Now that I have completed my series on building a modern solution with SharePoint, PowerApps and Flow I want to start building on that solution. The next enhancement I wanted to do was allow the capture comments from the approver in Microsoft Flow. So whether the approver approved or rejected the request I want to be able to capture the comments if they provided any. Because this is building on my previous solution you can see how that was built by clicking here.
Capture Comments from the Approver in Microsoft Flow
So the first suggestion I have is to create a place to store the comments. Because my solution is in SharePoint (of course) I am going to create a multi-line field to store the comments. You don’t have to do this, but I suggest setting the field’s “Append Changes to Existing Text” to Yes so if your process tracks multiple approval processes you can keep them all tagged and recorded.
Another change to my form I am going to make is to add a status field because now I am going to want users to be able to update rejected requests. Since the status options are unlikely to change much I am going to create a choice field with four options of “Draft”. “Pending”, “Approved” and “Rejected”. I don’t want this field to show up on the form because it is only there for the purpose of field control (more on that in a later post).
Your workflow is going to have similar steps as follows:
- Start when an item is created
- Get item
- Create an approval action
- Rename it to something significant. I used Tweet Approval Request (I have a way with words).
- Add an Initialize variable action to your flow. In the value field add “Comments” from the Approval Request
Now if the approver provides any comments we have captured them for use in the flow. That’s all you need for capturing comments from approvers. Now you can insert the comments into a SharePoint list item:
You can also send them to the requester in an email:
Thanks for reading!!
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