Power Automate Approvals – Markdown or HTML?
If you have ever used a Power Automate (formerly Microsoft Flow) Approval action, you probably know the struggle of getting the body of the mail look great. Markdown isn’t only a terrible way of styling the details of your approval, it also doesn’t support all of the elements you may want to use.
So, are we to accept this way of working, or is there another way? In this blog post, I will tell you how you can do this differently.
Markdown
First of all, let me explain the basics of markdown language.
It is supposed to be an ‘easy-to-read, easy-to-write’ plain text format, but that depends on what you are used to write. Some of us (like me), coming from earlier workflow solutions, are more known with RTF or HTML.
Markdown will let you write basic syntax and after ‘compiling’ it will automatically convert to an (X)HTML format for you. That way, you don’t need to know the HTML coding principles.
An example:
In HTML, a header is defined by using <h1>This is my header</h1>. In markdown, the same header is defined by using #This is my header#.
More information about the markdown language syntax can be found here.
Now, is this a true problem for all users using Approvals? Ofcourse it isn’t, but markdown (and especially the approval action itself) does limit you in the way your approval is sent out.
First: the approval action is always in the same format. You can’t style the overall feeling (e.g. apply company branding) of the notification mail that will be sent.
Second: you can’t use certain elements that HTML does allow you to use, like CSS or JavaScript. This is more of a lack for the ‘advanced’ user.
On the other hand, since the approval action uses an actionable message, you can handle the approval request entirely from your mail client which makes it quite powerful.
Note: actionable messages are only supported in Outlook 2016, Outlook 2019 and Outlook Online. If you are using another mail client, you will get a ‘plain’ e-mail message with link buttons to the flow approval portal.
HTML
So, are we condemned to using markdown language for all of our approval actions? The answer is simple: no!
You can still define your own HTML formatted message and use links to the corresponding approval item in the approval portal.
An example:
The above example is just a simple example. You don’t really need to alter from markdown to HTML if you use such a basic format, but it shows you the basics of having an HTML mail with links that immediately redirects you to the corresponding approval item and even selects the output for you.
Imagine using your company branded mail body instead of this basic example. Wouldn’t that be awesome?!
Using HTML instead of markdown
First of all, you need to know which approval action you should use. There are 3 actions within the Approvals connector:
You need the ‘Create an approval‘, combined with the ‘Wait for an approval‘ action. If you use the ‘Start and wait for an approval‘, your flow will halt at that action until the response is given, which will not allow you to send an e-mail after this action.
Within the Create an approval action, you will configure it as you always do (maybe with a little bit less info in the Details section, because you can provide that information in the HTML mail and some basic information in this section). After you have configured your approval, make sure you disable sending a notification to the approver(s)! Otherwise, the default approval mail will still be sent to the approver(s).
You can do this by setting the Enable notifications option (below Show advanced options) to No.
After configuring the approval action, we can send out our own customized approval mail. But first, we need to build our approve/reject URLs. You can also do this directly into your Send an email action, but I prefer to separate such actions, so I built the URLs inside separate Compose actions.
The URL consists of the following:
- Path to the Approval Portal, which is ‘https://flow.microsoft.com/manage/approvals/received/‘
- The ID of the approval item, which can be pulled from the Dynamic Content attribute ‘Approval ID‘
- The response you want to give (optional), which is ‘Approve‘ or ‘Reject‘
If you put these 3 elements together using the concat() expression (with the Expression builder), you will get the following expressions:
Approve
concat(
'https://flow.microsoft.com/manage/approvals/received/',
body('Create_an_approval')?['name'],
'?response=%27Approve%27'
)
Reject
concat(
'https://flow.microsoft.com/manage/approvals/received/',
body('Create_an_approval')?['name'],
'?response=%27Reject%27'
)
Now that we have the URLs, we can put together the approval mail. You’re completely free to use whatever you want. You can use the default RTF builder or write your own HTML. You only need to make sure to use the URLs generated above for the Approve and Reject buttons. You can even set the importance and/or choose if you want to send the mail from a shared mailbox. Isn’t that convenient?
After that, you need to add the Wait for an approval action and add the Approval ID attribute from the Dynamic Content to the Approval ID field. With that in place, you can configure your flow further as you always do: configuring a condition that will check the outcome of your Wait for an approval action for a specific outcome (Approve/Reject) and do whatever you want to do next!
Final thoughts
If you’re happy with the way markdown works or not looking for another way of styling your approval requests, you can stick with the markdown language within your approval actions. But if you want to go just a little bit further with the possibilities of styling your approval requests, you can consider the method I described above.
