Microsoft 365 Community Community Demos, 19 Oct 2022

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From YouTube: Power Automate and Microsoft Teams approvals advanced scenarios

Description

Approval workflows access user and approval status information stored in Dataverse tables. In this 16-minute citizen developer-focused demo, Tomasz Poszytek focuses on 5 key tables and what happens in tables when approval tasks are created, completed, reassigned and cancelled. Step through using custom actions to accomplish approval scenarios such as manual/automated task reassignment and approval completion after 80% of assignees approve, that cannot be accomplished presently with out-of-the box approval functionality. This PnP Community demo is taken from the Microsoft Power Platform community call – October 2022, recorded on October 19, 2022.

Demo Presenter
• Tomasz Poszytek | @TomaszPoszytek

Supporting materials
• Demo – Power Automate approvals | https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLaHN-sDizNyWt1_qajlDZsFOU-A68ZVe0

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• Twitter https://twitter.com/microsoft365dev
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Learn more
• Microsoft 365 Unified Sample gallery - https://aka.ms/m365/samples
• Microsoft 365 Platform Community in YouTube - https://aka.ms/m365/videos
• Microsoft 365 Platform Community Blog - https://aka.ms/m365pnp/blog
• Microsoft 365 Platform Community - https://aka.ms/m365/community

A

B

Poland and I'm stoked to be here even more when I learned about the badge that is going to be uh given to all those contributors in October, so anyways, uh just in short words, I'm, really love, I, really love to work with podcasts. For my daughter for over four years, uh I do a couple of lots: I mean lots of things around contributions, like video recordings blog posting.

B

So if you like to to connect with me and follow what I'm doing then here are some hyperlinks uh just navigate to to any of them, and I can take take it from there.

B

So, if you'd like to ask me questions an hour after the even all, this call and then feel free to reach out to me all right, so I'm going to talk about the Palm Advanced scenarios in Power Platform approvals, and the first thing that we need to to know is that um the built-in purpose from approvals, the power automate approvals, that we can use Microsoft teams as well.

B

They are working on dataverse, of course, and there are a couple of tables which are taking part in the approvals and by telling you this uh I want to show you some scenarios that you cannot simply achieve by using the out-of-box functionalities, and so first of all, there is the main table that is called approval, which is um storing like a header of the approval. So the information for the title description who has created it and after the approval is completed. uh What was the outcome? Yeah, then?

B

The approval request is a table that stores information about every single task generated during the follow-up process, together with information to whom it is assigned. Of course, then, the employer response is serving information about every single completed task, so information about who completed it um and what was the outcome? And what was the comment? Now then?

B

The user table is used to combine all these tables together because uh it has trim up the aid information to uh the diverse information about the users and the approval table is the most important one in terms of those custom scenarios, because it holds information about every single action in every instance of a flow that contains an action related to approval. So if you have a flow that has a starting weight, fun approval, it will contain just one one entry in the flow Pro table.

B

If you have two actions like start an approval and then wait for an approval, then it will contain these two rows here as well, and then one of the important the most important things, one of the most important data which is stored in flow approval, is a floatification theory column that once you post a Json, whatever post request that flow notification Yuri, it will resume the flow that is waiting for that approval to be completed, and so I'm speaking about uh the scenarios that we're going through.

B

You have to be aware that first flows are environment related, so that there is no like a general storage for all approvals. In all the environments you have, they are stored in data versus mentioned, therefore, they're, really environment related and, furthermore, those actions which are waiting for the approach to be completed, uh both speaking about power automate like wait for an approval and wait for like adaptive cards to be responsible adaptive card, they only wait 30 days so, but it doesn't mean that the approval data is removed from dataverse.

B

No, it's not and therefore uh what I'll be showing you can as well be used to create some really long-running um workflows, which can even take like years to be completed. So there are a couple of scenarios like when the task is created.

B

um Power automate is writing um to two tables so into approval and the flow requests. Some specific information, then, in terms of the completion, then the um that information is starting the pro responses. So all those information about uh completed tasks and in approval a table. uh It updates the record with outcome and and daytime information and some statistics as well.

