When writing my previous post on working with Tasks in Power Automate I realized existence of a column name Flow Notification URI inside of Flow Approval table, which I so far really underestimated. Let me show you how powerful it is!

Until today I was nearly sure it is impossible to automatically complete a task in Power Automate/ Microsoft Teams and as well to resume a process that is waiting for approval. It turns out I was really wrong.

Some basicis

Each time a workflow that contains an action which assigns a task and waits for completion is executed, it not only creates entries in Approval and Approval Request tables, but also in Flow Approval. Furthermore, each entry in that last table contains a value in column called Flow Notification URI, that when called with POST request simply completes waiting and resumes flow:

The URL there is built from the following pieces (most of them is coming from other columns of the Flow Approval table):
https://[instance].westeurope.logic.azure.com/workflows/[Flow Id]/runs/[Flow Run Sequence Id]/actions/[Action name that waits for approval]/run?api-version=2016-06-01&sp=%2Fruns%2F[Flow Run Sequence Id]%2Factions%2F[Action name that waits for approval]%2Frun%2C%2Fruns%2F[Flow Run Sequence Id]%2Factions%2F[Action name that waits for approval]%2Fread&sv=1.0&sig=[some signature key]

What’s next?

Knowing that making POST request to that URL completes waiting and resumes flow, opens a totally new range of scenarios that can be build around basic approvals, for example using custom Power Apps. Just imagine some of them:

1. Approving on behalf
2. Waiting for majority of responses
3. Allowing requester to finish approval at any time
4. and more!

The goal is, that first you need to write and update data in all other tables that Approvals are using (mentioned in my post here), get all the information needed to be sent as a response and after that make a POST to the Notification URI.

Also, when doing such a POST, be sure it is following the expected JSON format and that you put “Content-Type: application/json” as header:

{
   "responses":[
      {
         "responder":{
            "id":"GUID from Users Table",
            "displayName":"Responder name",
            "email":"Responder mail",
            "tenantId":"Tenant ID",
            "userPrincipalName":"Responder principal name"
         },
         "requestDate":"Timestamp",
         "responseDate":"Timestamp",
         "approverResponse":"Outcome",
         "comments":"Comments"
      }
   ],
   "responseSummary":"Combined response comments and approvers together with dates",
   "completionDate":"Timestamp",
   "outcome":"General outcome",
   "name":"Approval ID from Approval table",
   "title":"Approval name",
   "details":"Approval description",
   "requestDate":"Timestamp",
   "expirationDate":"Timestamp"
}

Once you send such a POST, action will complete waiting and will display all the data as dynamic outcomes, as if it was completed through the task UI:

I hope this post makes you as excited as it made me when I discovered this simple information. Let me know in comments what scenarios you are able now to accomplish!