New features for the Approvals app in Microsoft Teams

The sudden transition to an all-digital workstyle has been challenging. Although there are processes that have not been affected by this change, there are some others that need a little help with efficiency. 

Microsoft is constantly adding value to their apps and services to improve the whole digital work experience. To help streamline your company’s workflow, they released new features for the Approvals app in Microsoft Teams. 

Regardless of the type of approval, if it’s either a signature from a customer, a written approval from your manager, or a more formal authorization from your organization’s partners, they are an essential part of our everyday workflow. 

Taking into consideration that sometimes a whole group of people and systems are involved in this process, approvals might be hard to track and manage. Often, they end up leading to unnecessary delays. To avoid this:

Here are the new capabilities to streamline approvals requests 

Create an approval request with an electronic signature 

This new feature helps when you need a more formal attestation that requires the approvers’ signatures. Third party providers, such as Adobe Sign and DocuSign, among others, allow you to create an electronic signature within the Approval app. 

The approvers can add their eSignature without leaving the Teams app, making the approval process more efficient. Once the process is completed, Teams storages this information. You can easily access the approvals and eSignatures records to view who already signed. 

Here’s a short tutorial on how to request or add an approval with eSignature, provided by Microsoft.

Create an approval template 

There are some common approvals for each company/department. For example, discount requests or expense reports. The approval template feature allows organizations and teams to create templates for those repetitive processes. 

Admins and team owners can customize or create new templates. Once the first template is created, team members can simply begin from an already structured approval, instead of starting from zero every time. 

You can create a template from scratch or choose an existing one from the template store. 

New attachment capabilities  

You can attach files directly from SharePoint or OneDrive, as well as links to attach documents that are hosted outside Microsoft 365. This feature ensures that the latest version of the content you’re linking is available on the approval request. 

Markdown support 

Full markdown support is available in adaptive cards and detail’s view. This feature helps ensure you’re using the right format for all your approval processes.  

Approve or reject an approval request inline 

The approver can quickly approve or reject a request directly through the chat or channel. If a member of the team has no permission to respond, they will not see the ‘’Approve’’ or ‘’Reject’’ buttons. 

Microsoft provided training videos and the Approvals Look Book, so you can easily learn how to request and receive Approvals.  

If you want to read more details about these new features, click here.