Within Microsoft Flow it is possible to create approval processes. Nothing special! Simply create an approval action

Start an Approval

You will now receive an email that looks as shown below:

Approval email

Or within the Flow interface you can also approve your outstanding items

Approve using the Flow UI

 

But there is an alternative option available.

Send an email with options

And again there will be an email with Approve and Reject buttons.

 

An email asking for input

 

 

Ok, there is no Approval task this time, but who needs those anyway. If all you try to do is get an approval or rejection response then both options might be valid.

So, what is the difference?

When you start to look at the dynamic contents in any of the future steps you will note the Dynamic content available from the Send email with options action. Where the Send email with options only has Approval Email Response and Send email with options …

Dynamic content for send an email with options

… Within the approval actions you get a lot more information returned.

Dynamic content for approval actions

So when would you use the Approval and when would you use the Email option? I noticed that when I send an Approval step that for external users I get an error returned. So for any non Office 365 people that needs to be able to submit approvals the email option might be a good alternative.

By Pieter Veenstra

Business Applications and Office Apps & Services Microsoft MVP working as a Microsoft Productivity Principal Consultant at HybrIT Services. You can contact me using contact@veenstra.me.uk.

2 thoughts on “Microsoft Flow – Do you have an approval process? I’ve got 2!”
  1. Sorry, but i’m not undestanding the statement “When you start to look at the dynamic contents in any of the future steps you will note the options available are very different. Where the email option only has Approval Email Response and SelectionOption:” I can’t figure out what you did to get the screen shot you showed. Can you provide some more details?

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