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Flow: log approvals to get a grip on your approval process

4 februari 2019

The new approval center is a great out-of-the-box solution for all your approval needs. There is no need to make custom lists because all the approvals from all the different business apps are all collected in one place. Just add an approval action to your flow and you’re all set. You can even re-assign approvals straight from the interface.

Approval Center

BUT!

Such convenience comes with a draw-back. You can only see the approvals you send and receive. Which is fine for everyday use, but not ideal if you want to see if all the approvals are going is planned. As management you want to see if there are approvals that are not being… approved. If this is the case you can act on this information.

Although approval statistics aren’t part of the approval center (yet), with a little bit of help from Flow you can make this yourself.

Log your approvals in SharePoint

Create a list in SharePoint. Typically, it will have the following columns:

  • Approval request
    Text of the request
  • Name of requester
    The name of the person that started the request
  • Item Link
    The link to item or document that needs to be approved
  • Name of approver
    The name of the person(s) that approves
  • Approval outcome
    This will be either approved or rejected
  • Approval Comment
    The description why an item was approved / rejected

Now you can use Flow to create an item just before the approval starts. After the approval is done, you can fill out the approval outcome on the list item:

Log Approval

This way you can track  all of the approvals and act on them.

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