Do you want to send someone a direct link to an approval request in Power Automate? This can be useful if you want to remind them via chat or email or assign them a task in Planner or To Do. In this blog post, Iāll show you how to get a link to a specific approval request’s link that you can use in different Power Automate flow concepts.
Note
If you’re looking for how to send a link to ALL a user’s pending approvals (rather than a specific approval request), check out my recent post on how to create a link to open the Approvals app in Teams.
You may already know that Power Automate has three approval related actions:Ā Start and wait for an approval,Ā Wait for an approval, andĀ Create an approval. Each of these actions has different dynamic content available for later steps. To get a link to a specific approval request, we need to use theĀ Create an approvalĀ action because it gives us access to theĀ Respond linkĀ dynamic content. This is the link that will take users directly to the approval board in Power Automate with their approval task open awaiting response.

How can you use this link? For example, imagine you want to create a flow that runs when a new request is created in SharePoint and creates a Planner task for the approver with the link to the approval request.

Here are the steps for this particular request scenario:
How to create a Power Automate flow that assigns Planner tasks containing links to approval requests
Note: For sensitive information, like leave requests, you’ll want to be mindful of PII and privacy and consider email or chat or other ways to use the link so only individuals who should see sensitive content can. This is merely an example of how you might use Planner tasks for any request scenario.
- For your flow’s trigger, search for SharePoint and selectĀ When an item is created. Configure the trigger by selecting the site and list where you want to monitor new items. For example, you might choose your HR site and the Leave request list.
- ClickĀ Add an actionĀ and search forĀ Create an approval. Configure the approval details as you need. In our example, you might want to request approval from the employeeās manager and set the title to “Leave request approval.” If you intend to send custom notifications via email, planner tasks, etc., click Show advanced options and set Enable notifications to No. This will prevent approvers from receiving multiple notifications about the same approval request.

- ClickĀ Add an actionĀ and search forĀ Create a task (Planner). Select the plan and bucket where you want to create the task. For example, you might choose your specific team’s plan and the Pending tasks bucket.

- ClickĀ Add an actionĀ and search forĀ Update task details (Planner). Select the task ID from the previous Planner action. In the References section, fill in the following fields: References Alias is the text that will be clickable. References Resource will be the Respond link dynamic content from the Approval step. And References Type will be Other.

- Optionally, you can add more actions after creating the approval and updating the task details. For example, you could add a Wait for an approval action to take the outcome of the approval request and perform conditional actions based on it. Or you could add an Update item action (SharePoint) to set the original requestās Approval status from Pending to Approved or Rejected. Or you could add a Send an email action (Outlook) to notify the requestor, copying the approver and HR, with the final outcome of the request.

- Save your flow and test it.
Thatās it! Now whenever a new request is created in SharePoint, a Planner task will be created for the approver with a direct link to the approval request.
You can apply this technique in other scenarios as well. For example, you could send chat messages or emails with links to approvals using Teams or Outlook actions. Or you could create personal To Do tasks with links using Microsoft To Do actions.
How might you be able to use direct links to specific approval requests in your business processes?
References and further reading
Looking for a deeper dive and more ideas? Look no further.
- Create and test an approval workflow with Power Automate | Microsoft Learn
- Create approval flows with custom responses – Power Automate | Microsoft Learn
- Get started with Power Automate approvals – Power Automate | Microsoft Docs
- Create a task in Planner from Microsoft Forms and post message in Teams ⦠| Power Automate Templates
- Create a Planner task | Microsoft Power Automate | Power Automate Templates
- Planner | Microsoft Power Automate | Power Automate Connectors
- Create Planner Task and Include Attachments From O⦠– Power Platform ⦠| Power Platform Community Blog