Microsoft Teams Approvals App – Help me allow users to be in multiple approver groups

Video: Rick Su explains the issue (2 min)

The Approvals app is great for simple scenarios like purchase approvals and event attendance approvals.

There is a problem with more complex approvals. Say you need approvals from 2 out of 5 designated people, then validation stops this from being done.

The current validation does not allow the same person to be in multiple approver groups. This validation should be removed.

Figure: ❌ It is a problem that the same individual user cannot be assigned to multiple approver groups.

There are other solutions that allow this such as www.KissFlow.com and www.integrify.com

Suggestion:

The Microsoft Teams Approvals App should allow the same individual user to appear in multiple approver groups.  

This modification would give the flexibility to allow more complex approval scenarios.

Microsoft Teams Approval App – Allow me to edit approvals

At SSW we are rolling out the use of the Approvals App with Teams to get requests approved through the organization.  I love how easy it is to create templates and use them to submit requests.  Previously we were using emails to manage these approvals, so another benefit is a reduction of noise across our collective inboxes.

Once an approval is submitted there is no way to alter the data.  While this makes sense for requests that have been approved, it would be great if we could edit requested approvals prior to being approved.  Currently, the only way we can do this is submit another request which means manually entering all information again which takes time. 

Figure: Able to edit SMS messages after being sent on an iPhone.  Image from Edited iMessages in iOS 16 Now Display Original Text, Undo Send Limited to Two Minutes – MacRumors

Workaround:

  1. Send another request with the updated information.
    • ❌ This can be time consuming if multiple edits need to be made
    • ❌ Copying information to another request can be error prone
    • ❌ Approval system gets polluted with duplicate requests

Suggestion:

  1. Add the ability to edit an approval request prior to it being approved.
  2. This would include changing the approver (if the template allowed the user to select approvers)
Figure: Lack of an option to edit an approval request
Figure: Only able to edit approvers during request creation
Figure: Viewing details of an approval request after it’s sent

Microsoft Teams Approval App – Allow me to easily find important approvals

Every company has the need for requests to be approved.  We’ve found that the Microsoft Teams Approval App works well, but only in simple cases.  It is easy to create templates and use them to submit requests. 

When companies switch from emails to a centralized structured approval, processes improve, and emails are reduced.

Senior Management are often responsible for approving most requests and as such can have a large backlog of requests to approve.  In order to help approvers action the most important requests I would like to see the following enhancements:

  1. Allow Priority to be set in Custom Approval Templates – ideally the priority level would be set in the Custom Approval Template, and not able to be changed by the user making the request.
  2. The ‘Request title’ field is not enough.  We need another column called ‘Approval Template Type’.
  3. We can sort on the column titles, but we need the ability to filter by Priority and Approval Template Name
Figure 1: Approval Hub – Can see Priority and Title, but not Request Type
Figure 2: Not able to filter by Priority and/or Request Type
Figure 3: We are able to configure priority for basic requests, but NOT able to do this for Custom Request Templates.  We need access to this field in Custom Request Templates.
Figure 4: Why are there only two priorities?  We would like to have 3 levels (for example, similar to how Outlook works (see below))
Figure 5: In Outlook we have 3 priorities.  For consistency, we would like 3 priorities in the Teams Approval App also.

Azure DevOps – Show Display Name from Azure AD

We have Azure DevOps connected to Azure AD so that our users can log in with their Azure AD credentials.
Currently, DevOps does not show our users’ Display Name that is set in Azure AD.

Users can change their own name here, but this is not a fix. For the sake of consistency, display names should match the display names used in Azure AD.

Figure: Display Name in Azure AD (with [SSW])
Figure: Display Name in Azure Devops (missing [SSW])

BUG Payroll – Help me see the correct default hours when taking leave

Xero monthly payroll has a bug with the defaults, when creating a leave request. Unfortunately, this issue can only be fixed by Xero.

Xero is calculating leave request hours based on actual hours in the month, but it should use standard hours per day averaged… which for some companies doing monthly payroll would be 8h per day (8h per day * 5 days per week * 52 weeks / 12 months = 173.3333h). 