Please do keep in mind that if you alter from the default approval notification to a self-generated e-mail, you will loose the ability to directly handle your approval request from out your mail client.
43 Replies to “Power Automate Approvals – Markdown or HTML?”
Hi! This was really helpful and saved My day, but do this works when You have more than one approvers?
I tried this on a test with two approvers and one the second one tried to accessthe flow from the link it tales You to the approval page but the side Windows of the approval says ” this approval was reassigned” and isnt able to do anything. If the second person access the approval from the approval page can approve/reject fine.
Any idea what is happening?
I don’t know if it is because I have the allow reassignment field in “No” but i’ll test more with that field in Yes and SEE if it keeps happening.
As far as I know, it should not matter if you have 1 or multiple approvers. The only thing you do with my solution is change the contents of the email. The link to the approval in the approval center stays the same. Or Microsoft has changed something in the approval URLs (again), but I haven’t noticed that yet. Will see if I can find the time soon to check if that is the case
This is great and I have gotten almost there, for some reason my approve/reject options do not go work. I made sure to grab the approval link from my default environment. Here is my formula: concat(‘https://make.powerautomate.com/environments/Defaultxxxxxxx/approvals/received’, body(‘Create_an_approval’)?[‘name’],’?response=%27Approve%27′)
It seems like your ‘…/approvals/received’ string is missing a forward slash. It should be ‘…/approvals/received/’ and then the approval ID (name) from the dynamic content
This is awesome! No more ugly approval emails (sorry Microsoft!).
I guess there’s no way for the buttons to perform the same function as in the official Microsoft Approvals emails? As in not have to click ‘Approve’ again in the Approvals portal?
Unfortunately, that is not possible. The only way to have interactive buttons is to use markdown which doesn’t allow HTML
how to make this work for an personalised approval with multiword options like thoses:
Reject
Approve without download
Approve with download
Only the “reject” option work fine. the two others don’t select any option in PowerAutomate.
I just tried this on my own tenant and it works for me. Are you sure you have the %27 tags (which are single ANSI quotes) wrapped around your response? ?response=%27Approve with download%27
Hi Rik,
One more thing, it would be helpful if you can post the screen of the entire approval flow.
thank you
I will see if I still have a copy of the flow and attach the entire flow as screenshot to the blogpost
Hi Rik,
thank you and wonderful sharing on this. I’m new to power automate. please pardon me if my questions are too basic.
I’m trying to achieve an approval from OneDrive Excel table and send in html format. I’ve manage to pull the data and send the approval and when ever the data is updated it will send the approval but then it is not in order. All the data not in order, so i would like to put it in html format.
I got stuck at the create the compose action whereby the URL for the approval. i could not find the option to retrieve that. Much appreciate it there are any video for me to learn.
once again thank you Rik for the wonderful piece of information sharing.
The approval URL is something you need to build yourself. The URL stated in the blogpost is currently a bit outdated since Microsoft has (once again) changed things up. But it basically comes down to the following: https://make.powerautomate.com/environments//approvals/received/?response=%27Approve%27. In which environmentName can be hardcoded if you only use one environment, or you can pull it from the workflow() expression (see my other blogpost about the Make Portal URL change for more info). The approvalID can be pulled from the approval action itself, which is the Approval ID attribute of the approval (from Dynamic Content; see blog post).
Eu criei o link porém quando abre diz a seguinte mensagem:
Something went wrong
The requested approval is not found or not accessible to the caller.
Are you, by any chance, on a GCC or DOD environment? Those use different URLs
I verified that the user has access to other environments and is always being directed to the default one, so I have to change the default environment to be able to approve. Is there any way to use concat and direct to the correct environment? ‘https://flow.microsoft.com/manage/approvals/received/’, body(‘Create_an_approval’)?[‘name’], ‘?response=%27Approve%27’
Sorry for the late response, but you can extend the URL With the environment by using the workflow() expression. The environment is stored inside the tags – environmentName property. So if you put that into a concat, it would look something like this: concat(‘https://make.powerautomate.com/environments/’, workflow()?[‘tags’][‘environmentName’], ‘/approvals/received/’, body(‘Create_an_approval’)?[‘name’], ‘?response=%27Approve%27’). Please note the change in URL since Microsoft recently switched from https://flow.microsoft.com to https://make.powerautomate.com
Great Job, excellent work around, thanks
Thanks for your feedback! Glad to be of help
This looks very good as i am wanting to include the the approve and reject links directly on a quote email when it gets sent out.
how would i go about updating a record in sharepoint with the response that is selected??
