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Most processes built in FlowForma contain at least one approval: a point where a named person or group has to look at what has been captured and decide whether the process continues. FlowForma has no separate “approval” object. An approval is just a step assigned to someone, which means every approval pattern on this page is built from the same building blocks as the rest of your flow: steps, step settings, and business rules. That matters in practice. Because an approval is a step, an approver can be given their own questions, their own documents, their own view permissions, and their own routing logic, without leaving the process or handing off to a second tool.

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What an approval looks like

A step becomes an approval when you assign it and give the assignee a decision to record.
  • Assign the step: in step settings, use Assign to to name a person or a group, or Assign to form creator to send it back to whoever started the form. Those assigned to a step can complete, reject, or approve it.
  • Capture the decision: add a Yes or No question or a Choice question for the outcome, and a Multiple lines of text question for comments. Enable Enable comments and Enable attachments in step settings if approvers need to attach supporting evidence.
  • Act on the decision: use business rules with conditions to route, notify, or halt the process based on the answer.
  • Set the expectation: Time to complete in the step’s advanced settings records how long the step should take, which feeds reporting on where approvals stall.
Use Step category in step settings to tag every approval step (for example, Approval or Finance approval). Categories make approval steps easy to find and filter across a large flow.

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Approval patterns

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Single approver

The simplest pattern. One step, assigned to one person or group, with a decision question on it. Everything else on this page is a variation of it.

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Sequential approvals

Place approval steps one after another in the Flow designer. Each approver only sees the form once the previous step has been submitted, so a two-tier or three-tier sign-off chain needs no extra configuration beyond assigning each step.

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Parallel, all must approve

Group the approval steps into a parallel group when several approvers need to act at the same time and the order does not matter. The form does not progress beyond the parallel group until every step inside it has been completed, which gives you an all-must-approve gate.
  • Steps in the group can go to the same or different people.
  • If one person owns several steps in the group, submitting one submits all of theirs.
  • Enable parallel step collapsing in Flow settings so each approver sees only the steps assigned to them.

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Group approval

Assign a single approval step to a SharePoint group rather than an individual. Steps are always assigned to a user or a team, so this is the pattern to use when any member of a rota, mailbox, or duty team can take the decision. Pair it with Teams and Reassign work item if you also want to balance the load across members of that group.

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Quorum or scored decision

Where a decision belongs to a committee rather than an individual, use a Voting question instead of a plain approval question. It gives you a decision group drawn from a SharePoint group, a Minimum number of votes threshold before the form can progress, optional weighted scoring, public or private voting, and captured rationale per voter. Results are presented on a later step with the Voting question results question.

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Conditional or skipped approval

Not every submission needs every approver. Use Hide/show step with conditions to hide or disable an approval step when it is not required, for example skipping director sign-off below a spend threshold. Enable automatic rule reversal is on by default, so the opposite condition restores the step.

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Dynamic approver

When the approver is not known at design time, use Step assign to to set the assignee at runtime from one of:
  • a named person or group
  • the answer to a Person or group question on an earlier step
  • the person already assigned to another step in the flow
This is how you route to “the requester’s manager” or “the site owner chosen on step 1” rather than a hard-coded name.

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Rejection and rework

FlowForma separates ending a process from sending it back for changes.
  • Reject ends the form at the step where the rejection happens. Data entered in earlier steps is kept, but no further steps can be completed and the form’s status shows as “Rejected” (or the alternative wording set in Flow settings). The reject button is hidden by default. Show it per step for administrators, the form author, or all users in step settings.
  • Pass back returns the form to an earlier step in editable mode so the original submitter can correct or add information, then resubmit and continue. The destination step must have Allow passback to this step enabled. Users can pass back manually with the passback button, or you can automate it with the Pass back rule, for example passing a request back automatically when the approval answer is not “yes”.
The Pass back rule does not send an email on its own. Add a Send email rule so the person receiving the work back knows about it. Step started rules on the destination step do not re-execute on passback.
For a rework loop that skips the approvals already given, disable the intermediate steps so the form returns straight to the approver who asked for the change. See Show/hide and enable/disable steps.

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Keeping approvals moving

Approvals stall when the assignee is busy, on leave, or has left. FlowForma handles each case differently.
  • Delegation by the assignee: the delegate button on a step lets the current owner hand it to another person or group with a comment. Control it per step with Show delegate button and Show delegate button for all users. See Submitting a form.
  • Planned absence: I am on leave delegates all steps assigned to a user to a substitute for a date range. Steps assigned before the entry was created stay with the original owner.
  • Bulk reassignment: Bulk assign forms moves many forms to a new owner in one administrator action, including replacing a named user inside parallel steps.
  • Reminders: the Alert rule sends a recurring email on a days or hours schedule while a step remains uncompleted.
  • Escalation: the Reassign work item rule hands the step to a new owner once, after a set time with no action. Combined with Teams capacity, it moves the work to the team member with the most availability.
Alert and Reassign work item are part of the Work Items feature, which is purchased separately and is available for Office 365 only.

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Where people approve

Approvers rarely want to visit a portal. FlowForma surfaces the same work item in the places they already work, and the actions available are the same in each: save, submit, delegate, pass back, and close.
  • The FlowForma site: approvers open the forms list and work from a view such as forms awaiting their input. See Views and Using forms.
  • Microsoft Teams: the Teams app shows a Forms awaiting my input tile with a live count and opens the forms list without leaving Teams.
  • Mobile: the mobile app opens on Forms awaiting my input, so approvals can be completed on a phone, including offline-capable downloaded flows.
  • Email: a Send email rule on step started notifies the approver and links them to the form. Use Email templates to keep the wording consistent.
  • Outside your organisation: FlowForma Engage lets an external approver, either anonymous or authenticated with a Google or Microsoft account, complete a step without a licence in your tenant. Check the unsupported questions and rules list before designing an external approval step.

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Governance, evidence, and audit

Approvals are usually the part of a process that gets audited, so the controls sit at step level.
  • Who can see what: the Security wizard sets read and edit permissions at flow and step level. The user assigned to a step holds the highest rank in the permission hierarchy, so approvers get access to what they need to decide without being given the whole flow. Use Enable view permissions in step settings, or the Step view permission rule, to restrict a sensitive approval step further.
  • Proving who approved: E-signature requires the approver to re-enter their password on step completion, or when casting a vote. The 21 CFR signature type also captures the role of the signatory and the purpose of signing.
  • Recording what happened: the Audit feature logs step started, step completed, delegate, pass back, business rule execution, and signature checked events with the user and timestamp. Enable it site-wide, per flow, or on individual rules.
  • Reviewing changes: History and restore options show what changed on a form over time.
Audit and e-signature are part of the Compliance and Life Science feature packs. Voting requires the Collaborative Decision Making feature to be enabled in FlowForma Settings > Features.

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Measuring approval performance

Because Time to complete is captured per step, approval bottlenecks are measurable rather than anecdotal.

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Next steps

Add an approval step

Assign a step, control its buttons, and set view permissions.

Route it conditionally

Hide, show, assign, and pass back steps with workflow control rules.

Approve in Teams

Give approvers their work items inside Microsoft Teams.

Chase and escalate

Reminders, capacity, and automatic reassignment with Work Items.