Power automate or power apps for basic forms approval?

[jblackburnHWGA]

We have the usual school forms we want to digitize and add in a digital approval process.

 

For example. A leave of absence form

 

Teacher currently gets a physical form from reception, fills it in, leaves it in a pigeon hole. Person who approves them picks them up. E-mails person if approved or not.

 

How do i do that process digitally?

The only guidance i can find online doesn't have privacy in the process. they're more business based. Others can see the request. The form would obviously need to be confidential

 

Any pointers or help would be greatly appreciated.

 

Thanks

[River]

If you use Office 365 you could use Forms, or there is the Approval app in Teams. There is a workflow App that combines the two which could work for leave requests.

[clareq]

SharePoint lists, with powerapps creating the form, and powerautomate in the background sending the emails. You can set the list permissions so users can only see the forms they have submitted, and give approvers permissions to see all.

[jblackburnHWGA]

SharePoint lists, with powerapps creating the form, and powerautomate in the background sending the emails. You can set the list permissions so users can only see the forms they have submitted, and give approvers permissions to see all.

 

Hi Sorry for the long delay in my reply. Many thanks for the replies! I'll have a go at making this today.

 

Clareq if you have any good guides or youtube vids to hand that would help me please share. Thanks

[clareq]

have a look at Shane Young's You Tube channel. I've not found a problem I can't fix using his guides.

[jthompson]

One bugbear I've found with using Power Automate for an approval process is that a workflow will fail if left awaiting approval for too many days. I want to say 30 days? You might therefore want to design your workflow with that in mind, perhaps including a timer in it which will automatically cancel a request if not approved within 10 days or something. That way, if an approver allows something to lapse, there can be a notification back to the requester to have another go.

[jblackburnHWGA]

Thanks jthompson. They are leave of absence forms and leave forms. Approval or denial is normally quite quick but its good to know if we start adding in order approval process.

I've just got to get the kids to leave me alone now so i can concentrate

[Casper_Lad]

Another vote for Sharepoint List and Power Automate. I have recently designed a similar process but for Purchase Invoice Approvals.

Sharepoint List with a "status" field. Then point power automates triggers once the status has been changed to "awaiting approval". There are a fair few videos online covering the approval process. Just copy one of those and tweak it accordingly to suit. Shane Youngs YouTube as mentioned above is a great starting point!

[jblackburnHWGA]

I've done a short term solution using forms and automate. Staff member fills in the form. Automate hold the approval and rejection processes then e-mails based on the outcome. Its not too bad. I'm going to sit and learn some power apps though, it has a lot of potential for a lot of things.

[Frodo_Baggins]

Forms and approvals through automate at a past job for me, then feed the responses back into a SharePoint list for a nice pretty view - easy to setup and showed our HR team how to do it so they could do it in the future (hopefully me successor didn't get hounded with that one )

Have seen a colleague do some fancy bits with Powerapps but forms and automate might sort you best and is within the realms of what a standard user can setup with a little bit of help (we used it for new staff approvals for HR)

[coz44]

Sorry to jump on the thread, but has anyone got any idea on how to do this with the approval going to a specific person depending on who submits the form? I am looking at making something very similar in power apps but the approval will go to each persons line manager, which varies across the school. I know it most likely involves lists but I haven't worked with lists yet.

I am also looking for a way to display the remaining allocation to the person before they book, and reset this each September but this is a step to put in later on.

[jblackburnHWGA]

You can set managers in exchange. Then as part of automate it looks up the manager and sends for first approval.

 

I side stepped it and just added a manager e-mail field in the form. I'm getting the person completing the form to submit the manager e-mail then using that for the approval process

[clareq]

I do the same - a manager's e-mail field on the form. It's amazing how many people don't know their manager's e-mail address, or can't spell their name.

[clareq]

I am also looking for a way to display the remaining allocation to the person before they book, and reset this each September but this is a step to put in later on.

 

I use Power Automate to add a row to an excel spreadsheet, use the spreadsheet to do the maths, then update a field in the list. We reset manually in September.