Do you know if this can be done with the standard approval flow in power automate where the approve and reject buttons can be added to a send email with other information on and then conditions can be used depending on what response is given?
Thanks
With the HTML option, you cannot directly process the button click from the email. The links will redirect to the Power Automate Approval Portal where you need to confirm your choice. After that, it works like any other approval. Your flow needs to process the outcome (e.g. in a SharePoint list)
Excellent work around , Really helped
Hi,
How about a link to the ‘Sent’ tab and opens the ‘Cancel approval’ dialogue box. Can you please help me with this?
Marconi
0
0
Unfortunately, I haven’t found a way to directly access the Cancel action through an URL
Would you happen to know how to turn off the html for an Send email notification (v3) action in Power Automate? There is no longer a field to indicate Html yes/no like they had back in (v2).
(I must turn off the HTML or the Responses summary field returns in the email formatted incorrectly.)
You can turn HTML off by clicking the HTML View button. It should be the only button on your Body
There is only a button to toggle on/off viewing the html code in the Body window, but it does not turn the email body to plain text. I’m not wanting to turn off the view. I wanted to actually turn off the html. But nevermind because I found a workaround to having to turn off the html. 🙂 Thank you for your reply.
Great solution. I was looking for a solution of this issue. One question, without taking user to the approval request screen, is there anyway, I can just give popup to only approval/rejection section?
Unfortunately, you cannot skip the approval center and approve/reject directly from the mail
You rule. Thank you. I combined this with another flow I found that includes a reminder option and it all works perfectly.
how to create html option in send to back and use in power automate
I’m not sure what you want to know. Can you clarify for me please?
Cool stuff but I cannot get my links at the bottom of the page to work. I have tried several different ways of adding the Approval ID. This is the result after coping your code directly into my Compose inputs.
Approve:
Concat(‘https://flow.microsoft.com/manage/approvals/received/’,body(‘Create_an_approval’)?[‘name’],’?response=%27Approve%27′)
Approve Result:
https://flow.microsoft.com/manage/approvals/received/f589e68d-22d1-4554-9a24-cb0755c1900d?response=%27Approve%27
Reject:
concat(‘https://flow.microsoft.com/manage/approvals/received/’,body(‘Create_an_approval’)?[‘name’],’?response=%27Reject%27′)
Result Result:
https://flow.microsoft.com/manage/approvals/received/f589e68d-22d1-4554-9a24-cb0755c1900d?response=%27Reject%27
Your Approve/Reject URL seems valid. What doesn’t work for you?
The links are not working and do not take me to the approval.
Do you have multiple environments and are you using approvals from a non-default environment? Because these links point to your default environment
I found my issue. I am working for the government and the URL is slightly different with .gov in the url. Now it works and it’s is brilliant! I am so happy to have found this solution as my email formatting is so much better.
I did need a second approval which created some additional complexity. I had to create a second Approval2 ID and a second approval2 and reject2 which now works great.
My only add is I do a Compose Email in the beginning of my flow and create my email with the variables. Then in my actual email I call that Compose. But I had to add the Approve & Reject variables to each email separately as they have different Approval ID’s for each.
Thank you again!
Glad you figured it out. I never knew .gov had its own URL for Power Automate, so I guess I learned something as well! Thank you for sharing
I have the need for a second approval once the first has been approved
How did you go about creating the 2nd approval…and creating the 2nd Approval ID??
would it be easier to send the approval out to both parties at the same time by using the Approve/Reject – Everyone to approve and inputting both email addresses??
Thanks
Robert
This great, I am having one issue, When I add approve or reject to the sting when it goes in approval site instead of filling in my option it says something when wrong.
concat(‘https://flow.microsoft.com/manage/approvals/received/’, outputs(‘Create_an_approval’)?[‘body/name’],’Approved’)
Hi, you’re missing the ?response= string in front of your Approve outcome./?response=’‘
The URL you want to build is as follows: https://flow.microsoft.com/manage/approvals/received/
Hey Rik,
This is really good. Only thing i ran into is, it is always taking me to the flow and ask me to approve instead of defaulting to approve when i click on approve link? can you advice what i have to do to get it right?
You always do have to click the Confirm button on the flow approval section. I haven’t found a way to overrule that
This is awesome, very straightforward and makes perfect sense. Thank you!