An approval should help a business make a decision and move the work forward.
But in many teams, the decision is only a small part of the effort. Someone prepares an email, finds an attachment, checks who needs to respond, sends a reminder, updates a spreadsheet, and tells everyone what happened.
When those steps become routine, the process can depend more on people remembering to follow up than on a clear way of working.
Power Automate can help coordinate repeatable approval work. These five signs suggest it is worth considering, especially when the business already uses Microsoft tools. They are reasons to examine the process, not proof that every approval needs a new workflow.
1. Requests get lost in email
A request arrives in someone's inbox alongside customer questions, meeting invitations, and everything else that needs attention. A few days later, the requester sends another message because nothing seems to have happened.
The problem may not be an unwilling approver. The request may simply be difficult to find, missing essential details, or unclear about the decision required.
A structured approval can give each request a consistent title, relevant information, and a clear response action. Power Automate supports approval responses through channels including Outlook and the Power Automate approvals center, with access depending on the user's setup and licensing. [1]
Before building, decide what the approver must know. Sending an incomplete request through a better system still leaves someone chasing the missing information.
A useful approval makes the decision clear before it asks for a response.
2. Someone spends too much time chasing updates
If a coordinator repeatedly asks, “Have you seen this?” or “Can you approve it today?”, the business is relying on that person to keep the queue moving.
The hidden cost includes remembering what is outstanding, checking whether a response arrived elsewhere, and deciding when to follow up again.
A workflow can be designed to check for outstanding requests and send reminders according to agreed rules. It can also route overdue work to a designated person when escalation is appropriate.
Those rules need to be designed. Adding an approval action does not automatically create the reminder schedule, backup approver, or escalation policy the business needs.
Start by agreeing on:
- how long a normal response should take;
- when a reminder is useful;
- what happens when the approver is unavailable;
- and who can resolve a request that remains stuck.
More notifications are not always the answer. If an approver lacks the information or authority to decide, another reminder will not remove the obstacle.
Make waiting visible
Suppose an equipment request has been sitting with a manager for several days. The requester sees no update, so they submit it again. Now two people may be following up on the same purchase.
A defined status, a visible owner, and a sensible reminder could make that situation easier to manage. The benefit comes from knowing what is happening, not simply sending messages faster.
Automate the follow-up rules after the team agrees on them.
3. Nobody can confidently explain the current status
One person says a request was approved. Another is waiting for a reply. The spreadsheet still says “pending,” and the latest decision is buried in an email thread.
This is a sign that the approval and the business record are disconnected.
A flow can be configured to update a shared request record after an approval decision and notify the relevant people. Microsoft's approval workflow guidance demonstrates this pattern using a SharePoint list. [2]
The business still needs to decide where the official status lives and who should be able to see it. A successful approval response does not guarantee that every later update succeeded.
Plan for the case where the decision is captured but updating the record fails. Someone should be able to spot that mismatch and recover without asking the approver to make the same decision again.
4. The right approver depends on rules people remember
Some requests go to a team manager. Others need a department lead or a second review. A coordinator knows the exceptions and forwards each request to the right person.
That knowledge can become a bottleneck, especially when the coordinator is away or responsibilities change.
Power Automate supports approval patterns such as requiring everyone to approve or accepting the first response. [1] Routing and review stages can be configured around the business's agreed rules.
First, write those rules down. Clarify whether reviewers act in sequence, whether all must approve, and what happens after a rejection or a requested revision.
Keep the routing information maintainable. A workflow that sends everything to a former manager is still following its instructions; the instructions have become outdated.
5. An approval creates another round of manual work
The manager selects “approved,” but the process is far from finished. Someone copies the outcome into a tracker, tells the requester, forwards the details to another team, and creates the next task.
When the same actions follow the same decision each time, they may be suitable for automation. An approval flow can branch on the outcome and carry out configured follow-up actions, such as updating a record or sending a notification. [2]
The design should distinguish approval from completion. An approved request may still be waiting for ordering, scheduling, or another person's work.
It should also prevent avoidable duplication. If a request is edited or an action is retried, the process should not create the same downstream task twice.
The decision should move the work forward without hiding what remains to be done.
Start with one clear approval process
Choose a process that repeats often enough to matter and has rules the team can explain. Map its starting point, required information, decision makers, outcomes, and exceptions.
Then test more than the straightforward approval. Include a rejection, missing information, an unavailable approver, a revised request, and a failed update.
Check the licenses, connections, and permissions required by the complete workflow. An approval step alone does not establish the requirements of every system it connects to.
Keep an owner responsible for monitoring the process and updating it when the business changes. Automation reduces routine coordination; it still needs care.
Better approvals start with clearer decisions
If these signs sound familiar, begin by identifying where requests stall and what people do to keep them moving.
Sometimes a simpler form, fewer approval stages, or clearer ownership will resolve the problem. Sometimes Power Automate can connect those improvements into a dependable workflow.
Measure the result in terms the team recognizes: fewer follow-up messages, less duplicate entry, clearer status, and fewer requests left without an owner. Faster responses are useful, but so is knowing that the right person made the decision and the next step happened.
Keep the human judgment. Reduce the routine work around it.
Before you automate approvals
Start by confirming:
- what starts a request and what information is required;
- who approves it and how routing rules are maintained;
- where the official status and decision are recorded;
- when reminders or escalation should happen;
- how revisions, absences, and failures are handled;
- which follow-up actions each outcome should trigger;
- and who owns testing, access, and ongoing maintenance.
Start with a process people understand. Build the automation around it.