Powerapps Portal to bypass PowerAutomate Approval Limitations

[rmanthey]

I need approvals from suppliers outside my organization.  However this is not available with Power Automate yet.  I was wondering if I could create a work around in a PowerApps Portal.  Instead of an approval email the supplier would be sent a link to the portal and once logged in they would see their outstanding approvals request.  Then they can approve or reject then it would write to my sharepoint list.  

I do not have access to create a portal but I want to ensure this will work before I approach our corporate admin to request access.  

Also are portals able to be created like powerapps are? Meaning can I drag and drop a gallery and filter it to to the supplier linked to the login info?

[v-xida-msft]

Hi @rmanthey ,

Do you want to use the a SP List to store the approval requests for these suppliers outside my organization?

Do you want to send the Portal link to these suppliers, then they could see their approval requests when they login in your Portal?

Based on the needs that you mentioned, I afraid that there is no direct solution to achieve your needs in PowerApps. Currently, the PowerApps Portal could only accept CDS Entity as data source, it could not connect to SP List data source directly.

As an alternative solution, you could consider generate a canvas app based on your SP List, then it would be generate three screens automatically. Then embed this canvas app into your PowerApps Portal using <iframe> HTML tag, when your suppliers login in your Portal, they could use this embedded canvas app to handle their own approval requests, and submit the changes back to your SP List data source.

Within your generate canvas app, please set the OnStart property of the App to following:

Set(CurrentUser, Param("userName"))

within the BrowseGallery screen, set the Items property of the BrowseGallery1 to following:

SortByColumns(
              Filter(
                      [@'Your SP List'], 
                      StartsWith(Title, TextSearchBox1.Text),
                      'Created By'.DisplayName = CurrentUser      // filter current login user's approval requests
              ), 
              "Title", 
              If(SortDescending1, Descending, Ascending)
)

save and publish your canvas app.

Within your Portal, add a new web page for this canvas app (you could also consider embed this canvas app into the Home page of your Portal), with the body of the page selected, then click Source Code Editor button </> on the bottom right corner, then type the following <iframe> html tag code:

<iframe frameborder="0" width="800" height="1200" src="https://apps.powerapps.com/play/50bd4c95-c29f-49ae-a013-90a7452eb04a?tenantId=xxxxxxxx-f6a5-41a2-xxxx-9785a9d6c706?userName={{user.fullname}}&source=website&screenColor=rgba(165,34,55,1)" allow="geolocation; microphone; camera"></iframe>

Note: The 'https://apps.powerapps.com/play/50bd4c95-c29f-49ae-a013-90a7452eb04a?tenantId=xxxxxxxx-f6a5-41a2-xxx...' represents the App Url of my canvas app, on your side, you should replace it with our own App Url. The userName represents the parameter you want to pass into your canvas app, which must match the parameter defined within the OnStart property of your app. The {{user.fullname}} is a Liquid syntax in PowerApps Portal, which is used to retrieve current login user's displayname.

More details about embedding canvas app into PowerApps Portal, please check the following blog:

https://readyxrm.blog/2019/11/26/embedding-a-canvas-app-in-a-power-apps-portal/

After that, when your suppliers sign in your Portal, and then go to the canvas app screen, the embedded canvas app would only pull approval requests from your SP List for current login user.

Note: I assume your suppliers have enough permission to access your SP List. And you have share your app to your suppliers (share canvas apps to external users) and they all have proper PowerApps license to access PowerApps feature.

Please take a try with above solution, then check if the issue is solved.

Best regards,

[rmanthey · Accepted solution]

I actually found a nice work around since power automate doesn't allow approvals outside your organization.  I used the Send Email with Options and customized the responses to fit my needs.  I have tested this and it works exactly as expected.  

I was thinking this portal could be the last resort should no other viable option exist.

Thank you for your time and your reply