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.

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.

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. 

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)

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