In this article, we are going to create a Microsoft flow to approve a document added to the SharePoint document library. We will see how we can use Approval action and use it in different strategies.

Requirement:

• Create an approval workflow that triggers when a document is added or modified in the SharePoint document library.
• The Document/list item should be approved by the approvers in the list.
• The document /list item can be rejected by anyone of the approvers.

Create a document approval flow – Only one approver

• Access Microsoft Flows from your SharePoint document Library

• Once you are in Power Automate, Go to My flows
• Click on New >> Instant – from blank.

• Skip the next screen, you can give a name to your Flow later.
• Choose the trigger. Here based on your requirement you can select when should the flow trigger.

• I have selected When an item is created or modified.
• Add Site Address, List name, and View (optional and recommended) as shown in the screenshot.

• Now add an action. Start and wait for an approval

• Select Approval type: check the link for the detailed description on each of the approval types

• Here, we are going to select the second option – Approve/reject – First to respond.
• Enter the details as mentioned in the screenshot below.
  • In the Assigned To field, you can put multiple approvers but as we have selected our approval type, if only one approver approves, then the flow should be good to proceed.
  • Apart from that, you can add a link and description of the item.
  • You can Enable notification and Enable reassignment.
  • You can also attach multiple attachments with the approval.
• Click on save.
• Now, we will perform an action when the document is approved or rejected. Let’s send an email to the Manager of the project.
• Add a condition in the Next Step.
• In the condition, we will compare the outcome of the approval with the value – Approve, and based on that we will send an email.

• Action, based on the Outcome of the approval. You can customize this according to your requirement.

• Let’s run the flow.
  • First Step: Got the email for approval.
  
  • Let’s approve the document.
  • While approving, you can see there’s another option called – Reassign (this is because of Enable reassignment settings).
  
  • After approving, the manager will get an email.
  

Create a document approval flow – Everyone must approve

• If you want all your approvers to approve the document, then you can choose - Approve/reject – Everyone must approve in Approval Type.

• After selecting this, your flow will be completed only when all the approvers Approve or at least one Rejects the document.
• This kind of flow is required when approvals are needed from multiple designated resources, like a manager, Senior Managers, and department head for single document approval.

Create a sequential approval flow

• If you want to process approvals like…
  • Person 1 approves then Person 2 approves …., then in the same flow mentioned above, you can add condition and in success run, you can add another approval action.
• So, your flow would be something like this.