Getting Started with Approvals

The flows you’ve worked with up to this point are largely automated (like detecting new files or emails) or triggered by a user action (such as the button flow to send a template email). In this chapter, we’re going to begin exploring flows that require additional user action to continue, such as an approval flow.

Approval flows require a special service that’s used to hold state information pertinent to the flow. Dataverse (formerly the Common Data Service) is the foundation for more complex flows such as approvals.

Specifically, this chapter will cover the following topics:

• Understanding Dataverse
• Creating an approval flow
• Responding to approvals

By the end of this chapter, you’ll have some introductory knowledge of Dataverse and be able to create basic approval flows.

Let’s dive in!

Understanding Dataverse

Microsoft Dataverse (formerly Common Data Service or CDS) can be thought of in similar terms to a database. It is comprised of data objects called entities. Compared to a database, entities can be described in terms of database tables. Whereas database tables have the concept of columns, the corresponding object in an entity is called an attribute.

Microsoft documentation currently has two separate descriptions for the types of objects stored in Dataverse. We covered the new nomenclature in Chapter 1, Introduction to Power Automate. In some cases, however, Dataverse terminology may change, depending on the user interface, protocol, or technologies being used.

One of the biggest terminology changes is the renaming of entity to table. Since table has distinct database implications for this book, we’ll use the old terminology of entity. Many of the UI components that you’ll encounter will still reference Dataverse elements by their...

Creating an approval flow

Approval flows can cover a number of scenarios, such as requesting time away, manager sign-off on an expense report, or business owner sign-off on product marketing materials that are to be published. Approval flows typically fall into two categories:

• Automated, such as when a new item is added to a SharePoint document library or list. You might use an automated flow to start the approval process for an expense report, which is triggered when a document is uploaded to a site.
• Instant, such as when a user manually starts an approval workflow from an existing document, list item, or application. You might configure an instant approval to start a process for approving an individual piece of content for external publication.

Regardless of the use case and configuration, an approval flow will require the Approvals connector. The Approvals connector has a number of actions and object types that the flow can interact with, though mostly...

Responding to approvals

As an approver, you’ll receive an email notification stating that action is required. Approvals will also show up in the Approvals section of both the Power Automate web portal and the mobile app as well as within the Approvals app in Microsoft Teams. An approval can be processed from any of those locations.

The approval has buttons based on the various Response option items selected in the approval flow. In the following screenshot, you can see that the options we configured when creating the approval flow are displayed in the body of the email. The approver can select Approve or Deny, enter any optional information, and then click Submit.

Figure 9.19 shows what the approval email looks like when it’s delivered to the approver:

Figure 9.19: Approval request email

If your organization has deployed the Approvals app, the request is also available there, as shown in Figure 9.20:

Figure 9.20: Approvals app in Microsoft...

Summary

In this chapter, you learned about one of the most popular and useful flow capabilities available in Power Automate – the approval flow. Approval flows frequently utilize Dataverse (formerly called CDS) to store state information. Approval flows can be used for simple tasks such as vacation requests or expense forms, and can also be integrated into more complex tasks such as document publishing and content automation. Finally, you learned how to create an approval flow, trigger the approval, and respond to it as an approver.

In the next chapter, we’ll begin using Power Automate to interact with Microsoft Forms.

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