Automate Your Microsoft Teams Approval and Provisioning
If your business uses Microsoft Teams and you feel like Teams creation is getting out of hand (people are using different naming conventions, they're not clear on the purpose of the Team, or Teams similar to each other are being created), we've got a great approval-based tool that should help streamline that process.
It starts with storing the requests in SharePoint, filling out a form in PowerApps, and using a Flow for approval and automatic Team creation. We also have free downloads for all 3 resources with instructions at the end of this article.
Store Data in SharePoint
Our database in SharePoint uses a list to store information about the Team request:
- Title (name)
- Visibility (public/private)
- Description
- Owners
- Requested By
- Request Date
- Approval Date
- Approval Status (Pending, Approved, Rejected)
- Group ID (Team ID)
- Audit (log from steps in Flow)
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Our PowerApp will connect to this list, and every time a new request is submitted it will be added here (which subsequently triggers our Flow).
Gather Information in PowerApps
This very simple PowerApp has a form where users input information about their Team.
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The nice thing about using PowerApps to collect this information is a clean UI, connection to our SharePoint list, and very robust validation. For example, our submit button is not clickable unless:
- every field is filled out
- there are at least 2 owners (this can easily be changed back to 1)
- the Team name is not already taken
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After the submit button is pressed, the info is sent to our SharePoint list which triggers our approval flow.
Automate Approval and Team Creation in Power Automate (Flow)
The first thing our Flow does is notify the requester that their request has been submitted.
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Next, the approvers will receive an email asking to approve or reject the request (which they can do right from the email itself).
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The requester will then get another email letting them know if the request was approved or rejected, and then if approved, the Team will be automatically created.
Download Templates For This Solution
If this seems like a solution that would work well for you and your company, we’ve created 3 free resources that will get you quickly set up:
- SharePoint template to automatically add the list to an existing site
- PowerApp file (that you can import to your environment)
- Power Automate file (that you can import to your environment)
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