{"id":1328,"date":"2021-08-05T11:26:23","date_gmt":"2021-08-05T17:26:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.idubbs.com\/blog\/?p=1328"},"modified":"2021-08-05T11:26:23","modified_gmt":"2021-08-05T17:26:23","slug":"modern-sharepoint-workflow-and-approval-visibility-with-power-automate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.idubbs.com\/blog\/2021\/modern-sharepoint-workflow-and-approval-visibility-with-power-automate\/","title":{"rendered":"Modern SharePoint &ndash; Workflow and Approval Visibility with Power Automate"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019ve been out of the pages and workflow game for a bit while focusing elsewhere \u2013 so playing a bit of catchup in certain areas. Plenty of folks have been digging in here for a long time, so what I\u2019m learning and re-learning isn\u2019t news, but it is new to me and I\u2019m sure there are others in the same boat. There are plenty of folks on older versions of SharePoint that are, or will eventually, make a similar move to SharePoint Online as I\u2019m working on\/helping with right now. <\/p>\n<p>In legacy versions of SharePoint, we\u2019ve had workflows and approvals around for some time. These have been managed through SharePoint Designer (SPD) (\u2026may it RIP) and surfaced directly in the list settings where workflows were implemented. Looking something like this: <\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.idubbs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/LegacyWorkflow.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"456\" height=\"282\" title=\"LegacyWorkflow\" style=\"display: inline; background-image: none;\" alt=\"LegacyWorkflow\" src=\"http:\/\/www.idubbs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/LegacyWorkflow_thumb.png\" border=\"0\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>In \u201cModern\u201d SharePoint &#8211; SharePoint Online \u2013 the preferred and recommended workflow solution is Power Automate, which creates \u201cflows\u201d instead of workflows. <\/p>\n<p>The SharePoint and Power Platform (umbrella group within MS that owns Power Automate and sibling technologies) folks have done a nice job integrating Power Platform tools within the SharePoint interface \u2013 including Power Automate and specifically approval workflows. Baked directly in the SharePoint list top nav\/action bar: <\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.idubbs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/Automate-Integration.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"330\" height=\"133\" title=\"Automate Integration\" style=\"display: inline; background-image: none;\" alt=\"Automate Integration\" src=\"http:\/\/www.idubbs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/Automate-Integration_thumb.png\" border=\"0\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Out of the box, configuring a page approval flow is super easy and pretty darn elegant as an approval solution. Kudos Microsoft. <\/p>\n<p>NOW. One of my first questions after turning one of these on was \u201cWhere can I see all my open approvals and manage them as needed?\u201d. Because hey, I want visibility and the ability to override stuff. A few key points: <\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Configuring a page approval flow adds an \u201cApproval Status\u201d field to your library \u2013 so you can see the status in your Site Pages view<\/li>\n<li>Users can review approvals on the submitted page itself and get there via the \u201cthree dot\u201d menu on individual items in the Site Pages view \u201cMore \u2013&gt; Review Approvals\u201d<\/li>\n<li>Open approvals do NOT show up in the Workflow Settings page (shown above) <\/li>\n<ul>\n<li>Initially, this might be kind of irritating, but it does make sense. The Workflow Settings page is SharePoint workflows, not Power Automate approvals<\/li>\n<li>It would be kind of nice to have some note or even a link to where users can find the new approvals, but I suspect this page has a limited life left and probably isn\u2019t worth updating<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>So, if you haven\u2019t guessed it yet \u2013 where we find that list of open approvals, as well as history and lots of other goodies, is in the Power Automate interface.<\/strong> <\/p>\n<p>There are several ways to get there, but the easiest for folks working in SharePoint already is to use the menu shown above and select the \u201cSee your flows\u201d option. This will open a tab to Power Automate. In the left menu you\u2019ll see Action Items \u2013&gt; Approvals. <\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.idubbs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/Approval-Flows.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"403\" height=\"278\" title=\"Approval Flows\" style=\"display: inline; background-image: none;\" alt=\"Approval Flows\" src=\"http:\/\/www.idubbs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/Approval-Flows_thumb.png\" border=\"0\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Ultimately, this is super easy and makes sense. But if you\u2019re coming from legacy SharePoint and you haven\u2019t made the mental shift to working with Power Automate yet you might just need a little nudge. Hopefully this helped. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019ve been out of the pages and workflow game for a bit while focusing elsewhere \u2013 so playing a bit of catchup in certain areas. Plenty of folks have been [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[187,21],"tags":[189,190,138,188],"class_list":["post-1328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-power-platform","category-sharepoint-online","tag-approvals","tag-flows","tag-modern","tag-power-automate"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pgWQ1-lq","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idubbs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1328","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idubbs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idubbs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idubbs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idubbs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1328"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.idubbs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1328\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1329,"href":"https:\/\/www.idubbs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1328\/revisions\/1329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idubbs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idubbs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idubbs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}