Microsoft Teams Approvals App in 2026: Streamline Approval Workflows Without Leaving Teams

Every organisation runs on approvals. Purchase orders, leave requests, expense reports, content sign-offs, budget changes — the list is endless. And for years, those approvals have lived in a patchwork of emails, PDF forms, and shared spreadsheets that are easy to overlook and hard to track.

The Teams Approvals app changes that. Built natively into Microsoft Teams and deeply integrated with Microsoft 365 in 2026, Approvals lets you create, send, track, and respond to approval requests without leaving your workspace. This guide covers everything you need to know to start using it effectively.

What Is the Teams Approvals App?

Approvals is a native app in Microsoft Teams that manages request-and-response workflows. It has two access points:

The Approvals app in the Teams sidebar — a dedicated hub showing all your pending, sent, and completed approvals

The Approvals button in chat and channel message compose bar — lets you create an approval request directly in a conversation

Approvals integrates with Power Automate for advanced workflows, Adobe Sign and DocuSign for electronic signatures, and Microsoft 365 records for audit trails.

How to Create an Approval Request

Creating a basic approval takes under two minutes:

Open Microsoft Teams and click the Approvals icon in the left sidebar (if not visible, click the three-dot "…" menu and find Approvals)

Click New approval request

Enter a Title — be specific (e.g., "Q3 Marketing Budget Increase — $5,000")

Add Approvers — search by name or email. You can add multiple approvers

Choose approval type: Everyone must approve (all approvers must agree) or Anyone can approve (first responder decides)

Set a Due Date — optional but recommended for time-sensitive items

Add Details — include context, links to documents, or relevant numbers

Attach Files if needed

Click Send

Approvers receive a notification in Teams and can respond directly from the notification — no need to open the Approvals app or navigate anywhere else.

Approving and Rejecting Requests

When you receive an approval request:

You'll get a notification card in Teams chat or Activity feed

The card shows the title, requester, details, and attached files

Click Approve or Reject directly on the card

Add a comment explaining your decision (optional but helpful for records)

If you're in the Approvals app hub, click any pending request to see full details and respond.

💡 Pro Tip: Add a brief comment when rejecting — it saves a back-and-forth conversation and creates a clear record of why the request was declined.

Creating Approvals Inside a Chat or Channel

One of the most practical features is the ability to create an approval request directly in a conversation:

In any chat or channel, click the "+" icon in the message compose bar

Select Approvals

Fill in the request details as normal

Click Send

The approval request appears as a card inside the conversation. Team members can see it, follow the status, and the designated approvers can respond — all in context, without switching to a separate system.

Tracking Approval Status

The Approvals app hub shows a complete picture of all your approval activity:

Sent — requests you've sent and their current status (pending, approved, rejected, cancelled)

Received — approvals waiting for your response

All — complete history of every approval you've been involved in

Each request shows a timeline of when it was sent, when each approver responded, and what their decision was. This audit trail is automatically maintained and exportable.

Advanced: Approval Templates

If your team sends the same type of approval request repeatedly — weekly expense reports, monthly content sign-offs — use templates to save setup time.

In the Approvals app, click Templates

Click New template or use an existing one as a starting point

Set the template name, default approvers, due date rules, and required fields

Save the template

Next time you create that request type, select your template and the fields pre-populate. Just add the specific details and send.

Integrating with Power Automate

For complex workflows — multi-stage approvals, conditional routing, automatic notifications — connect Approvals with Power Automate.

Common Power Automate + Approvals scenarios:

Automatically create an approval when a SharePoint list item is added or changed

Route approval to manager's manager if direct manager is absent

Send a summary email to the requester when approval is completed

Update a SharePoint or Dataverse record when an approval is approved or rejected

In Power Automate, search for "Approvals" in the connectors list to see all available triggers and actions. The Start and wait for an approval action is the most commonly used — it pauses the flow until the approver responds.

💡 Pro Tip: For multi-stage approvals (e.g., manager then finance director), chain multiple "Start and wait for approval" actions in sequence inside a Power Automate flow.

Electronic Signatures with Approvals

In 2026, the Teams Approvals app integrates with Adobe Acrobat Sign and DocuSign for legally binding electronic signatures. To use this:

When creating an approval, select Electronic Signature as the approval type

Choose your provider (Adobe Sign or DocuSign)

Upload the document requiring signature

Set the signature fields

Send as normal

The approver is directed to the e-signature flow. Once signed, the completed document is stored and linked in the approval record.

Approvals and Copilot in 2026

Microsoft 365 Copilot can help you draft approval requests. In the Approvals app, click the Copilot icon and describe what you need — "I need approval for a new vendor contract worth $12,000 for cloud storage services." Copilot generates a draft approval with an appropriate title, suggested approvers based on your organisation's structure, and a template details section.

Copilot can also summarise approval history: "Show me all approvals related to IT spend in Q2 2026" will pull a filtered view across your approval history.

Best Practices for Teams Approvals

Be specific in titles — vague titles like "Approval needed" create confusion at scale

Set due dates on everything — undated requests get deprioritised

Use "Everyone must approve" only when truly required — it slows things down

Connect high-volume workflows to Power Automate — manual creation doesn't scale

Export approval records quarterly — maintain your own audit archive

Final Thoughts

The Teams Approvals app removes one of the most common sources of friction in office workflows — the approval bottleneck. By bringing request, review, and decision-making into the same tool your team already uses for communication, it eliminates the context-switching that makes approval processes slow and unreliable.

Start small: pick one recurring approval type your team handles by email and migrate it to Teams Approvals this week. Once your team sees the tracking and notification benefits, adoption spreads quickly.

For more Microsoft Teams tips and Microsoft 365 workflows in 2026, visit officelearner.net.