Share via


SharePoint Online/Office 365: How To Develop Approval Workflows On List Item Update Event Using Microsoft Flows


In this article, we will see how to deal with SharePoint Online List Item update event.

For the demo in this article, we will consider a business scenario where on an update of any Product in the Product list, an approval process will execute and an email is sent to the approver for the selection of Price Range for the Product just updated.

To start with a demo we have a Product List in SharePoint Online Site as shown below

https://howtodowithsharepoint.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/29.png?w=800

Go to “Flow” Menu and click “Create a Flow”

https://howtodowithsharepoint.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/31.png?w=800

Here we have two choices: either we can use any available workflow template that suites our requirements or we can create a new one from scratch

https://howtodowithsharepoint.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/41.png?w=800

For this demo, we will create a Flow using blank template

Go to Flow Site by clicking “See you flow” links

https://howtodowithsharepoint.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/51.png?w=800

Click “Create from blank” this will launch Workflow Designer

https://howtodowithsharepoint.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/61.png?w=800

On the Workflow Designer, select the Trigger

We can select trigger from the any of the available services as shown highlighted below

https://howtodowithsharepoint.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/71.png?w=800

Select SharePoint Online as target service and select for the Trigger “SharePoint-When an existing item is modified”

https://howtodowithsharepoint.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/81.png?w=800

Provide the Title to the Workflow “Product Details Modification Approval Request”

https://howtodowithsharepoint.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/91.png?w=800

Create SharePoint context by providing Site URL and List Name as shown

https://howtodowithsharepoint.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/101.png?w=800

You can optionally rename the Step by selecting “Rename” option as shown below

https://howtodowithsharepoint.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/111.png?w=800

Here we have changed the name of Step to “Get SharePoint Context”

https://howtodowithsharepoint.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/121.png?w=800

Add another action to the workflow by clicking “Add an action” option

https://howtodowithsharepoint.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/131.png?w=800

Send email by selecting “Office 365 Outlook” Service and “Office 365 Outlook-Send approval email” action

https://howtodowithsharepoint.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/141.png?w=800

Rename the name of Step to “Request Approval”

https://howtodowithsharepoint.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/151.png?w=800

Choose or approver’s email in “To”. Here we are just selecting the email of the person who has originally created the Product in list by choosing “Created By Email” field

Specify Subject as applicable

Specify User Options that allows approver to select the approval options from within the mail

Specify the Body content as required. This content can consist of dynamic tokens provided by Workflow runtime as shown below

https://howtodowithsharepoint.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/161.png?w=800

Update List Item by selecting “SharePoint Online” Service and “SharePoint-Update item” action

https://howtodowithsharepoint.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/171.png?w=800

Rename the step to “Update item”

Specify Site URL and List Name

In Id field select “ID” token provided by workflow runtime. This token represents the List item Id of the item that triggered this workflow to execute.

It is important to note that values to all mandatory fields in the list must be provided. If you don’t want to change the values you can choose same values again.

https://howtodowithsharepoint.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/181.png?w=800

For Title field we have selected “Title” token that represents current value present in list for the Title field of this item

https://howtodowithsharepoint.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/191.png?w=800

In “Product Price Range” field choose “SelectedOption” token that will hold the value selected by the approver from within the mail

https://howtodowithsharepoint.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/201.png?w=800

Once all the Steps are configured as required we can save the workflow by clicking “Save flow”

https://howtodowithsharepoint.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/211.png?w=800

Click “Done” to return back to the workflow dashboard

https://howtodowithsharepoint.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/221.png?w=800

On the workflow dashboard, we can see the details of services used within this workflow

https://howtodowithsharepoint.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/231.png?w=800

Now modify and the Product in Product List and notice the “Product Price Range” field which is currently set to “Low”

https://howtodowithsharepoint.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/241.png?w=800

Once the Product details have been changed, this will trigger the workflow that we have developed

https://howtodowithsharepoint.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/251.png?w=800

On execution the workflow we can see a new email hitting the inbox of the approver

https://howtodowithsharepoint.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/261.png?w=800

Let’s consider the approver submitted “High” as approval option

https://howtodowithsharepoint.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/271.png?w=800

This action will update the “Product Price Range” field for the list item to “High” as shown below

https://howtodowithsharepoint.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/281.png?w=800

Hope you find it helpful.