B

So speaking about the reassignment, the only uh things that are happening are happening within the approval request say it was like one task is being activated, the other one task is being created, record is being activated, the other one is activated, is created and when speaking about the reassignment and what we can do out of box they're like principles which power automate is following, or maybe the current approvals API. So first uh user cannot reassign a task which is not assigned to themselves, so you can't reassign others, others assignees tasks.

B

uh Also, you cannot reassign it ask yourself. Why would you and you can't really sign it as to them to the initiator so to the person who started the approval process, uh but what I will be showing you uh can be overcome?

B

I mean those principles can be, can be uh overcome with the custom custom um actions that you can do on the approvals table. Obviously, and lastly, when a task is canceled, uh then the original information uh is updated again in approvals table uh with the outcome that is canceled and the result that is canceled, and so that's it it's so. Thank you. uh It's just that I. Will you know jump over to demos because they are way more interesting?

B

So first, uh first information I have like a couple of flows running here which have already assigned tasks um and they're. Quite simple: they're, just assigning a tasks generating me um or returning with this just uh approval ID, which I need to grab for the future scenarios.

B

um This first task or this first workflow uh I, will just show you how you can complete any running approval uh like no matter if it is already completed or well, it has to sorry whether it's waiting for one approval or whether it's waiting for 10 approvals, um the point is about the approvals are also important. Is the fact that, if you choose to approve reject, everyone must approve, it will be waiting either for the first rejection or first approve of all the approvals.

B

uh If you choose the proof, reject uh everyone must approved but custom responses, then it will be always waiting for everyone who is assigned a task to complete their tasks, and this might be a bottleneck in many scenarios. Just imagine if someone is on holidays or is on a sick leave and they just cannot complete their tasks, but on the other hand, you are not able to reassign these tasks or let others to complete these tasks.

B

So what I will be showing you is to help you create those um really Advanced uh approvals that can uh that can handle such scenarios so right now, I'll navigate to the workflow, which is going to complete any approval.

B

Its mechanism is quite simple, I mean it is, and it is not uh that very deep details are on my YouTube channel if you'd like to to follow um and to get into details. So first of all, the workflow is taking information about the approval itself about all the assigned tasks, any information about the tasks which are already completed so like if I go now to list of my assigned tasks and I'll just complete one of these, which are assigned in this approval process um every snow. So maybe I'll go to another user.

B

Who should have that task signed to him? uh Oh there, it is so he'll complete yep, and that's done it's done. Yes, he's done so anyways. This flow is now uh will take us for information about the completed tasks and then it is reaching out to the table to get the flow approval into the four Pros table to get the information about the fluentification Yuri. Now, what I found out is that if you have the same scenario as I do have so that you have like two actions, one is assigning an approval.

B

The second one is wedding. There are two records, although only the first one, so that for the first action is having the same grid as the approval. The other one is not having the same good, but it's having the same sequence ID.

B

uh So uh it's called the flow sequence ID and therefore, if after trying to get the flonificationary with the first attempt with the first action uh using the approval, ID I am getting nothing so that the phone notification here is empty I'm. Doing the second call to check if there is a flow notification, Theory available for the flow run, sequence ID, that I was able to obtain from the first call, and that's just the most movie cumbersome piece. uh There is as well here.

B

In that um part of going through the approval responses, uh some logic because I'm just building the request body that is going to be sent to the fortification Yuri and that request body is following simply the schema of the Json, which the action wait for an approval is expecting so that this, if the schema is matching, then the response will be turned into those Dynamic outcomes, and you will be simply able to use them in next actions in your cloudflow and so finally, after all, these data is obtained.

B

The flow is marking the existing approval as completed and then is building the request body uh that is in the end, going to be sent to this fortification Theory. So just let me show you how um this can be done uh now trigger this workflow by providing that flow by that approval. Id, and here we go so oh, and by the way this request that you are sending it for notificationary, it can be literally anything. It just has to be a valid Json and it is being returned one to one uh through the up.

