Beginner | Flow of the Week: Planner Approval Flow
Hello Flow Fans!
This weeks Flow of The Week comes from a Flow and PowerApps MVP – Melissa Hubbard @Melihubb
Check out her post and be sure to leave her a comment below!
— On November 8th new Flow triggers for Planner were announced.
This Flow uses the “When a task is completed” trigger to send an approval email to the PM, stakeholder, or person of interest to notify them of the task being marked as complete and ask for their approval. If it is approved, an item is added to a SharePoint list to track the completed tasks for reporting purposes and a message is posted to Teams notifying them of the task being successfully completed. If it is rejected, a message is posted in Teams alerting them to take further action on the task and contact the PM or stakeholder for more information.
This Flow is useful because often on project, someone wants to be notified when a task is marked as complete. This Flow also gives them the chance to approve or reject the task being marked as complete. Also, as a sidenote, some users may have a business need to store completed Planner tasks in a SharePoint list for reporting purposes.
To begin building the Flow choose Create from blank. For the trigger search for Planner and select When a task is completed. Select the plan you want the Flow to be triggered by from the drop down.
Click Add an action and search for Start an Approval. Enter the email address of the person you want to approve the completed task and the subject to something that makes sense for your organization. Click advanced options to change the body of the email.
Click Add a condition then click on Add dynamic content and enter Response is equal to Approve.
Under the If yes section, click Add an action then search for Create item in SharePoint list.Note: you will need a SharePoint list that has the fields shown below.
Click Add dynamic content to use the Planner task metadata to populate the SharePoint list item fields. Click Add an action and search for Teams and select Post message. Select the Team and Channel you want the message to post to when a completed task is approved. Enter your message making sure to use the Title of the task.
Under the If no section, click Add an action and search for Teams and select Post message. Select the Team and Channel you want the message to post to when a completed task is rejected. Enter your message making sure to use the Title of the task.
And that's it! An approval flow that runs off planner and notifies in teams in just a few minutes. If you like this post from Melissa and want to learn more about her, check out her blurb below and be sure to follow her on Twitter!
Melissa is an Office 365 and SharePoint consultant who specializes in simplifying and automating business processes using Flow and SharePoint Designer. She is experienced in managing projects throughout the entire lifecycle as well as developing and implementing SharePoint and Office 365 solutions. User adoption, governance, and training are topics she is especially passionate about! Check out her other Flow blog posts here.