With this preview update, you can now mark instant flow steps as complete/incomplete, right from your flow!

Before we get started…

Make sure to have a business process with an instant flow step handy to follow along. If you don’t have one, use the guide in the preview announcement to get started 

Marking a flow step complete/incomplete

Picking up where we left off in the initial preview announcement, we have an instant flow step in a business process flow that requests approval with information from the business process and the related record, and notifies the requestor of the outcome via email

For anyone collaborating on the business process, but not participating in the approval, it becomes difficult for them to learn of its outcome. To make sure everyone using the business process is on the same page, we’re going to mark the flow step as complete if approval was received, and incomplete if it wasn’t.

To mark a step as complete, add the Update a record action of the Common Data Service connector under the If yes path. Set the Environment field to ‘Default’ and Entity to ‘Process Logs’. For the Record identifier field, set it to ‘FlowsWorkflowLogId’ by picking it from the list of dynamic values. Finally, set the Status Value field to ‘Succeeded’ by selecting it from the dropdown.

Similarly, to mark as step as incomplete, add the Update a record action under the If no path, only this time, set the Status Value field to ‘Failed’.

All that’s left to do now is save the flow, and we’re done!

You’ve just updated your flow to mark an instant flow step as complete/incomplete based on the business outcome from the approval!

Tips

• Unlike data steps, you’ll need to reload the page to see the latest status of the instant flow step
• Instant flow steps that do not set status will leave the step in the ‘Processing’ state. In this state, you won’t be able to re-run the Flow from the flow step.

The post Preview Update: Instant Flow Steps in Business Process Flows appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

Approvals

To get to your approvals, click on ‘Action Items’ in the menu on the left, and then click ‘Approvals’.

View a list of all approvals that need a response from you under the ‘Received’ tab. From here, either select a request to respond to it, or click on a request to view its details. Similarly, track approvals requested by you under the ‘Sent’ tab.

View outcomes of approvals you’ve sent or received by navigating to the ‘History’ tab and toggling between the Received and Sent views

We’ve also improved the organization of information when viewing an approval. In this new experience, key information about the approval (such as its title, the requester, when it was sent/received/completed, link to content, outcome, etc.) is consolidated in an Overview card. Additional information that may be provided with the approval is displayed in a Details card. For approvals that have been responded to, responses along with comments are displayed in an Activity card

Business process flows

With the Action Center, you can now view a list of all business processes flow runs you’re involved in!

You will see a business process in the Action Center if you are assigned at least one CDS entity record that the process uses. For example, if a business process uses the Lead and Opportunity entities in CDS,  you will see all instances of this process where either the Lead or the Opportunity record is assigned to you

All instances that are currently being worked on are listed under the ‘Active’ tab. From here, view the name of the process, the stage they’re in, the owner of the CDS record associated with the active stage, and time since the instance was created.

Click on an instance to open it in a new tab, or select it to copy a link, share a link via email, abandon or delete the instance.

All instances that have either been finished or abandoned are listed under the ‘Inactive’ tab. From here, view the name of the process, the stage it was last in, whether it was abandoned or finished, and when it was last updated.

Tips

• Looking for a particular approval or business process instance? Use the search bar in the top right of the Action Center in any of these views to find an approval or business process by its title
• Each business process instance is listed by the name of the first entity record (primary entity) that’s associated with it. Following our previous example, each instance of the Lead to Opportunity Sales Process would be listed by the name of the Lead. If you don’t have permission to read records of the first (primary) entity of the business process, you will not see a name for that instance

The post Introducing the Unified Action Center appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

With this preview, you can now run an instant flow to automate repetitive tasks, generate documents, track approvals, and more – right from inside a stage in the business process.

Add an instant flow as a step in a business process

Let’s say that we sell printers to enterprises and to help us close deals, we use the Lead to Opportunity Sales Process:

As part of this process, we’d like to have to have the team lead review and approve a proposal put together by the sales team in the ‘Propose’ stage of the business process flow, before sharing it with the customer.

To do this we will:

1. Build a solution-aware instant flow that requests review and approval of the proposal from the team
2. Add this flow as a step in the Lead to Opportunity Sales Process

Step 1: Build the instant flow

Only solution-aware flows can be added as a step in a business process. In our example, we’ll create our instant flow in the ‘Default Solution’. To do this, click on Solutions in the navigation menu, click on Default Solution in the list of solutions to open it, and then create a flow in this solution from the + New menu.

