6 reasons you should use Microsoft Power Automate as your digital approval system
If you are still using email approvals in your company you should stop. In no time at all you can build a sophisticated approval system using the built in Approval connector in Microsoft Power Automate.
Why use Power Automate for approvals?
Reason 1: It’s free (if you have Microsoft 365 Business then you already have it)
Reason 2: Email, Smart Phone app with notifications and Teams. Power Automate integrates into multiple communication channels.
Reason 3: Dynamic approval routing. No more hard coding of approval routing. You can use Power Automate to build dynamic approval routing based on logic.
Reason 4: Full history of approval requests. Power Automate automatically saves a history of the approval requests. You can also create a custom log of approval events by saving the approval data in any
Reason 5: Data and processes. The “power” of Power Automate is that it connects to any data or API. This means you can send an approval within your Microsoft environment even if it relates to an event in a different software or system.
Reason 6: Flexible and dynamic approval message. You have full control over the approval message and can include dynamic values. Markdown language is used to format the message.
Simple manager approval or complex situations…dynamically create your approval routing
Whether you want to dynamically handle a simple manager approval or need a complex scenario based on several parameters Power Automate will handle it. The Approval connector only handles the approval part. However, by using Power Automate as a processing engine you can build any dynamic approval routing you want.
A simple manager approval
To dynamically create a manager approval you need to get the manager of a particular person. In Power Automate this is simple. Just put the person’s name into the “Get manager” action which is part of the “Office 365 Users” connector. This will retrieve the manager details as they are stored in the Azure Active Directory. Then use that value in the “Create an approval” action.
Complex approval routing
In a complex scenario you will base the approval routing on a number of factors such as amount, department and/or category. With Power Automate I have built complex scenarios which have well over 1,000 possible approval routing scenarios. The approval routing is created dynamically each time depending on the inputs.
Protect your C-Suite
A really nice feature is to use the split feature to insert an additional “control” approval before the final request reaches your C-Suite. By splitting the approval routing and making use of arrays, variables and if statements you can re-form an approval routing.
Example: No Cost Contract Automation approval
In the diagram below is an example diagram from the No Cost Contract Automation project. It is a good idea to design you workflows as diagrams like this before starting to build.
In this diagram you can see that the approval routing contains dynamic values (manager) and manual values (input fields). It also uses data from the contracts list to create a more meaningful approval request message.
Custom approval message
You can create custom approval request messages using a combination of hard coded and dynamic values. Formatting of the request is easy using Markdown. Below is an example approval request received in the Power Automate app.
Conclusion
As you can see, the Approval connector in Power Automate has lots of great features. In case you haven’t already made the switch from email or old SharePoint workflows you should do it now.
