Quickly add approval workflows to any list or library in Microsoft 365

SharePoint and Teams seamlessly integrate across files, lists, loops, and pages. And now, we’re excited to release the latest integration. SharePoint + the Teams Approvals app bringing you fast, easy approval-tracking business solutions – to any list or library. A single toggle gets you started: Create, approve, reject, and cancel – without leaving your content or the context of your conversations. Learn more from our "Automate work with SharePoint content processes" SharePoint learning series video. Watch now: 

Whether you need to approve a purchase order, a vacation request, project milestones, or a blog post, Approvals in lists and libraries help streamline the process and collaboration among your team members.

Approvals running on a SharePoint document library in Microsoft 365; note the "Approval status" column.

How this new Teams Approval app integration works

Microsoft Lists and SharePoint document libraries provide a rich set of features to manage content and build your own solutions when collaborating with your colleagues. You can customize the look and feel, design forms, create notifications, build rules and workflows, and now, capture approval details.

From any list or library, navigate to the Automate dropdown, and select Configure Approvals:

Configure Approvals for lists and library from the Automate menu > Configure Approvals.

Once enabled, you’ll see a new special choice column under the column title, “Approval status.” This is where you can initiate new requests, track details of in-progress approvals, and act: Approve, reject, or cancel.

The "Approval status" column appears right after to enable it for a list or a library (shown here).

Kick off a new approval by adding a name (or leaving the file or item name) and specifying who needs to approve the item. You decide if all approvers need to complete the approval. Once approved, the list item status is updated.

Kickoff a Request approval from any list item or document library file.

And there's a nice fail-safe feature the team built in. If a list item was sent through a review/approval process, and was approved - changes to the item post approval will trigger a warning pop-up that lets the person know that this amount, or date, or status change has been approved and shouldn't be adjusted; to maintain good governance and process - all auditable throughout the entire review and approval process.

Staged & Sequenced Approvals

Coming soon! You’ll be able to require responses in the assigned order. This will give you even more flexibility on how you design and route your approvals.

In the future, assign the order for various individuals to respond and move your approval forward, in sequence.

Notifications in the Teams Approvals App

Once you submit a new item for approval named individuals receive a Teams activity feed notification from the Approvals app. They can then accept or reject from Teams or navigate to the source and take the same actions directly from within the list or library.

Use Rules or Power Automate to get email notifications

Rules are used to create simple email notification based on Approval status column.

Of course, you can build in further custom logic and email notifications in Power Automate. This provides you a great grow up opportunities should you need more actions to happen in parallel or in sequence – whatever your business process requires that Power Automate supports.

And soon, you’ll be able to customize and integrate your own flows with a new SharePoint connector action for lightweight Approvals. With this new action, you can automatically create new approval requests enhanced by the rich ecosystem of Power Automate connectors. For example, when a new file is added to SharePoint, you can have an approval request created automatically. Or when a planner task is set to a specific status, create a new approval request. Of course, you can also use Power Automate to integrate with 3^rd party systems, while keeping source files and approvals in SharePoint.

In the future, leverage the value of Power Automate connectors within lists and libraries Approval workflows.

A few things to note...

Some of our list and library templates have Approvals built-in and ready to go: Content scheduler with approvals & Travel requests with approvals. We also leverage Approvals within the SharePoint Premium eSignature solution. And now, take it further with the new ability to add an approval workflow to any list of library. Note: This applies to lists accessed within the SharePoint user interface, Microsoft Teams – Lists app, and Microsoft Lists itself.

If you disable approvals, this only hides the relevant columns and in-progress approvals will still be actionable in Teams. At any time, you can manually add approvals columns back into views.

 

We’ve updated the “Approvals in Lists & Document Libraries” article on support.microsoft.com. Dig into step-by-step ‘how to’ configure and use approvals. In addition, my peer, Reza Dorrani, produced a nice demo video, “EASY Document Approvals in SharePoint | Step-by-Step Tutorial.” He shares some of his own tips and tricks.

In the end...

We know you’re going to enjoy both saving time when setting up review/approval type solutions and keeping everything more in order as you track status to completion. We know not every workflow should take hours to build and require a unique skillset. Now anyone can benefit adding an approval process to their own list items and document library files.

Let us know what you think. We’re interested in fine tuning the experience and adding capabilities in the future. For now, happy approving (and rejecting) information and documents as you work.

- Nate “I approve this blog post” Tennant, Senior product manager – SharePoint, Microsoft