In this version of the preview, begin by adding the When a record is selected trigger from the Common Data Service connector. Set the Environment field to ‘Default’ and set Entity to ‘Lead to Opportunity Sales Process’. Finally, we’ll add a text input field to capture a link to the proposal:

Next, we can get information from the business process flow instance to help provide context for the review. In this version of the preview, we do this by adding the Parse JSON action. Set the Content field to ‘entity’ by selecting it from the list of dynamic values of the trigger, and paste the following content in the Schema field:

{
    "type": "object",
    "properties": {
        "entity": {
            "type": "object",
            "properties": {
                "FlowsWorkflowLogId": {
                    "type": "string"
                },
                "BPFInstanceId": {
                    "type": "string"
                },
                "BPFInstanceEntityName": {
                    "type": "string"
                },
                "BPFDefinitionId": {
                    "type": "string"
                },
                "BPFDefinitionEntityName": {
                    "type": "string"
                },
                "StepId": {
                    "type": "string"
                },
                "BPFDefinitionName": {
                    "type": "string"
                },
                "BPFInstanceName": {
                    "type": "string"
                },
                "BPFFlowStageLocalizedName": {
                    "type": "string"
                },
                "BPFFlowStageEntityName": {
                    "type": "string"
                },
                "BPFFlowStageEntityCollectionName": {
                    "type": "string"
                },
                "BPFFlowStageEntityRecordId": {
                    "type": "string"
                },
                "BPFActiveStageId": {
                    "type": "string"
                },
                "BPFActiveStageEntityName": {
                    "type": "string"
                },
                "BPFActiveStageLocalizedName": {
                    "type": "string"
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

Since the Propose stage of our business process is defined on the Opportunity entity, let’s get information from the related Opportunity record to provide additional context in the approval requests. To do this, add the Get record action of the Common Data Service connector. Set the Environment to ‘(Current)’, the Entity Name to ‘Opportunities’ and the Item Identifier to ‘BPFFlowStageEntityRecordID’, picked from the list of dynamic values:

Now that we have the data we need, lets define the approval process by adding the Start and wait for an approval (V2) action. Use the dynamic content picker to add fields from Get record action to add relevant information about the Opportunity. To provide further context of the active stage that the business process is in, select the BPFActiveStageLocalizedName field from the list of dynamic values

Next, let’s send an email to the requestor based on the outcome of the approval. To do this, add a condition based on the Outcome field of the approval (picked from the list of dynamic values) and add a Send an email action to both the If yes and If no paths.

Finally, save the Flow and turn it on. Altogether, our Flow that requests an approval with information from the business process and the related opportunity record, and acts based on the outcome is below:

Step 2: Add an instant flow as a step in a business process

We begin by opening the Lead to Opportunity Sales Process in the BPF designer. To add a Flow as a step in the Propose stage of our BPF, simply drag and drop the Flow Step (preview) component onto the Propose stage:

Next, click on the search icon in the Select a Flow field to list all flows that can be added to a BPF, and select one from the list. To save your changes, click the Apply button at the bottom of the properties pane:

Finally, click the Update button to make this business process flow with its new flow step available to users.

And we’re done! You can now run your Flow from the Propose stage of the Lead to Opportunity Sales Process by clicking on the Run Flow button:

The post Preview Instant Flow steps in Business Process Flows appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

With custom response options, you can now create approvals with responses tailored specifically to your business needs. Use custom responses to provide granular feedback for content reviews (E.g.: Approve, Approve with edits, Reject), respond to an approval to offer discount with discount limits (Up to 5%, Up to 10%, Up to 15%, Denied), and more!

Create an approval with custom responses

Let’s say we want to send an approval request each time a proposal is uploaded to a SharePoint folder, and allow the approver to respond with one of three options: Accept, Accept with edits, Reject.

To do this, begin by adding an action that starts an approval, just as you do today.

Next, select one of the two ‘Custom Responses’ options in the Approval type dropdown.

Lastly, specify your custom response by filling in the ‘Response options item’ field. To add another custom response option, click the ‘Add new item’ button.

Leverage approval responses

Based on the outcome of the approval request, we might want to do different things. For instance, if the outcome of the request is Accept/Reject, move the proposal to a folder for accepted/rejected proposals, but if it is Accept with edits, send an email to notify the author to make changes to the proposal.

To do this, add a Condition or a Switch action, pick the ‘Outcome’ field of the approval request from the dynamic content picker and check whether the value equals Accept, Accept with edits and Reject respectively.

Respond to approval requests with a custom response

Responding to an approval with custom response options is no different from responding to Approve/Reject approvals. Head on over to the Approval center in Flow, or the actionable email and pick your response

The post Introducing Custom Response Options for Approvals appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.