Last week, I worked on a multilevel document approval flow in Power Automate. I needed to send an approval request each time an employee uploaded a document to the SharePoint document library, allowing the approver to respond with one of three options: Accept, Need more info, or Reject.
However, when the approval request goes to the approver, they usually only see the ‘Approve’ or ‘Reject’ buttons.
In this article, we’ll explore how to add custom buttons to the approval emails using Power Automate.
Changing the Button Text in the Start and Wait for Approval Action Email in Power Automate
I want to set up a flow when a document is uploaded to the SharePoint library. The manager then receives an approval email to approve, reject, or modify it.
If the manager clicks the “need to modify” button, the document creator receives an email indicating that the document needs modification. They should check the comments. After modifying the document, the manager gets an email to approve, reject, or need to modify it. The flow ends when the manager clicks the approve or reject button.
To do this, I created a SharePoint Document Library like below screenshot:
Here, the Approval Status column is a choice column. The choice values are Approved, Rejected, and Need to modify.
Let’s see how to create:
1. Create an automated cloud flow. Give the flow name and select the trigger ‘When a file is created or modified(properties only).’ Click on Create.
2. Now, Provide the mandatory fields, such as Site Address and Library Name.
3. Next, we will add another action, Start and wait for approval, which is sending an email when a file is created or modified in the SharePoint library.
Here, select Approval Type, which is ‘Custom Responses – Wait for all responses.’
4. You can add your custom button to the Response Options. Then, enter the Title field value. Put your manager’s email ID in the ‘Assigned to‘ field. After that, add the request letter in the Details field.
5. Afterwards, add a switch condition. In the On field, put dynamic content OutCome.
6. In the first case, check if the Outcome equals Approve.
7. Add the send email action inside the first case and update the file properties, as shown in the screenshot below.
Do not forget to update the Approval Status Value as Approved.
8. Same action when the Outcome equals Rejecte case. Check the screenshot below.
Do not forget to update the Approval Status Value as Rejected.
9. Then, when the Outcome equals Need to Modify.
10. Only send the email with the manager’s comment. Check the screenshot below.
11. Now, we need to stop the trigger when the Approval Status is equal to Approved or Rejected.
To do this, I have added two trigger conditions, as shown below.
@not(equals(triggerOutputs()?['body/ApprovalStatus/Value'], 'Approved'))@not(equals(triggerOutputs()?['body/ApprovalStatus/Value'], 'Rejected'))
Now, our flow is completed.
Let’s save the flow and test it to see how it works. Click on Save > Test >Manually > run flow.
For testing purposes, l uploaded a PDF file to the document library.
Then, the manager gets an email to approve, reject, or need to modify.
The uploaded user gets an email when the manager clicks the Approve button. The Approval Status column also updates in a Sharepoint library.
The flow will end here because we added a trigger condition. The same thing happens when the manager clicks the Reject button.
When a manager clicks the Need to Modify button then, it will not reflect in the Sharepoint library. Only the uploaded user gets an email with the manager’s comment.
When the uploaded user modifies the document and saves it, our flow triggers (when the file is modified), and the manager gets an email.
This way, we can add a Custom Button to Approval Mail using Power Automate.
I hope you follow all the steps and notice that adding custom actions like ‘Modify Request’ or ‘Further Review’ can enhance communication and make the flow more efficient and user-friendly.
You may also like to read:
- Power Automate Multilevel Approvals
- Import CSV Data to SharePoint List in Power Automate
- Create a Scheduled Cloud Flow in Power Automate
- Send Emails based on the Date in the SharePoint list using Power Automate
- Power Automate Send Email Based on Form Response
After working for more than 18 years in Microsoft technologies like SharePoint, Microsoft 365, and Power Platform (Power Apps, Power Automate, and Power BI), I thought will share my SharePoint expertise knowledge with the world. Our audiences are from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, etc. For my expertise knowledge and SharePoint tutorials, Microsoft has been awarded a Microsoft SharePoint MVP (12 times). I have also worked in companies like HP, TCS, KPIT, etc.
