If you’ve been working with SharePoint and Power Automate for any length of time and you work with SharePoint approval requests to get some form or file approved, you’ve probably experienced the frustration of trying to create approval workflows that feel seamlessly integrated with your SharePoint lists and libraries. The traditional Power Automate approval actions work, but they exist in their own bubble—approvers get emails and Teams notifications, but the approval status and responses aren’t automatically reflected back in your SharePoint list where everyone can see them.

Microsoft has rolled out a new SharePoint action in Power Automate called Create an approval request for an item or file that fundamentally changes how approvals work with SharePoint. This isn’t just another approval action—it’s a bridge that finally connects Power Automate’s approval capabilities with SharePoint’s built-in modern approval interface. In this post and associated video, I’ll show you how to use it.

What Makes This Different from Regular Power Automate Approvals?

The key difference lies in integration. When you use the standard Power Automate approval actions, the approval process happens entirely within Power Automate and Teams. Your SharePoint list remains oblivious to what’s happening. You might get an email saying something was approved, but unless you build additional workflows to update your list, there’s no visual indication of the approval status directly in SharePoint.

With this new SharePoint approval request action, everything changes. The SharePoint approval request is created directly within SharePoint’s modern approval system, which means:

• Approval status appears automatically in your SharePoint list
• Approvers can see and respond to approvals directly from the list item
• The system automatically tracks who approved, when they approved, and any comments
• Items become protected from changes once they’re submitted for approval

Setting Up Modern Approvals in SharePoint

Before you can use this new action, you need to enable the built-in approval functionality in your SharePoint list or library. This is straightforward: Click the Automate button in the toolbar of your list or library, and click Configure Approvals. Enable Approvals and click Apply.

As soon as approvals are enabled, you’ll have 4 new columns in your list or library:

• Approval Status
• Approvers
• Approval Creator
• Responses

These aren’t just display columns—they’re functional elements that integrate directly with the approval workflow. When someone submits an item for approval, you’ll see the status (it’s a button) change to Requested, and as the approval progresses, the status updates automatically.

The New SharePoint Approval Requests Action

The Create an Approval Request for an item or file action appears in the SharePoint connector within Power Automate. When you’re building your flow, you’ll find it listed specifically as a SharePoint action, not under the general Approvals connector. This placement makes sense because it’s designed to work exclusively with SharePoint lists and libraries that have the modern approval feature enabled.

The action offers two approval types:

Default Approval

This works like a parallel approval process. You can specify multiple approvers, and they all receive the approval request simultaneously. You can configure whether you need responses from all recipients or just the first person to respond.

Multi-stage Approval

This creates a sequential approval process where approvers must respond in a specific order. Each stage waits for the previous one to complete before moving to the next approver.

One important limitation with multi-stage approvals: you cannot use the same email address for multiple stages. If you’re testing and want to approve something yourself at different stages, you’ll need to use different accounts or find colleagues to help with testing.

How the Workflow Actually Works

Here’s where things get interesting from a user experience perspective. Unlike traditional Power Automate approval flows that sit and wait for responses (potentially timing out), this new action creates the approval request and immediately completes. The flow doesn’t pause—it starts the approval process and moves on to any subsequent actions you’ve configured.

This design choice has significant implications:

• Your flows won’t time out waiting for approvals
• You can add actions after the approval creation that execute immediately
• To respond to completed approvals, you’ll need to create separate flows triggered by item modifications

Here’s the interface when you click on the button in the approval status column on an item:

Notifications and User Experience

The approval notifications work differently than traditional Power Automate approvals. The new SharePoint approval action sends Teams notifications but doesn’t automatically send emails. If you want email notifications, you need to add a separate Send Email action to your flow.

From the approver’s perspective, the experience is much more integrated. When they receive a Teams notification and click through to the item, they can:

• See the approval details directly in the SharePoint list
• Use the approve/reject buttons right from the list item
• View all approval history and comments in context
• Access approval details even when viewing individual items

Here is the interface where you can open a single list item from the item’s link, and see the approval details button at the top of the item if an approval process has been started on it.

