Creating an Approval Workflow

Quick reference

• 00:03 So following on from the last lesson, let's take a look at how we can put
• 00:07 together an approval workflow in SharePoint.
• 00:10 Now because this is a document that I want to be approved by somebody else, I need to
• 00:15 make sure that I first have that document available to me within SharePoint.
• 00:21 So I'm going to want to upload it to my document library.
• 00:24 Now if I jump into documents,
• 00:26 I'm going to use one of my existing documents as the example.
• 00:31 And let's use this one here, the Rollout Plan.
• 00:33 I need this to be approved before I can implement it.
• 00:37 So I want to create an approval workflow for this document.
• 00:42 So all I need to do here is select the document and
• 00:45 then using the horizontal menu running across the top.
• 00:49 If I go all the way along to where we have those three dots,
• 00:53 we get our contextual menu drop down and we want to go to automate.
• 00:58 And it's worth noting that workflows in SharePoint utilize the power of
• 01:02 a little application in Office 365 called Power Automate.
• 01:07 And it's also worth noting that Power Automate used to be known as
• 01:11 Microsoft Flow.
• 01:12 So you might be more familiar with that terminology.
• 01:16 So let's select Power Automate.
• 01:19 And then I can choose one of three options.
• 01:22 Now the obvious one that I want to do here is I want to create a flow.
• 01:26 So let's click it.
• 01:27 So now I have this little pane pop open on the right hand side.
• 01:31 And this is going to show me all of my different workflow templates, and
• 01:35 there are a lot of them.
• 01:36 If I click the show more link underneath,
• 01:38 you can see all of the different templates that I have available.
• 01:42 So there are workflow templates for lots and lots of different things,
• 01:46 not just approving documents or signing off on holiday.
• 01:50 I can set up a workflow so that all of my email attachments that I receive
• 01:54 are automatically saved to my SharePoint document library.
• 01:59 Or maybe I want to automatically post a message to Microsoft Teams.
• 02:03 So it's definitely worth having a scroll through some of these different templates
• 02:07 and try to automate any repetitive tasks.
• 02:10 So if I take a look through this list, let's see if we can find a template that's
• 02:14 going to do what I need to do, which is approve a document.
• 02:16 And if I scroll all the way down, you can see right at the bottom, we have
• 02:21 a template here that says request approval everyone must approve for a selected file.
• 02:27 And this is exactly what I want,
• 02:29 particularly if I'm sending to multiple people, multiple managers and
• 02:33 I need them all to approve it for that document is essentially finally approved.
• 02:39 So let's select this template.
• 02:41 So I can see here what it's going to do and I can also see underneath
• 02:45 what applications SharePoint needs access to in order to create this approval.
• 02:49 And right at the bottom here, it's telling me that this flow will connect to
• 02:54 Office 365 Outlook, to the approvals area in teams, and also to SharePoint.
• 03:00 And the thing that's really important here is to make sure that you can see
• 03:05 a green tick next to all of these items.
• 03:07 Because this tells you that you are signed in,
• 03:10 you have a valid account for each of these applications.
• 03:14 If you're not signed in to all of the different applications that SharePoint
• 03:18 needs access to to complete this flow, then the flow isn't going to work.
• 03:23 So make sure that you have a green tick and if you don't,
• 03:26 you will be asked to sign into that application.
• 03:30 Now mine all looks good, so I'm just going to say Create Flow.
• 03:33 And here we go.
• 03:34 Here are the details of my flow.
• 03:36 I can see that it's an approval flow.
• 03:38 I get a description and it's saying that the owner is me.
• 03:42 I can see my connections.
• 03:44 And most importantly right to the bottom here, it says 28 day run history.
• 03:49 Now currently, this is empty, because I haven't run this workflow yet.
• 03:54 But as you start to run it, and you can run workflows over and over again for
• 03:58 different documents, you'll see a history log down here.
• 04:02 Now this is what we call a manual workflow, an instant workflow, i.e.,
• 04:07 it's not an automatic workflow.
• 04:09 Now we're going to look at those in the next lesson but
• 04:12 the difference is that a manual workflow, I have to trigger that workflow.
• 04:17 So I need to go into my document library, select my document, and then run the flow.
• 04:21 Automatic flows are a little bit different,
• 04:24 they are automatically triggered by something that happens in SharePoint.
• 04:28 So now that we have this flow here,
• 04:30 let's send our document through this approval workflow.
• 04:33 I'm going to go back to SharePoint, Rollout Plan is still selected.
• 04:38 Let's go to our three dots down to automate and
• 04:41 take a look at what we have now.
• 04:43 Because we've created that flow I can see it there in the list request approval.
• 04:49 So all I need to do is click to select.
• 04:52 A pane opens up on the right hand side, I need to make sure again that I'm logged in
• 04:56 to all of the relevant applications and then click Continue at the bottom.
• 05:01 Now this is where I can add in some additional options, so
• 05:04 I can type in a message, I can then specify who the approvers are.
• 05:08 So who is this going to go to?
• 05:10 And you want to type in their name or their email addresses in there.
• 05:15 Now once again, because I am all on my own, I'm going to be the approver as well,
• 05:19 so I'm just going to select myself.
• 05:21 I could choose to send approval reminders if the approvers are being a little
• 05:25 bit slow in actioning this request but I'm not going to.
• 05:29 I'm just going to say run flow, and away it goes.
• 05:33 Now because I am the approver I would expect to get a message very shortly in my
• 05:37 Outlook letting me know that there is a document waiting there for me to approve.
• 05:42 I can see that I've got a message in Microsoft Teams in the approvals area of
• 05:47 Teams letting me know that approval is waiting and there is my Outlook email.
• 05:51 So let's jump across to Outlook, and I can see right at the top here,
• 05:56 please approve Rollout Plan.
• 05:58 So as the approver I have a link to the document so I can give it a read,
• 06:02 see if it's correct, and then I can choose to approve or reject.
• 06:07 Now before we decide if we want to approve or reject this document,
• 06:10 let's just minimize down Outlook and let's take a look at this flow.
• 06:14 So I'm going to go back to my Power Automate tab, I'm going to refresh this
• 06:19 page because you should see it has a little bit of a difference.
• 06:24 Because I've now run this flow in the 28-day run history, it's showing me
• 06:28 when it was run, the duration, and what the status is, which says running.
• 06:34 And the reason why this flow is still running is because it's waiting for
• 06:38 the approver to approve.
• 06:39 Remember, I'm the approver and I haven't selected approve or reject as yet.
• 06:44 And if you want to see this process and
• 06:47 see what stage of the approval you're up to in the form of a chart,
• 06:51 all you need to do is click on the workflow in the history area.
• 06:56 And it's going to show you all the steps that this workflow goes through.
• 07:00 And if there's a green tick next to the step,
• 07:03 it means it's been completed successfully.
• 07:06 So what we should find here is as we go down, you see it branches off.
• 07:10 We can see set respond to approval link.
• 07:13 That was the last task which was completed successfully.
• 07:16 And now it's waiting for approval.
• 07:19 So let's go back to Outlook, and I'm going to say approve.
• 07:24 I could choose to type in some approval comments, I'm not going to at this stage,
• 07:28 I'm going to submit my response.
• 07:30 And you should see that this workflow will now complete.
• 07:34 And there we go.
• 07:35 Everything is now green, and the workflow has run successfully.
• 07:39 And now if I go back to the details page,
• 07:41 you can see that the status has changed from running to succeeded.

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