Sometimes you’ve just got to admit someone has done something before you and better than you’re likely to achieve yourself – at this point, there’s no point trying to reinvent the wheel!
I have been at the ULearn18 Conference this week and I ended up spending 30mins with a partner who came to our stand asking about how they could manage leave request forms from teachers with an approval workflow using SharePoint Online. I know a number of SharePoint experts who have done this with some wizardry, but having earlier that morning blogged about the new School Data Sync MS Flow Connector, I speculated that there was probably an MS Flow to manage the Approval Process.
Jon Levesque created the above video showing precisely how to build this out – there’s no point me even attempting to recreate that so I do encourage you to watch the video. Helpfully, Jon also wrote a good blog post outlining how to do this
Workflow as outlined in Visio for a Vacation Leave Request – if you wanted to recreate this yourself using MS Flow then watch the video above.
My Point of View
There are so many workflows in schools where this could be helpful to streamline and automate mundane paper shuffling. From vacation request forms, through to parent permission for school trips, through to student lunch orders and of course the standard HR on-boarding, off-boarding of staff. Using MS Flow Approval workflows is a no brainer decision. For those new to MS Flow, start your journey here.
Home page of MS Flow, wiht some of the templates available on the left and various apps displayed along the bottom that existing Flow connectors can be easily used. Note the “Approvals” menu option in the top left.
If you’re interested in different variations of Approval workflows then click here to see the pre-built templates you can use and customize. As always, the documentation is a great aid for getting these right the first time – check the MS Flow Approval Documentation here.
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