Document Libraries and the “Final” Status

When working with document libraries, the approval process includes an additional safeguard. Documents submitted for approval are marked as final as soon as SharePoint approval requests are started, and if someone tries to edit the document during the approval process, they see a warning that saving changes will remove the final status and cancel the approval request. If anyone edits the file in any way during the process, the approval status is automatically reset back to Not submitted.

Note that this protection mechanism ensures document integrity during the approval process, but it also means this approach isn’t suitable for collaborative approval workflows where multiple people need to edit the document as part of the approval process.

After Approval Workflows

Since the approval creation flow doesn’t wait for responses, if you need anything to happen after the approval, that will require a separate flow. The most effective approach is to create another flow, triggered by item modifications with a trigger condition that filters for items where the approval status equals “Approved.”

Trigger Conditions for Optimizing Flow Execution

For example, to trigger only when approval status equals “Approved,” you’d use this:

@equals(triggerBody()?['{ApprovalStatus}/Label'],'Approved')

After the item or file has been approved, you may want other actions to occur, such as sending emails, creating items in other lists, converting a file to a PDF, or moving a file.

In this other workflow that triggers when the item has been finally approved, be sure NOT to add any Update item or Update file actions. If a flow makes a change to the item or file after it has been approved, this will set the approval status back to the default status, Not Submitted.

Practical Limitations and Considerations

While this new functionality represents a significant improvement, there are some limitations to consider:

Teams Dependency: Since notifications only go through Teams (unless you add email actions), users who don’t actively use Teams might miss these SharePoint approval requests.

List/Library Visibility: The action only shows lists and libraries that have the modern approval feature enabled. If you don’t see your list in the dropdown, check whether you’ve enabled approvals in the list settings.

Document Editing: For document libraries, the approval process essentially locks documents from editing. This works well for final review processes but isn’t suitable for collaborative editing workflows.

External Users: You can include external users in approval processes, but they need appropriate permissions and Teams access to receive and respond to notifications.

Advanced Integration Possibilities

The real power of this new action becomes apparent when you combine it with other SharePoint and Power Automate capabilities. Create approval workflows that:

• Automatically determine approvers based on metadata, org structure (your manager) or user properties
• Send different notifications to different stakeholders
• Update related lists or systems once approvals complete
• Create audit trails and reporting dashboards
• Integrate with other business systems through additional Power Automate actions

Why This Matters for Business Users

This integration addresses one of the most common complaints about SharePoint approval processes: the disconnect between the workflow approvals and the user interface. Previously, building a complete approval solution required multiple flows, custom columns, and often complex logic to keep everything synchronized.

Now, business users can create approval processes that feel natural and intuitive to end users. The approval status is visible right in the list, approvers can respond from multiple locations (Teams, SharePoint, or mobile), and the entire process maintains a clear audit trail.

For organizations that have been hesitant to implement approval workflows due to complexity, this new action significantly lowers the barrier to entry. You can create simple, functional, user-friendly approval processes with minimal technical complexity.

Looking Forward

My opinion is that this new SharePoint approval action represents a broader trend toward better integration between Microsoft 365 applications. Rather than treating each tool as a separate entity, Microsoft is creating more seamless experiences that leverage the strengths of each platform while maintaining consistent user interfaces.

For business users working with SharePoint and Power Automate, this new action is worth exploring immediately. It solves real problems that many organizations face with simple approval processes and provides a foundation for building more sophisticated workflow solutions. Whether you’re managing document approvals, request processing, or any other business process requiring sign-offs, the integrated SharePoint approval action brings approval workflows into the modern era of Microsoft 365 collaboration.

Would you like to learn Power Automate? Check out my very own online 10 hour comprehensive course!

About The Author

Laura Rogers

Power Apps Trainer @ IW Mentor | Microsoft MVP

Rogers, L (04/02/2026) SharePoint Approval Requests in Power Automate. SharePoint Approval Requests in Power Automate – @WonderLaura – Laura Rogers