A little while ago, we launched our modern approvals experiences which enable you to quickly set up automated approval workflows and review those requests, as an approver, in the approvals center. This week, we are proud to announce several new enhancements to further streamline your approval processes.

Sent requests

With this week’s release, you can now view your sent approval requests in addition to received requests.  Simply head to the approvals center by clicking on Approvals in the top navigation bar followed by Sent requests. Both tabs show you active requests that have not been approved or rejected. In an upcoming release, we will also give you the ability to view request history.

Approvals on your phone

While building our modern approvals experience, a common requirement we heard from customers was the need to conduct approvals from their phones. The Flow mobile app (available on iOS, Android, and Windows Phone) now sends you a push notification whenever you receive a new request and allows you to process all your pending requests directly from your mobile device. Just like on our web-based experience, as an approver, you can view additional details about the request like the sender and a link to the approval item and you can leave a comment along with your decision to approve or reject.

Request approval, post to Teams, or add a task in Planner for a selected file in SharePoint

In a previous post, we showed you how you can run a flow on demand for a selected file or list item directly from SharePoint. With the addition of several new templates, for a given document or list item, you can now request an approval, post to Teams, or add a task in Planner. Simply select your file or list item, click on the Flow menu, and then select the Create a flow command. In the pane that opens on the right hand side, choose from one of the templates.

 

Once you’ve created your flow, it’ll automatically show up in the Flow drop-down menu when you select a file in that list or document library. Simply select the Flow to start it.

And voila!