Power Up With Power Apps – Setting Up Approvals in Business Central

Setting Up Approvals in Business Central 

Business Central was developed to help businesses automate and streamline their daily business processes and enhance management capabilities. With solid adaptability and rich features, Business Central has equipped companies to manage their business with ease, including finance, sales, project management, services, and so much more.

Microsoft has expanded its capabilities through product integration and the Microsoft Power Platform. In this article, we will cover how to set up Approvals in Business Central using Power Automate.

How to Set Up Approvals in Business Central Using Power Automate

Business Central provides build-in workflows but what if you want to do something different like allow for two levels of approvals? 

Power Automate to the rescue! 

How to get started? It’s easy. 

• Navigate to your Business Central entity like Vendors or Purchase Invoices or Sales Orders. Open a document and then select Request Approval > Create a Flow. 

Note: Microsoft Flow is the old name for Power Automate. 

• Select an existing Power Automate template from the pop-up window called Request Approval for Dynamics 365 Business Central Vendor. 

• The template will start to load.

• It will take a moment as Power Automate generates connections to the various services (Business Central, Outlook, and Approvals) required in the workflow. 

• Click Continue when the connections have been generated.  

Note: You may receive an error at this step if Power Automate is unable to create a connection to one of the services. In this case, click the X to see if you can re-enter your credentials. 

• The workflow template will load after a moment or two. 
• You will need to verify the Environment Name and select the Company Name for the trigger.  

• You will also need to update each Business Central Action step in the workflow with the Environment Name and Company Name. 
• Add an Approver email in the Assigned to field in the Start an approval action.  
• Save and test the workflow.  

Note: You will need to add the Approver and the Connection you are using in your workflow in the User ID and Approver ID columns in the Approval User Setup table in Business Central for your flow to have the required permissions to run successfully.  

• Navigate to your Business Central Vendors entity.  
• Create a new Vendor then select Request Approval then Send Approval Request. 

• Approver receives the approval email and approves or rejects the request.  

Modification required to the out of the box template:  

• For multiple approvers, you can either initialize and set variables to store approver emails or enter them directly into the Assigned to field in the Approval action. 
• For a two-level approval process, we are going to delay the Execute action for the approval and start another approval if the response to the first request was approved. 
• Copy the Condition action to your clipboard as this will be the next step after the second approval. 
• Once you’ve inserted the Condition step from your clipboard. Delete the remaining Execute and Condition step under the Yes condition. 

Note: Remember to change the Response in Condition 2 to the response from start an approval second level. 

Note: Remember to change or add the Approver Name and Comments in send an email to the fields from start an approval second level. 

• Save and test the workflow. 

To see your Workflow from Business Central, navigate to Business Central once your workflow is configured and saved.  

• Go to Workflows, here you can see all your Business Central and Power Automate workflows. 

• Click on the Power Automate workflow, here you can enable or disable the workflow by clicking on the toggle next to Enabled. 
• You can also go directly to your Power Automate workflow by clicking on Power Automate and then View.  

• Click on Process then Workflow step instances to see the information on running workflows. 
• Click on Archived Workflow Step Instances to see the information on completed workflows. 

There are certain drawbacks we have noticed with Approval information, once the requested entity has been posted that information is lost. 

At CRGroup, we can customize Power Automate Approvals to Business Central to address these limitations through custom extensions such as:  

• Record approver name and comments in Business Central
• Store attachments for invoices and line items in Business Central
• Assign managers in dimension value 
• Assign backup approvers for users on vacation 

Please contact us for more information on Business Central customizations. 

Work less. Do more.

Power Automate allows you to create automated workflows between your favorite apps and services to get notifications, synchronize files, collect data, and more.

Learn more concepts like Setting Business Central Approvals, through our Power Up with Power Apps Series.

Contact us to get started or learn how you can implement and use Power Automate and Business Central for maximum productivity.