Table of Contents
This post and video will show how to create dynamic and sequential approvals in Power Automate. The purpose is to route approval requests to different approvers based on an attribute associated with a record, ensuring that approvals happen in a specific, predefined order.
In one of our previous blogs, we demonstrated how to create dynamic approvals that are sent in a single request at the same time, to learn more about this, check it out.
Use case description
For this example, we’re working with list of Projects that is linked to a department, when the project is created, we want to extract department and check who are the approvers linked to the department.
We will need an approval matrix that lists all the departments, all the approvers for each department and the order in which approvals must be sent:
For this video and blog, we’re working with SharePoint lists, but the same logic can be applied regardless of the data source being referenced, such as SQL or Dataverse.
Solution description
Set up the Approval Matrix
To manage dynamic approvals, an Approval Matrix SharePoint list needs to be created created. This list defines:
- Department
- Approval levels (indicating the order of approvals)
- Approvers assigned to each level
Create Power Automate workflow
- Add triggerwhen a new project item is created in SharePoint.
- Retrieve approver from the Approval Matrix list, filtered by the selected department. Learn about data filtering in SharePoint here: https://powergi.net/blog/ultimate-guide-to-odata-query-filters-in-sharepoint/
Approach 1: Using the Built-in Sequential Approval Action
Power Automate has an out-of-the-box a “Start and wait for an approval” action with a sequential approval option, it sends one approval request containing multiple sequential approvers and Power Automate manages the approval sequence and responses.
Approach 2: Individual Sequential Approval Requests
An alternative method sends individual approval requests to each approver one at a time inside a For Each loop. Each approval request is sent separately, allowing for intermediate actions such as logging or email notifications.
This approach provides greater control and flexibility but requires more workflow design.
Step-by-step walkthrough
Watch the video below to see a step-by-step walkthrough by Graciela, where she shows how to create the approval matrix and use it to create sequential approvals:
How our Power Automate Development services can help
This is a very simple yet extremely powerful concept that can be implemented in scenarios of various complexity levels, whether the approval rules only depend on department or on more criteria such as company or project amount.
Using our Power Automate and Power Platform consulting services, we have implemented it many times for multiple clients. If you’d like some help building robust and dynamic approval workflows, contact us, we’ll be more than happy to have a conversation and see how we can be of help for your team.