B

Actually, it's waiting so if I see now approve.

B

But then this outcome is going to be stored uh in dataverse, and it will be as well returned by the action which is now waiting. So let me navigate here, you see now. The information is that if my flow runs successfully and when I go through the outcomes, uh I can see that there is My outcome, just written uh the response summary because General researcher has already approved their task and there were no other responses, and even though that the approval was waiting for three responses or the first Rejection, it is already completed.

B

um The second scenario I wanted to show you um before before I move on to the third one. If I still have time is the reassignment, because one of one of those things I found the most important when are we speaking about the workflows? Is that whenever we have that approval um process waiting for multiple assignments for their responses?

B

We really can, as mentioned before, we can very easily find ourselves in like in a bottleneck, I mean the process can can meet at bottleneck, because some of these approvals are simply unavailable uh at the moment they are requested, or they just want to spend some more time on doing whatever, and we might first think that, okay, so if that person is not available.

B

Just procrastinate for whatever weeks so anyways the recycling task works. This way that it is obtaining or getting the information about, the current assignee uh and the new assignee. uh It is as well getting information about the existing task details because in the end it has to create a new entry in upload requests uh table.

B

That simply looks up, looks of the existing uh approval request and once this new approval is created when this new entry is created with the new assignee, then the existing one is simply set to a reassigned stage: complete and Status inactive. So now, once I hit and test it, I also need to navigate back to another example. I think it was that one, this task is pre-assigned Task.

B

You see this assigned just to two employees, so, like General researcher doesn't have this task uh assigned and now I'll get the approval ID and where to start here, I think again, it was here so I want to reassign my task to John and run it so just to show you um I. Have this reassigned as present meanwhile John well, John has but it's uh the old one, so I can see if he can't sell it uh and it will not.

B

It will not uh sorry to cancel but uh reject it, but it will not terminate the workflow here right, so the workflow is still running, so it means that it wasn't, that instance, uh the instance uh this task was coming from was terminated or canceled before so still the workflow is sweating uh and this tasks that I have here assigned so just note 33 minutes ago and now refresh and I, should not see it right.

B

So it's gone from my list, however, when I switch to John's list of tasks and now refresh keys, you'll see that right here this has now appeared so now, if I reject it here, whatever I'm not very creative, it will now complete the uh the workflow this workflow yep, because it is said to wait for either or approvals or first rejection. So in that case um the outcome is reject because John to whom it was really signed, decided to reject the task. Okay, so all right so I mean the last example.

B

I would like to show you was about how to create this kind of scenario where you have a workflow running and you have it assigned like five assignes or 10 assignees, but you want to complete it after a specific quarter of of complete of responses he's made. um That is the same as we used to have in SharePoint workflows.

B

These are SharePoint design workflows so that we really need to adjust for the specific percentage of approvals to be collected, and that is basically following the same scenario or the same steps as I showed you in the first example. The only difference is that ISO have a table uh well that, in this scenario, is used to uh to store information about what is the percentage of tasks that has to be. That has to be uh made so that the whole approval is collected.

B

And then you can imagine that there is a workflow which is being triggered every time. There is a change that is happening inside the responses table and it is simply checking if the number of responses to that specific approval approval process is already equal or above the defined port, and then, if it is above the quarter or equal or above then it is simply following the same scenario as in the first example.

B

Possibly it's just completing the workflow by posting that request body collected from the responses table with all the details of other of all the given responses uh and is marking the approval as a completed one. So I'll just not go through details and with the demo.

B

Thank you very much for this opportunity to showcase this uh and I really think this has a very much uh over the potential unless we are given some cool approvals, API that we can that we can just do it out of box what I'm showing you uh as long as there is no such API, then uh well, you need to have premium licenses and and take it from here. So if you have any questions, I'll be here on the chat to answer them for you.

A

Awesome, thank you. Thomas yeah, a lot of information here. Folks, we put uh Thomas, has done a lot of videos as well, so you'll find that link in the chat, don't hesitate to take a look there and we'll have him back again uh to talk a little bit more about it.