What the Approvals connector does out of the box
Power Automate's built-in Approvals connector lets you define who needs to approve what, in what order, with configurable time limits. Approvers receive an Adaptive Card in Teams — or an email if they prefer — containing the full context of the request: details, attachments, and any relevant data pulled from the triggering system. From that card, they can approve or reject with a single click, without leaving Teams. No separate login, no navigating to another system, no replying to a thread.
The connector supports both sequential approvals — where each approver must act before the next is notified — and parallel approvals, where all approvers are notified simultaneously and the flow resolves on the first response or when a majority is reached. Reassignment and delegation are built in: if an approver is unavailable, they can reassign to a colleague directly from the card. Every decision is recorded with a timestamp, and the full audit trail is written automatically to a SharePoint list or Dataverse table — no manual logging required.
A real approval workflow, live in a day
Building the first flow starts in Power Automate's cloud portal — no local tooling, no developer environment. Choose your trigger: a new item added to a SharePoint list, a Microsoft Forms submission, or any other supported event. Configure the Approvals action — add the approvers by name or email, write the request title and body using dynamic content from the trigger, and set a timeout after which the flow escalates or closes automatically. Add a condition: if approved, update the SharePoint item status and notify the requestor; if rejected, notify and record the reason. That is the complete flow.
The first end-to-end build — trigger, approval notification, response handling, record update — typically takes 2 to 4 hours for someone building their first flow in Power Automate. The Approvals connector itself is included in all Microsoft 365 Business and Enterprise plans, so there is no additional licence cost. Testing is immediate: submit a test item, watch the Adaptive Card arrive in Teams, approve it, and confirm the SharePoint record updates correctly. Most people have a working flow before the end of the first morning.
What changes when approvals are structured
When approvals are structured, they are visible. Anyone with access can see what is pending, who it is waiting on, and for how long. The follow-up email — "just checking if you've had a chance to look at this" — becomes unnecessary because the flow sends automatic reminders if no action is taken within a configurable window. Escalation rules can route to a manager if the approver is unavailable beyond a set period. The process runs without anyone chasing it.
The audit trail changes what is possible for compliance. Informal email threads cannot reliably demonstrate who approved what, when, and on what basis. Each record written by the Approvals connector shows the approver, the timestamp, any comment left with the decision, and the outcome — in a structured, queryable table. For regulated industries or internal governance requirements, this is the difference between a process that satisfies an audit and one that does not. The operational overhead of structured approvals, once the flow is built, is effectively zero.