Say an employee has taken leave for 2 days. They would expect to see 16h in the leave request, however they see:

Figure: The leave hours are a mess and then it is saved incorrectly. In this case the accountants would later have to manually change this to 8h + 8h
Figure: The leave hours are a mess and then it is saved incorrectly. In this case the accountants would later have to manually change this to 8h + 8h

Sadly, this bug has been present for +7 years and there has been heated debates… Xero has acknowledged the issue, but no fix has been implemented. 

  1. https://central.xero.com/s/question/0D51N00004xkCU7SAM/setting-default-hours-for-leave
  2. https://productideas.xero.com/forums/939198-for-small-businesses/suggestions/45126628-au-payroll-leave-requests-for-part-time-workers-t
  3. https://central.xero.com/s/question/0D53m00008es7vzCAA/leave-application-hours-calculation

The problem with the above is that the bug can cause incorrect leave requests. While it can be manually overwritten by the accountants, it does not offer great user experience.

Note: You could fix it by adding a dedicated package like Employment Hero (or another HR app) – such apps can process leave requests within the HR app itself and then send the leave request into Xero

Microsoft Teams – Help me forward chat history

I work in the China office, and we keep reverting to WeChat because it offers this feature which is super useful. It is missing from Teams.

I want to be able to forward a group of messages in my private chat with someone else not in the chat. This often happens when a problem comes up in the discussion and I realized I have already discussed a similar issue. Therefore, I want to share a section of my chat history to them quickly.

❌ My current workarounds:
Option 1: Copy + paste the messages one by one to the other chat.
Option 2: Take a long screenshot of the chat history and share the image.

✅ Suggestion:
Allow people to cherry-pick messages in their chat and forward them in a bundle.

❌ Figure: I want to forward just the section in the red box to someone else (but I don’t want to share irrelevant information about my annual review)
✅ Figure: WeChat lets me combine and forward selected messages

Help me use full screen mode in Outlook

When screen sharing in Teams or other applications, you want to be able to reduce noise as much as possible. One way to do this is by using full screen mode.

✅ Chrome – F11 works

✅ Edge – F11 works

❌ Outlook new email – F11 doesn’t work (does nothing)

❌ Word – F11 doesn’t work (does nothing)

❌ Excel – F11 doesn’t work (goes to Charts)

❌ Figure: F11 key goes to Charts in Excel
Figure: Full screen in Edge with F11

Keeper – Help me to deep link directly to a report

It would be really useful to be able to link directly to particular reports in Keeper. For example I can put a link on our intranet to https://keepersecurity.com.au/en_US/console/#auditreporting but I would like to link directly to ‘Recent Activity’ or ‘All Security Events’.

If you agree please vote for this suggestion on https://keeperapp.canny.io/feature-requests/p/deep-link-to-report

Figure: Allow linking directly to reports
Figure: Allow linking directly to reports

Azure – app registration secret/certificate logs cannot be forwarded to Azure Monitor

Azure AD Audit Logs are very helpful when diagnosing issues. Similarly, sending these logs to Azure Monitor is very useful for storing logs, and for setting up alerts on certain events.

In Audit Logs, we can see when an app registration secret or certificate is created or deleted.

Figure: Azure AD | Audit Logs app registration secret/certificate logs

However, there is no way to send these logs through to Azure Monitor so that we can set up alerts on these events.

Figure: no option for app registration secret/certificate logs

Help me know instantly what Tracing Mode is via a rename

Today I showed at NDC Oslo how to build a bot manually with C# and Blazor using the Azure OpenAI GPT services.

Then I showed how to do the same thing automatically with the new PVAs.

At the end I did a poll of the audience (about 300 people) – the Norwegians vote was about 80% saying they preferred the PVA solution.

Well done – the 1st impression is awesome ⭐

Keep the $ attainable please… it is the danger point for adoption.

Little UX suggestion… Regarding this “Tracing Mode” screen.
I reckon I would rename it to “Query Execution Plan” or maybe just “Execution Plan”

Then you keep the same name as you have in SQL Server: