start the approval, it goes to a few users who approver or reject, the light template is what you’re looking for. Nothing fancy, just the core functionality to get you going.

With the LIGHT template you’ll get a solution where you can:

✅ assign task to a specific user or user in a column in the request
✅ configure as many approval steps as you need with various responses – straightforward Approve/Reject process
✅ restart the flow from a specific approval step, or from the beginning
✅ create new lists or configure the approval on an existing list or library with a single click
✅ start the approval process manually (from SP list view, Power Apps app) or automatically (on item creation / document upload)

Full version of the approval process

If you’re looking for a complex approval process, not just approve / reject but some cycles between the steps too, the full approval process is what you need. Years of approval process building went into this template, the flow design, the functionality it needs, the technical implementation – multiple years of experience (and thousands of dollars) condensed in a single process!

The FULL Approval template extends the functionality by:

✅ possibility to use SharePoint or M365 groups as approvers
✅ more complex processes with back and forth functionality – return to author, send back to approver…
✅ delegation, the possibility to assign task to additional users during absence
✅ reminders to approvers and a summary of all open tasks
✅ reusability of the template on the same environment
✅ a Power Apps application to help you configure the process

Skip the hours of trial-and-error, get a proven template instead

But the best part of it – it’s a template! Take it and use it however you want. Keep it as it is, use it as a baseline and extend it, or copy pieces of functionality and paste them in another flow. Use the whole solution in SharePoint, or extend it by building a Power App with the flow on the background, it’s up to you!

Save yourself days of work and a few headaches while automating approvals in your organisation. I suffered that for you.

Automate more, faster, and cheaper. Get the Approval template and join tens of companies who already automated many of their approval processes!

Why a template?

While there’ll be a difference in the request you’re approving, let it be items in a SharePoint list or files in the document libraries, the approval process will be often very similar.

You must start it somehow, let it be automatically or manually by pressing a button. There’re some approval steps it must go through, including email notifications, permission management, status updates, and the tasks themselves. And in the end you want the information who approved it.

But designing, building, and testing an approval process covering all the necessary functionality can take weeks, maybe months, especially if you always start from a scratch, not to mention that every process can look different, making it more complicated to manage them later.

That’s the reason why I’m using this template on my projects:

💥 often it’ll be enough to take the flow as it is and just configure it – an hour of work instead of days
💥 if you need something more, you don’t start from scratch – you start from a template that already covers most of the features
💥 having a unified flow design helps with maintenance of these flow, it’s much easier to understand
💥 you can automate much faster – how many processes can you automate in a year if it takes you a day instead of a month?

What will you get with the template?

👉 2 YEARS and HUNDREDS OF HOURS of building, improving, adjusting, and maintaining approval processes condensed into one Power Automate flow

👉 time tested approval process you can add to any existing SharePoint list or to a completely new solution

👉 2 Power Platform solutions – one to setup SharePoint lists, another one with the approval and reminder flow templates for both, SharePoint lists and document libraries

👉 well documented flows where each action contains a note with explanation, designed to help you understand and maintain the flow on your own

👉 1 setup guide – PDF document with the import and configuration process, including a few notes on adjusting the template

👉 FREE access to any future fixes, updates, or extensions of the template!

IMPORTANT: The process is distributed as a Power Platform Solution, if you’re not sure whether you can use solutions on your environment try it on the free preview version first!

Not sure if you can set it up by yourself?

If you’re not sure whether you can do the deployment and configuration by yourself, or if you’d like to get the template customised to fit your exact needs, you can book a consulting session and we’ll do it together!

FAQ

1. What kind of processes can I automate?

You can use the template for approval processes of various complexity with the first response applies settings. With the LIGHT template it can be a simple approval flow with 1 approve/reject task, or it can be multiple approve/reject tasks in a sequence…

…the FULL template then extends it to small loops where each approver can send the request back for update to the author…

…or one big loop where the request can be sent back to the beginning of the approval process…

…or different settings for each task.

IMPORTANT: as it is the template covers only approval tasks in sequence! Using it for parallel approval steps would require changes in the flow.

2. I already have lists with the data in SharePoint, can I use the approval process on existing lists / libraries?

Yes, part of the solution is a flow that’ll add the necessary columns to any existing SP list or library! All you have to do is connect the flows to those lists using variables.

3. How to handle the processes that failed in the middle?

The flow is built as a state machine, it’ll create approval task depending on the current request status. If a flow fails you can restart it, it’ll recognise the current status, and create the same approval task again.

4. How long can the whole approval process take?

There’s no limit on the whole process, there’s only limit on a single task that’s the standard 29 and something days. But even then, as explained above, you can restart the flow and create the task again if it’s not enough.

5. What if I need various responses for various approvers?

You can define as many approver responses as you want, although you’ll have to adjust the flow to evaluate them correctly. As long as there’s a clear path from each step to 1 next step, and optionally 1 previous step, the adjustment in the flow is quite simple. Having multiple options for the next step or previous step will require bigger changes in the flow.

6. Will the flow send reminders even for cancelled tasks?

Yes, the flow as it is will keep sending reminders for cancelled tasks. But the reminders are based on two SharePoint columns – if you empty them it’ll disable the reminder for given request. You can also adjust the flow to empty them automatically if the task is completed with no outcome = it was canceled.
The LIGHT approval template doesn’t include reminders.

7. How is the flow triggered?

The flow is triggered by pressing a button in the SharePoint list, but it can be easily adjusted to trigger automatically upon request creation. It’s designed in a way that you can manually trigger it also from other solutions, e.g. from a Power App.

8. Can I use the flow also on a document library, to approve documents?

Yes, the updated solution contains also processes usable on document libraries!

9. Can I delegate tasks retrospectively?

No, the delegation is evaluated when the task is created. If there’s an active delegation during the task creation it’ll assign the task also to the delegatee. But as explained above, you can cancel the flow and recreate the task again, this time assigning it to all the users.
The LIGHT approval template doesn’t include delegations.

There’s another app though that’ll allow you to delegate existing tasks to other users.

10. Can I resell the template to my customers?

One purchase is intended for use in a single organisation. If you’d like to resell it to your customers you’ll have to buy them their own copy.

11. Is it safe?

Once imported the whole solution is running in your tenant, using your account. Nothing is sent outside of your organisation in any of the included processes.