Form and Automate

[JPTaylor2]

have a form that I created with Microsoft Forms. The form captures the following: Users email address, Supervisors Email Address, and the user has to upload supporting documents for their request. I need to do a couple of things:

1. When a form is submitted by a user it will automatically email to the supervisors email address on the form for approval or denial of the request. This approval also needs to include a copy or link to the submitted form for the supervisor to see what was submitted.

2. If the supervisor denies the request an email will automatically send to the users email address notifiying them that their request was denied.

3. If the supervisor approves the request it will automatically send an email to an email group that has been programmed into automate for processing.

4. If the final processing of the request is approved an email will be sent to the user informing them of the approval and any relevant account information.

5. If the final processing is denied an email will be sent to the user and their supervisor informing them that the request was denied and why.

6. Lastly, I need to track all submitted forms for where they are in the approval/denial process and keep this information for a specified retention period. This tracking should include all the fields on the form.

What is the best way for me to reach my desired results. I have created the form already (https://forms.office.com/Pages/DesignPageV2.aspx?subpage=design&FormId=fNKMs8pXl0W-KCLfQ91H8Y-92b-Os...) 

[David_MA]

What you outline above is a logical process that can be accomplished in Power Automate. You just need to implement it. The only problem I see is with sending the supervisor the link to the submitted form. That will not exist as Microsoft Forms saves the responses in an Excel spreadsheet. You can do one of two things to handle this:

1. Include all of the information from the form in the approval to the supervisor (easiest method).
2. Or create a SharePoint list that contains fields to store the form response data and when a form is submitted create an item in the SharePoint list and send the link to the SharePoint item to the supervisor for approval (more complicated since you will need to manage access especially if the form data is sensitive.). Based on item six, I think this is the route you will need to take. You can set up a retention policy on the SharePoint list to handle the automatic deletion of the item when it is no longer needed.

[JPTaylor2]

Thank you for this information.  I am not familiar with creating a SharePoint list, is this easy to do?

[JPTaylor2]

I have used AI to try and create the automation with no luck.  Do you have a good example that I can use to get this accomplished?

[David_MA]

Creating a SharePoint list is super easy. You need to have owner permissions to create one. Here is a help article on how to create one: Create a list - Microsoft Support. 

[David_MA]

Nothing exactly like you want. I would start out with this:

1. Trigger: Set up a trigger for when a new form response is submitted.
2. Get Response Details: Use the action to retrieve the details of the submitted form with the ID from the trigger.
3. Send for Approval:
   • Use the “Start and wait for an approval” action.
   • Configure it to send an email to the supervisor’s email address listed in the form.
   • Include the data from the form in the approval. Later, once you've set up the flow with this much detail, you can update it to create an item in a SharePoint list and send the link to that instead.
   • Note, the body of the approval uses Markdown for formatting the text.
4. Use a switch to check if the response was “Approve” or “Deny”.
5. If Denied:
   • If the supervisor denies the request, use the “Send an email” action to notify the user of the denial.
6. If Approved:
   • If the supervisor approves the request, use the “Send an email” action to notify the designated email group for processing.

You said you can use the AI builder to create the flow. This description should give you the above: "When a new forms response is received, create an approval request. Once the approval response is received, send a different e-mail depending on whether the outcome is approve or reject."

When you are just learning, don't try to add everything at once. Build it in stages and then when you get it working, adjust it to meet your needs. When you've really developed your skills, you can use HTTP calls to call another workflow, this allows you to break the flow into stages. For example. I have a purchase request solution that uses 14 different workflows to handle all of the stages of the process, which doesn't even include RPA workflows to process some steps, and other workflows to pull data from various business systems.