Modify / Override OOTB Approval in Power Automate

[GeorgeLuther]

The article focuses on the on create trigger, but more scenarios are common. Please include more information:

SharePoint Document Libraries have an out of the box approval flow. It is unclear in the documentation how this is handled 'behind the scenes' but it doesn't appear to be via power automate. You enable it navigating to the library settings > versioning settings >

Say you want set this up to be a multi-approver flow where any 3 members must approve and any may reject.
The information I've seen seems to suggest you could do this by a "When a file is created or modified (properties only)" trigger with a trigger condition of approval status "Pending" (@equals(triggerOutputs()?['body/{ModerationStatus}'],'Pending'))

In practice this generates (an) additional approval(s) on top of the OOTB approval flow, making canceling impossible and approval cards in teams never get handled like they should per https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/business-applications-release-notes/april19/microsoft-flow/long-lived-approvals-other-approval-improvements

From a user interface perspective it would be ideal to use the OOTB ux for approvals by enabling the versioning setting. But it is unclear how it works under the hood, and what the best practice is for overriding/modifying the Out of the Box Approval.

---

Document Details

⚠ Do not edit this section. It is required for learn.microsoft.com ➟ GitHub issue linking.

• ID: c5ee96de-6a45-5ff0-50ea-4b627067061b
• Version Independent ID: ad00a0cc-f818-c468-0f54-653f5e6018f2
• Content: Require approval of documents in SharePoint using Power Automate
• Content Source: docs/business-apps/power-automate/guidance/require-doc-approval.md
• Service: power-automate
• GitHub Login: @VesaJuvonen
• Microsoft Alias: vesaj