Reassign An Approval In Power Automate

You can reassign an approval in Power Automate by using a single flow action. This ability is not included in the standard approvals actions. However, we can invoke an HTTP request to call the Microsoft Teams approvals API and reassign the request.

Table of Contents
• Introduction: The Reassign An Approval Flow
• Choose An Approval To Be Reassigned
• Get The Approval ID For The Approval To Be Reassigned
• Set The Approval ID And Flow Environment Variables
• Make A Connection To Microsoft Teams Approvals
• Reassign An Approval In Power Automate Using An HTTP Request
• Run The Reassign An Approval Flow In Power Automate

Introduction: The Reassign An Approval Flow

An employee at an insurance company makes a work from home request using Microsoft Teams and then their manager goes on vacation. We will reassign the approval by creating a Power Automate flow.

Choose An Approval To Be Reassigned

An approval may only be reassign when it is in requested status. Open Microsoft Teams approvals center and find a “requested” approval.

Or create a new approval request if there are no approvals with a requested status. Here’s an example that can be copied if needed.

Get The Approval Id For The Approval To Be Reassigned

To reassign an approval using Power Automate we will need to get the Approval’s unique ID. Go to make.powerautomate.com and navigate the Approvals table (in Dataverse). Search the table for the record with a matching Title. The unique identifier is located in the Approval field of the record.

We will also need the unique identifier for the Approval Request. Go the the Approval Request table and look for a record with an Approval Id Index that matches the Approval unique id. Then make a note of the Approval Request unique identifier for it.

Set The Approval ID And Flow Environment Variables

Now we have the information we need to make a Power Automate flow to cancel the approval. Start a new instant flow and add an initialize variable step. Create a variable named varApprovalId and set the value to the unique identifier of the approval.

Also create a variable named varApprovalRequestId and set the value to the unique identifier of the approval request.

Finally, initialize one last variable named varAssignedTo and load it with the email address of the person who the approval should be reassigned to.

Make A Connection To Microsoft Teams Approvals

An approval cannot be reassigned using the standard Microsoft Teams actions included in Power Automate. We will use the HTTP With Microsoft Entra ID (Pre-authorized) – Invoke An HTTP Request action to cancel an approval instead.

Upon adding the action we will be asked to setup a connection.

Use the following URL in both the Base Resource URL and Microsoft Entra ID Resource URI fields and press the Sign In button.

https://approvals.teams.microsoft.com

Reassign An Approval In Power Automate Using An HTTP Request

Fill-in the flow action with the following values to reassign the approval request.

Method:

POST

Url of the request

/api/reassignApproval

Headers:

Body of the request:

{
    "AssignedTo": "@{variables('varAssignedTo')}",
    "ApprovalId": "@{variables('varApprovalId')}",
    "ApprovalRequestId": "@{variables('varApprovalRequestId')}",
    "Properties": {
        "Response": "",
        "Comments": ""
    },
    "FlowEnvironment": "@{workflow()?['tags']?['environmentName']}"
}

Run The Reassign An Approval Flow In Power Automate

We’re done. Save the flow and give it a run to reassign the approval.

After the flow is completed we can see the approval has been reassigned in the approval details along with who it was reassigned to and the timestamp.

Questions?

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